I got the idea today for my next kick ass time lapse photography project. You may remember, I did one a while ago of the signwriting of a hardside trailer body that we had here at work. I’ve been trying to find something not signwriting related that I can have a crack at and then today, I had that eureka moment!

Tomorrow is the Six Hour Endurance race at Pukekohe. It starts at 2pm in the afternoon and runs until 8pm at night. That is two hours in darkness. When I’m at the race track, I work from the Race Control booth at the top of the members stand. It gives me a view of pretty much the entire race track bar part of the front straight because someone rudely stuck a bridge there and through the dip.

So tomorrow, while working in race control, I will set up my camera, Nikon D200, on a tripod with my super-wide lens (Tokina 12-24 f/4) that I acquired while in the states earlier this year and fire off an exposure every 15-20 seconds. I will need to make a few adjustments etc as the shoot continues, but I expect these to be minor adjustments to simple things like ISO as it gets darker.

So my goal is tomorrow afternoon set up the camera during the lunch break on a tripod on the top level of the members grandstand, set the aperture to f11 or similar, take a shutter speed reading, switch to manual everything and just check my settings every hour or so throughout the evening until the end.

With the 1200-1440 exposures expected, I won’t be shooting in RAW, but JPG, probably medium quality as well. That way I can get 1200 exposures to one 4GB compact flash card. I will be using the battery grip as I can swap batteries out throughout the evening just in case because that was my achilles heel last time I did one of these babies.

Suffice to say, this time around, I’m better equipped/prepared and I think I know what I’m going.

While the time lapse is clicking away, I’m going to spend about 30 minutes taking a handful of long exposure shots on another camera and some bracketed shots at dusk to use for HDR as I’ve never really tried my hand at that either.

But in the words of a mentor, if HDR is turning up at camera club level, its already overused.

Of course, I will share the finished work right here and on twitter/facebook/youtube etc

Any photography projects you have in mind?

It has been a while since my last blog post. Naughty me. But I could be forgiven as I’ve been such a busy beaver that this spot has kind of been pushed to one side while I keep myself plodding along trying not to fall asleep behind the wheel so to speak.

The last two weekends, I’ve been busy working my butt off in Race Control for the NZ Festival of Motor Racing Celebrating Chris Amon. It was seriously the hardest weekends I’ve ever had, and the most fun too. Sure, there is always someone who has the milkshake that brings all the drama to the yard, and I guess thats part and parcel of teenagers. I remember once upon a time, I was one. I still think I am one.

But yesterday, I cracked the big three oh. And the planet didn’t stop turning. A few cards had ‘welcome to the club’ written in them, and I’m now wondering – where are the clubrooms and does it have a cash bar? But seriously, we had the most amazing, relaxed celebration last night with friends and family here at our place. The food was awesome and I still have some salads left and some cake too. Om nom nom. The cake is not a lie!

And suffice to say, I got spoiled. I have a gorgeous canvas print, ceramic tile set, necklace, vouchers, hot dog machine just to name a few, but the real gift was that two friends who hadn’t spoken in years, reconciled at my party. Oh the warm fuzzies!

My darling husband gave me two presents, one was a Nikkor 50mm f1.8D lens and the other is a Lens Baby Muse with Plastic Optic. I got my presents early. He had good reason to do that. If I had got my presents on my actual birthday, the house would not have been cleaned and the foodage would have gone unpurchased. So all my guests can be thankful for that I suppose.

And so now, the party is over, the dishes mostly washed, the cake vacuumed up off the carpet and not a hangover was to be had. I’ve had a wee play with my Lens Baby and got a few shots in. More practice is required, but for now, I can allow myself to focus on the final arrangements for our LA trip in 26 days, 22 hours and also focus on the upcoming ITM 400 in Hamilton where I will well and truely be feeling out of my depth, but loving the rush from the pressure I’m sure.

And looking back at my 20s, it was a real mixed bag and I know, this next 10 years, my 30s, are going to be awesome!