I once saw a documentary on Harold Edgerton, who pioneered high-speed photography, stopping a bullet as it tears a card in half, or capturing a milk-drop corona.
But more memorable to me was his time-lapse work showing the slow-moving world of starfish. The idea of a world that moves at a different speed is pretty compelling -- tidepools seem tranquil and almost lifeless when viewed from the rocks above. You might have a vague idea that anemones feed on nutrients brought in by the waves, but the idea of a near-motionless life-and-death struggle doesn't really register. Last night, I saw the Shallow Seas episode of the amazing Planet Earth series, my favorite so far. I found the tidepool shots in a small format, and here's a collection of some of the time-lapse pieces accompanied by a lovely song from The Album Leaf.
Turns out, there's a lot of time-lapse videos out there, including the man trapped in an elevator for 41 hours (read the NYer story here).
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I especially like Andrew Curtis's growing collection of time-lapse videos, because he combines them with DIY slow pans, zooms, and dolly shots.
Here's a still from Andrew Curtis's Cinco de Mayo video.
