A Change of Scale and Timescale

There has been a lot of excite­ment about the fact that some of the higher end dig­i­tal SLRs (notably the Nikon D90) can now shoot High Def­i­n­i­tion Video. This means that there are new pos­si­bil­i­ties for peo­ple who don’t have huge stu­dios or wal­lets to do cre­ative things. In one case, it was with lenses and a spe­cial tech­nique called ’tilt-shifting’ that makes for an extremely nar­row depth of field from a dis­tance, and video — in this case, time-lapse pho­tog­ra­phy. The result is some­thing that makes one feel like a god, (or per­haps King Kong or Godzilla), look­ing down with placid seren­ity upon the bustling of tiny human­ity below. That’s what a series of videos by Aus­tralian Keith Loutit has pro­duced seem to be. Have a look at what I mean:

The North Wind Blew South

Loutit’s work has been fea­tured in lots of geeky places like Boingboing.com and Giz­modo, but I found out about it from my friend John Biehler, who showed another of his clips on his site.

I think there is some­thing here that tran­scends just the bizarre and unset­tling. It’s per­haps that we already have such a short time on the planet, but still, if we could just slow down and watch, we might see all sorts of things that we’d never seen before. If we could take a drug that would slow us down so that we were, say, oper­at­ing at 1/10 nor­mal speed for just a day, and didn’t suf­fer any ill effects, I bet that’s a trip that many of us would like to take. Yeah. A long, slow, trip.

I write this, remem­ber­ing that this morn­ing I heard that a critic and tele­vi­sion com­men­ta­tor who I used to watch reg­u­larly, John Leonard, died on Wednes­day. Kurt Von­negut once said: “When I start to read John Leonard, it is as though I, while sim­ply look­ing for the men’s room, blun­dered into a lec­ture by the smartest man who ever lived.” Who am I to dis­agree with Von­negut?  Leonard was indeed bril­liant. When­ever I heard him talk on the show Sun­day Morn­ing, I thought that he made being smart some­thing that was sexy, which per­haps the US is once again redis­cov­er­ing. I hope he was con­scious and knew what hap­pened the day before he died. Per­haps he left with a smile on his face.

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By David Drucker | Filed in Photography, Tech | November 7, 2008 11:26 am

6 Comments to “A Change of Scale and Timescale”

  1. AvatarGene Blishen
    Posted: Nov 8th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
    1

    Great post David. Loved the video. It seems so strange to see it and then real­ize it is real and not some sort of ani­ma­tion. I guess we all look at life through dif­fer­ent ‘lenses’. Hope all is well.
  2. AvatarDavid Drucker
    Posted: Nov 9th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
    2
    Author Comment

    Hi Gene,
    I know what you mean about it look­ing like some sort of a stop-action with minia­tures. I remem­ber when I was a kid, and my par­ents took me to New York City dur­ing the Christ­mas hol­i­days. There were 2 dis­tinct mem­o­ries from the trip: 1) the smell and taste of roasted chest­nuts and 2)the train set that I saw at the offices of Swis­sair in Man­hat­tan. It was a lit­tle alpine loop with small vil­lage, a tun­nel through a snowy moun­tain, and pine for­est. I was utterly fas­ci­nated with it and watched it as long as they let me. I prob­a­bly would have hap­pily sat for hours watch­ing the train move through the tun­nels, around to the vil­lage (and their tiny street­lamps, parked cars and even smaller pedes­tri­ans).
    Things are look­ing up. I hope to have more news soon, but can’t say any more at this point.
  3. Avatarnancy
    Posted: Nov 12th, 2008 at 12:12 am
    3

    I found that quite mov­ing (no pun intended), par­tic­u­larly with the choice of music. You cap­tured it — feel­ing detached as tiny human­ity bus­tles in its lit­tle impor­tances. It elicited com­pas­sion from me, and I also agree, I wanted to inject myself right into the mid­dle of it all, and take it all in. Thanks for posting.
  4. AvatarDavid Drucker
    Posted: Nov 12th, 2008 at 12:31 am
    4
    Author Comment

    Hi Nancy. You’re wel­come. I guess the music does add a cer­tain feel­ing of lan­guor and dis­tance. The high lit­tle sparkles of glock­en­spiel or what­ever they are using for that effect adds to the charm of small things.

    BTW, for a sim­i­lar, but also quite dif­fer­ent view of real­ity via time-lapse, but this time with the music of Philip Glass, check out the film Koy­aanisqatsi, which came out back in 1983. (I can remem­ber that year because I remem­ber see­ing it late at night in Cam­bridge, Eng­land, as a student.)
  5. AvatarDmitry
    Posted: Nov 15th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
    5

    Thanks for shar­ing the video David. It is unset­tling and mov­ing at the same time. Def­i­nitely rem­i­nis­cent of films like Koy­aanisqatsi and Baraka. It’s inter­est­ing that the tilt-shift tech­nique makes it pos­si­ble for a sin­gle artist’s work to have a sim­i­lar impact.

    All the best,

    Dmitry
  6. AvatarDoug
    Posted: Nov 19th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
    6

    WOW, how strange and cool! It’s like clay­ma­tion or some­thing. Great, one more thing for me to investigate!
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