Timelapsification

Oh, it’s on!

I got home around 6 p.m. to find one of the San Pedro cactus night-blooming blossoms just itchin’ to open up and I rushrushrushed to get everything set up to capture it in all its glory, which my blogbud Julia asked in the comments of my first attempt if I’d actually taken a picture of the picture-taking apparatusesses.

I had not, but I did this time (click to triplify):

setup.jpg

It ain’t pretty, but it works.

You’ll notice the bloom that’s the focus of my attentions on the far left, and a couple feet from it the clamp light rigged to the long branch to provide the illumination I was lacking last time after dark. I did opt for a 40-watt bulb instead of the 100 that was in there… for two reasons: 1) I don’t wanna blow out the image, and 2) the thing being nocturnal I don’t want to confuse it with too much light.

You’ll also find the tripod taped precariously to the top of the rickety ladder and the laptop balanced upon a piece of slate tile upon one of the ladder’s steps. The one thing you won’t find is the Airport basestation because I figured out how to record a sequence of images without having to upload anything to any servers. The drawback is no as-it-happens webcam. The bonus? I’m triggering an image every five seconds, which if all goes well, could mean some reallly cool timelapse movie tomorrow.

Fingers crossed!