Time-lapse Photography – Rebuilt for Youtube HD

In my last blog, I have posted the time-lapse photography, “A night at the Calgary Stampede”, and I noticed the image quality uploaded in Youtube was very bad. I do not think it was far from the acceptable level to publish. Think about the resolution produced by even old D80; it is much higher than 1080p high-definition. So I took a whole day (Beautiful Saturday) to research how to develop HD video for Youtube. Here is process to build time-lapse photography, which I think at least working for me.
1. Minor retouching on Adobe Light Room and apply the changes to all photos.
2. Export whole images to a folder with resizing to 1080 on short edge. In this movie, I captured ten different scenes so the resized images from each location were stored in particular folders.
3. Build the sequence movies (Time lapse) by Apple Quick time pro. In this case, I made 10 different movies.
4. Quicktime produces ‘mov” files which cannot be opened by Windows Movie Maker 6.0 so I used Avdemux 2.5 for not only converting files but also stitching the ten video files to one sequence. Avdemux 2.5 is very good software to transform video and audio to suitable ones to display on Youtube HD. Then the file was converted to AVI file.
5. Some effects were added by Windows Movie Maker 6.0, which allows to develop only WMV format of the video files.
6. The WMV file was converted to mpeg 4 format by WinFF.
7. Finally upload the time-lapse photography to Youtube.

I am sure that many people know better ways than this process I tried. Please share your method.

Although I have replaced with the HD version in my last post, I attached the HD version in this post. You can see the big improvement from the low resolution version. Also all softwares are free, except Apple QuickTime Pro which is only $20. Please select 720P HD in “Change Quality” button which is shown as a wheel mark located on right bottom of the video and try full screen.

High resolution version

Low resolution version

Time Lapse – A night at the Calgary Stampede 2012

I went to Calgary Stampede on July 14th Saturday. It was very busy day. Although I had my regular camera with me, I did not use the camera for even a shot because I decided to focus on time lapse photography with my old Nikon D80. I tried time lapse for wedding photo session which I hope I can show you in near future.

Calgary Stampede – Aftermath

Calgary Stampede 2012 has been over. After fireworks were done and when I was walking toward the C-train station, I found this scene. Well, although my friend, Janice, is the one who gets inspiration from Japanese Haiku,  I recalled the one of the most famous Haiku in Japan composed  about 350 years ago. Of course, I felt I’ve got to capture the scene and my sentimental feeling.

The summer grasses―
Of brave soldiers’s dreams
The aftermath.

The aftermath of dreams by Hiroaki Kobayashi

Calgary Stampede – Thank you, volunteers

My friend who was volunteering for Calgary Stamped went home today with her lovely horses. I guess her part of the summer 2012 has been done. When I visited the barns which spreads to huge area of the stampede park, I saw hundreds of campers. Most of the volunteers stay in their own campers and take care of their horses from early morning to the end of the fireworks which is around 11:30 pm.

Volunteers are not only for livestock, I noticed thousands of volunteers are helping Calgary Stampede. Without their help, Stampede could not be opened. My photos are being exhibited at the Stampede Western Photo gallery, and the gallery is run by 10s  of volunteers. They are the ones giving me the opportunity to show my images in the world event in 2011 and 2012. They are working not only the period of Stamped opened, but also they start planning for the next gallery show months ahead

I took picture of my friend’s love, Jazz. I would like to give this photo to her for showing my small appreciation. Thank you so much, all volunteers. Only one day left.

Jazz at Stampede by Hiroaki Kobayashi

Calgary stampede – Chuck wagon race

As I mentioned in my last post, I had a chance to visit backstage of Calgary Stampede. I could see chuck wagon race at close range and I tried to capture the powerful horses running hard and working together.

My camera gear was my everyday set, a rangefinder camera and I used 135mm and 90mm this time…No auto-focus nor huge 300mm 2.8 lens.  Elamrit 135mm is quite sharp even though the lens was designed 35 years ago. I often think what the evolution of camera technology for these 20 years is. I started shooting with shutter-speed fairly first, 1/250 sec.

Chuck wagon race 2012 -1 by Hiroaki Kobayashi

I do not shoot sports photography so I thought this was a good opportunity to practice panning. It was pretty difficult to get idea how first I should move my camera to follow the horses running first. I tried the shutter-speed 1/15.

Chuck wagon race 2012 -3 by Hiroaki Kobayashi

Chuck wagon race 2012 -4 by Hiroaki Kobayashi

The impression of the image is completely different from the first one. I got some ethereal images with 1/15. But it was a little too blur so I tried 1/30 and changed lens to 90mm. I think this image is dynamic enough and not too artistic as the 2nd one.

Chuck wagon race 2012 -5 by Hiroaki Kobayashi

Please click the images for larger sizes.

Calgary Stampede – behind the scenes

A friend of mine volunteers Calgary stampede every year and she invited me to a backstage of Calgary Stampede. I visisted the site around 5 pm evening so I had an opportunity to photograph cowboys and cowgirls preparing their horses for the chuck wagon race. I saw a young girl was helping, I guess, her mom. Also I saw a senior was showing how to bandage a horse legs to young one. I noticed the skills and knowledge were handed down from a generation to next generation.

Then I had a little beer with some volunteers, attending from all over the Alberta with their horses. That was great experience! Oh, fireworks from the other side of the Stampede park was amazing. I hope I can come back next year.

Animal portrait – Horses, such a gentle animal

Last weekend, I had a chance to visit my friend’s farm just outside of Calgary, Alberta. My purpose of this visit was photographing their horses. My inner images were trying to capture horses running dynamically…with a little bit motion blur. However, due to the rain before the day, the soil was pretty muddy, they could not get out to the field. So I changed strategy and tried more close-up shorts and made it animal portrait. Hmmm…I don’t know since I stop caring ribbon collecting images or my photographic vocabulary is expanding?… now, I can get images making me feel good in any situations…most of times

Talking about and horses and western theme, my 6 photos are exhibited at Calgary Stampede Western photo gallery until July 15th.

Secret talk by Hiroaki Kobayashi

Please click the image for the larger size.

Also please check out, my friend, Janice Meyers Foreman’s photo. Good one as well.