The longest day of the year is today, clouds in time-lapse over Derby video.

Today 21st June 2010 is the longest day of 2010. I meant to set up my timelapse equipment to capture a full days worth of clouds in timelpase but I forgot, but you may enjoy the last video I made of clouds in time-lapse on the longest day in 2008. This video is on my Vimeo channel. Its recorded in HD, to watch it in HD you need to click on the HD is off icon then click the link that shows, fullscreen option is bottom right of the viewer....



The Longest Day, A full day of clouds in time-lapse. June 20th 2008 from Andy Savage on Vimeo.
The idea of this video was simple, I wanted to capture a whole days worth of clouds in time-lapse on the longest day of the year (20th June 2008). The sunrises in the summer are amazing but you tend to be asleep and dont get chance to see them. By means of "timed start" time-lapse I've managed to capture a wonderful sunrise which you can see at 0:23 in this video, this equates to 4.28am
I shot the sequence out of my front window in Derby, Derbyshire, UK. I did not notice the dirt on the window until after I looked at the images, oh well !

I set the software to capture and image every 14 seconds.
The first image was taken at 02:43, this is the first photo that you could start to see some daylight starting.
The last image was taken at 23:04 which was the last image with any daylight present.
The sequence is made from 5232 photographs, taken with a Canon Ixus 430.

To learn more about how the length of the day changes throughout the year see here :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solstice

In 2010, at 7:28 a.m. Eastern Time, the Summer Solstice began, marking the first day of summer and the longest day of the year for those in the Northern Hemisphere.

The Earth, tilted on its 23.5-degree axis, is tipped closest to the Sun during the Summer Solstice while the opposite holds true for those residing in the Southern Hemisphere, for which today is the winter solstice. Today would be the shortest day of the year for them.

The Solstice does not always occur on the same day. The variation exists because our calendar has 365 days in a year, whereas an astronomical year has 365.25 days. The discrepancy is accounted for through our implementation of the leap year system, which adds an extra day to the calendar every four years

Andy

The famous garden slug from Derby on the DVD release of the film Flushed Away.

What’s the connection between the Aardman animated film Flushed Away and a Garden slug in Derby?
Read on and you will find out....

This blog post is about something that happened back in 2006 but thought it would be of interest to local readers.

In 2003 I was experimenting with time-lapse photography using my Olympus 2020 digital camera, and in  August I noticed some large slugs in my garden and thought it might be interesting to do some timelapse of a garden slug moving around so I took a series of 150 photographs (until I got bored!) of this slug moving along the path in my back garden.

I took the photographs by hand every 5 to 12 seconds and very roughly followed the travel of the slug. I then made the sequence of frames into a short movie as an AVI file and uploaded it to my website.

Then out of the blue in November 2006 A company called Blue Collar Productions contacted me on behalf of Paramount Studios asking if they could use my original frames as a DVD extra on a forthcomming animated film release. It turned out that that the film in question was the DreamWorks/Aardman Animation film Flushed Away.

Flushed Away is a 2006 computer animated British film. It is a partnership between Aardman Animations of Wallace and Gromit fame, and DreamWorks Animation, and is Aardman's first completely computer-animated feature as opposed to the usual stop-motion.
The film stars the voice talents of Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Andy Serkis, Bill Nighy, Ian McKellen, Shane Richie and Jean Reno. The story was by Sam Fell, Peter Lord, Dick Clement, and Ian La Frenais, and the screenplay was written by Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais, Christopher Lloyd, Joe Keenan, and William Davies.

The DVD for Flushed Away was released on 2 April 2007, For more info on this film see :
http://www.flushedaway.com/

If you own the Flushed Away DVD and want to see my Derby Slug perform these steps on the DVD
From the main menu select Special Features then select More>
then select Super Slug Stuff then click Slugcam.



How strange to think that a Slug in a garden in Derby is on this DVD film release, seen around the world.
Perhaps I should try and trace the descendents of that slug in my garden and tell it how its now famous throughout the world:). Im not sure how long a UK Slug lives for, perhaps the star himself is still alive now?

Video of Derby Streets by car City Centre, September 2009

My latest Derby streets by car video in now online.
This one shows a lot of the new developements in the City Centre.
Westfield Derby
Derby Riverlights
Cathedral Quarter Wheel
Derby Quad
Jurys Inn Hotel
New road layout near Seven Stars pub.

All captured in HD.

The wicked music is Psychedelica Panic Part 3 by Tilkanuts
Licensed under Creative Commons


Hope you enjoy.
Thanks
Andy