Happy Thanksgiving, Folks

Fall is my favorite time of year. It brings beautiful colors, non-stop football and roasted turkey. Who could ask for more.

This fall I spent many evenings photographing a wonderfully cooperative subject - the beautiful maple tree seen above. I was working on an experimental project for The Sun. What I did for this project was to shoot about 5,000 still camera frames of the maple tree, starting in late summer and working through the fall.

As is usually the case with these kinds of things, it's shoot, shoot, shoot; wait, wait, wait; wait some more..... then rush.

Today Baltimore Sun fellow shooter John Makely and I worked quickly together to produce the time-lapse movie I envisioned when I shot all of those frames.

(They wanted it up for the holiday weekend.)

Okay, it was more John than me on the production end. But he was a tremendous help in piecing together pretty much what I envisioned as I shot it. And I got to stir the pot some.

It's my third multimedia project - I'm a total noob - but my goal is to go out of bounds of "normal" for a newspaper and try new things. There's a link to the project at the bottom of the post.

For you far-flung international readers out there, November 23rd is Thanksgiving Day in the USA. We pause to give thanks by sleeping late, watching a big parade on TV, watching some football, stuffing ourselves to the point just shy of explosion with turkey, and then watching some more football.

If that sounds weird, don't even ask about Black Friday. That's the day after Thanksgiving, when we all wake at at 4:30 a.m. to stampede into Best Buy to shop.

And we honestly consider ourselves to be perfectly normal.

I am thankful for my wonderful family, my health, the fact that my University of Florida Gators are ranked in the top five in both football and basketball, and of course all of the wonderful new people I have met as a result of starting this website this past April.

But Thursday I will not be posting anything. I'll be pretty slow to moderate comments, too. And Moishe from Midwest Photo Exchange will probably not be returning e-mails. We'll be spending time with our families. If you are celebrating T-day, I hope you'll get a chance to be with yours, too.

The time-lapse movie is far from perfect. But I learned a lot through the process that I will be able to apply to the next project. Which I hope will be as nontraditional as this.

Click here to see it.

If you would, let me know what you think either on the still photo's Flickr page or in the comments section below. Please be gentle with respect to the many instances of clumsiness. I'm learning.

And while you're at it, take a look at what the other Sun shooters are doing on the multimedia page. We're working hard and learning as fast as we can.

Have a great holiday. And please drive safely if you are traveling.


Oh, and because I am a flash geek, the tree was lit with two speedlights. One was at back camera left behind a hedge on 1/2 power and the other across the street on full power at camera right. The cops even showed up during my night tree-flashing marathon. Gotta love Howard County's finest.

-DH