Cape Town Morph

It’s often difficult to know what people think when I post stuff like this. The reasoning behind my confusion is that is seems that many of my readers are tech-savvy, early-adopter, social media users.
And I first caught sight of this short video yesterday evening. Which means that they probably did too.

Fortunately, most of them don’t have the time, energy or inclination to leave a comment saying “Saw this ages ago – boring!” or whatever. There are those, however, who don’t live in Cape Town or South Africa (and will therefore probably not be interested anyway) or don’t hang around on Twitter or Facebook and will not have seen this.

Therefore, I am posting this for them. Oh, and for me.

This is 129 years in 30 seconds (I nearly typed “30 seconds in 129 years” then, but it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as interesting) and here’s the story:

I was recently commissioned to recreate a panorama of Cape Town and Table Mountain, captured from Signal Hill in 1884 by W.F.H. Pocock.

Fortunately I managed to find the exact same spot where the original photos were captured, so I was able to shoot my modern version of Mr. Pocock’s amazing 1884 panorama. And fortunately I correctly guessed the focal length that was used to capture the original photos, so my panorama came out looking almost exactly the same as the original.

Lots of fortuity there, and lots more detail here, including the phrase “Then I had this crazy idea…”.

Breathtaking

Behold, Rory Allen’s 2012 Timelapse showreel. Just… wow.

Says Rory:

This is a collection of time lapses shot over 2011/2012. Most of them are based in Cape Town but a few are from London too.

You’ll want to hit the HD button and go full screen – do that here.
And enjoy more timelapse loveliness here.

IOM Timelapses

Spotted earlier, this from here, via here:

Very nice, and really excellent for a first attempt. Says Jan:

I proudly present my first TIME LAPSE video compilation taken on the beautiful Isle of Man.
For best viewing please switch the HD feature on and watch it fullscreen!

For the past few weeks I’ve been learning the art of time lapse and this is the first result. There is more to follow soon and I hope you will like it.

The music, of course, is from Ludovico Einaudi, standard fare for timelapse videos and attempted pseudo-arty photo essays.

Amazing timelapse of Eihatsu Maru saga

While all the rest of SA is going on about defaced paintings and whether the North West Province is about to descend into a mini race war, I’ve been marvelling at this timelapse of Eihatsu Maru – the “Clifton trawler”.

Yes. I know that this is now (literally) last week’s news, but, when comparing last week’s news with this week’s news, I think I’d rather still be there.

In the words of the videographer:

What was supposed to be a single time lapse of the ship getting pulled out, ended up turning into a four day documentation of the entire event.

There were three attempts to pull the ship out, two of them failing with the rope snapping and the third being a success. The diesel on the Japanese trawler, which was also carrying fish, had to be pumped into a bladder on the beach to decrease its weight, making it easier to pull out. It ended up being quite a lengthy operation involving teams of specialised staff to operate and to offload machinery, and to coordinate the event.

The diesel was offloaded, a stronger towing point was welded to the rear of the ship and she was pulled out at high tide on Friday the 18th May 2012.

A DAFF investigation has shown that the vessel was not engaged in any illegal fishing.