The video of the seasons in Norway

eirikso

Update: I’ve made a new video of better quality images from 2008:
One year worth of images give some amazing videos

Update:
I have now uploaded a high resolution version of the index print as well: High resolution index print of 2005

Update2:
The high definition version is now available here.

One Year in Norway

44 pictures taken out of our window at random times of the day and at random intervals through the year. When taking the pictures I have placed the camera up in the corner of our living room window at a place where it gets nearly the same framing for each picture. Because it’s only nearly I aligned all of them in Photoshop. Then I put them on the timeline in Sony Vegas Video. I strethced them to 5 seconds each and added a simple dissolve between all the pictures.

Transparency

To align them in Photoshop you start with picture number one, put the next one on a layer above and makes it 50% transparent. Then you find a place in the picture that is as solid as possible and align the two pictures until you don’t have any “ghost image” around the solid parts.

Unalligned Aligned

Click the pictures to see the original screenshot from Photoshop. The first one (to the left) is not aligned. The last one (right) is aligned.

I have added the video to YouTube

Anyway, you can also download the video here:
Windows Media Video 9
Quicktime H.264

I have also made a 720p HD version of this video. It is actually quite nice to see it on my 37 inch LCD. The HD version is somethning that I could post on BitTorrent. Please comment if that is interesting.

Edit:
If you like this story you can vote for it on digg.com here. 🙂

Edit2
Been there, bought the T-shirt.

Seasons - T-shirt

Eirikso T-Shirts

The video of the seasons in Norway

91 thoughts on “The video of the seasons in Norway”

  1. 264 comming my way… wow, it is finally finished 🙂

    i have to do somethimng like that at the beach here on my island someday…
    just dont know how and where to place the camera yet… hmmmm

    anyways, great inspiration and “scientific” work 🙂

    Reply

  2. Yes, finding a place where the camera will fit in a way that makes it easy to snap the same picture each time can be difficult. And, you also want the framing in that spot to give you a nice picture as well…

    Anyway, it was a fun project and I have some ideas for a new one in 2006. 🙂

    Would love to see something similar from other windows around the world!

    Reply
  3. Andrew says:

    You’re very lucky to have such a lovely view from your window. Here in Toronto, Canada we have similarly drastic changes over the course of the year. Watching your video reminded me that everything will be green again in a few months. Fine work!

    Andrew

    Reply

  9. That’s beautiful. You it be acceptable if I painted a pastel series from that?

    No problem. 😀 Please tell me if you want pictures in a better resolution or anything like that.

    Reply

  11. excellent, the page loaded quickly, the video [you tube] played straight away.

    Fascinating that the more foliage there was the more depth the picture had. The leaves in the forground lead the eye across right almost down a path which was not obvious with the winter pictures. The sort of tricks painters use to move the viewers eye about the picture.

    thanks for that

    Reply

  13. Unfortunately for the HD-version I am currently travelling and connected through dial-up only. I’ll see what I can do, but the HD-torrent might have to wait until I return back home.

    I’ll keep you informed here!

    Reply

  14. Inspiring. Thank you for doing this, and for presenting your process so clearly. I hope lots of your visitors will create similar views, so that at this time next year we can share video from all over the world.

    Reply

  15. I have checked the HD-version. It’s around 120 MB and actually possible to upload from the dial-up I’m on. But I need a tool that let me resume a broken upload.

    What would you recommend? I must admit that my knowledge of BitTorrent and distribution through that technology actually is a bit limited.

    Reply

  20. […] Here’s a perfect reminder to make the most of your time because once it’s gone, it’s gone. Time-lapse 2005 out a window in Norway Eirik Solheim sez, “For all of 2005 I have been taking a picture out of our living room window at random intervals. I have found a place in the window where the framing is almost identical for each picture. Now I have finished a video that runs through one year outside our window. All of it in about one and a half minute. Link « Another Happy Face   […]

    Reply
  22. js says:

    wow… nice 🙂 with a webcam and automation, it would be easy to gather enough pictures for creating a longer piece, like an hour or even more. Seeing the landscapes change smoothly would be so mesmeriziing…

    Reply

  23. Very nice. I counted about 48 distinct transformations. Perhaps a trailer could be added giving a month and date ofeach transformation. Or a calendar image in a secondary window, or in-line, that shows a month with a highlighted date corresponding to the current image, and changing with each distinct transformation.

    Beautiful images.

    Reply
  24. pvck says:

    This is beautiful, both esthetically and scientifically. Thank you so much for sharing. The quicktime is going to make it into the early mellow section of my VJ set at the club where I work, if you don’t mind (if you do mind, please respond by email, as I might not make it back to this page). Well done indeed, and thank you again.

    Reply

  27. The quicktime is going to make it into the early mellow section of my VJ set at the club where I work, if you don’t mind.

    No problem! Where, and what club?

    We’ll all have to go there and watch it! 🙂

    Reply

  28. Perhaps a trailer could be added giving a month and date ofeach transformation.

    Good idea. All the pictures are time stamped… Have to do some experiments with that one!

    Reply
  29. indigirl says:

    I loved this. I wanted to do something similar with my daughter taking pictures of her lying on a mat from birth to one year …. but somehow having a baby is a bit distracting lol

    Reply

  31. Time-Lapse Video of The Seasons.

    Eirik Solheim has produced a beautiful time-lapse video of the changing seasons in Norway. He took 44 photographs from a window at random intervals during a year then spliced them all together into one fluid, serene video.

    See it here and heap lavis…

    Reply

    2. Given the order of the planes and the information you are aware of, in what order will the planes fly and does this appear to you to be a sensible approach…with the time factor geared to a first quarter 2010 delivery

      Reply

  36. […] High resolution index print of 2005 I am honored by the huge interest for my little video experiment with pictures from 2005. Huge amounts of nice comments and suggestions. One of the suggestions was to make a version of the index print with a higher resolution. That was actually quite easy. I used a cheap little publishing software called PagePlus. It has a photo merge function and repeating fields for pages. I have made two versions. Right-click and select “download” if you don’t want the PDF to open in your browser: US Letter, 6 x 6 pictures, 600 DPI A3, 6 x6 x pictures, 400 DPI […]

    Reply
  37. susita says:

    what an inspiration! This brought a smile to my lips, ah the hope of spring and green and the eternal cycle/circle of the seasons.simply beautiful. Thanks for the work you put into this,

    Reply

  38. […] A time lapse video of the seasons in Norway. Dallas toddler’s talking Elmo book asks ‘Who Wants To Die?’ This guy has the world’s longest ear hair Hey, this Kopi Coffee tastes like shit Should Sufjan Stevens next “State” release be California? 7 blog design trends for the new year. Oversized plastic car model kit wall art. […]

    Reply

  41. Cool. The irony is that I am currently travelling in hot and sunny Florida and will return back to icy cold Norway soon…

    The difference between the seasons here in Florida is not that big but it could have been interesting to have an unmanned camera taking pictures out of the window during hurricane season…?

    Reply

  44. excellent, the page loaded quickly, the video [you tube] played straight away.

    Thank you for your feedback. It seems like YouTube works quite smooth. And it actually handles the 50 000 + visitors I have had for the last two days…

    Reply

  47. …and as a secret to the people that actually read all the comments on this page I have now posted the HD-version as well.

    It is a WMV9 video that is 1280 x 720 50p

    Beautiful on my 37″ LCD. You need a quite powerful PC to play it. When I return back home I will post a more Mac-friendly HD-version as well…

    You find it here.

    Have fun!

    Reply

  48. […] First a big welcome to all my new readers! Because of the huge popularity of my little time-lapse experiment I now have even more utterly intelligent people subscribing to my RSS-feed. And yes, it’s a very good idea to subscribe to the feed because I will not overload you with posts here at eirikso.com. Subscribing to the feed or the email update gives you a nice little notification at the times when I have decided to put something new on this page. To celebrate the fact that my excellent web host just octupled my bandwidth and quadrupled my disk space I give you the HD-version of my time-lapse experiment for download. I am currently travelling and on a dial-up connection only. Uploading the 120 MB through modem was painful. And that’s why I have to wait until I return back home before I can upload additional versions. […]

    Reply

  49. This is great – thanks so much for sharing! If you’re still looking for software to produce this kind of effect, I work for a company that distributes lots of software, and there’s a few photography programs created by Selectsoft that do some nifty effects….Panorama Studio could take all these pictures and turn them into one big panoramic effect, Photo Morph Studio morphs pictures, one into another, and Photo Montage takes a bunch of little picture and uses their color values to create a montage out of another picture.

    Can’t wait to try your idea out my window!

    Reply

  53. […] The pepper matters Somewhere in the discussion around my little time-lapse experiment a person concluded that “this guy should get a life“. If you are dedicated, patient, accurate and serious about what you do this is a boring comment to get, because you get it all the time. Especially if you are very interested in one single subject. I don’t mind to be called a geek or a nerd. Simply because I am a geek and a nerd. Still, I’m interested in more than time-lapse photography… Thanks to several celebrity chefs and huge amounts of books, we have learnt that if you want salt in your dish it has to be sea salt from Maldon in England or from Camargue in France. Of course all ingredients are important and there is a difference in the type of salt you choose. But choosing the right black pepper is more important. I find it strange that these chefs mainly talk about one thing when they add this spice: pepper has to be freshly ground. That’s the nobrainer. Yes, you can take the glasses and small bags of pre ground pepper you have at home and trash them at once. I was actually very happy when I saw that my favourite food coloumnist, Andreas Viestad wrote about pepper in his last article (norwegian). […]

    Reply

  54. […] standing right next to me is your absence. the physical one at the very least. mind you, it’s a livable absence. yours not mine. the manual reveals this was the turn I wasn’t meant to make. but i’ve made it and now i’ll divert. if i run faster you won’t catch me. so there. Norway here i come. winter will freeze you out of me and the greatest irony – my frozen heart will thaw for good. just in time for spring. at last, i am back to front, hoping for happy accidents. because you are an accident waiting to happen. and you know, i’m always right. […]

    Reply

  57. Really cool video. Thanks for putting it up. I live it Texas and we dont get snow down here. So your seasons are quite a bit different than ours.

    Reply

  58. It’s truly inspiring that so many people like this little video. Right now it’s spring time again here up north and the birds are going crazy singing day and night. Made me think of a soundtrack for the video. I should really start recording some audio clips as well. Birds during spring time. People outside during summer. Rain during autoumn. Wind during winter…

    Reply

  60. I have to upgrade my version of Vegas Video to be able to render a H.264 QuickTime in HD.

    Actual requests from users is taken seriously here on this blog so I’ll speed things up… Expect a Mac friendly HD-version soon. 🙂

    Reply

  62. Really inspiring video. Very little video on the net is worth looking at. You have done a rare thing mixing nature and technology. I hope you will continue on.

    Reply

  64. Beautiful work. I googled “time lapse seasons” because I have always wanted to do this and I knew some else had. Very nice. Thanks for posting this. I would love access to a hi def version for my video projector! Is that available?

    Reply

  71. […] For å slippe å måtte klarere rettigheter og annet har jeg valgt en video som jeg laget selv for to år siden (ja, dette er skikkelig “beta”). En timelapse satt sammen av bilder tatt ut av mitt stuevindu gjennom et helt år. Den har tusenvis av visninger på YouTube, Revver og iFilm bak seg, men nå får dere den i 720p. Med andre ord HD. Den er kodet i H.264 og inneholder desverre ikke lyd. De spesielt interesserte kan lese om hvordan jeg laget den. […]

    Reply
  78. Anita says:

    Satt og søkte på Internett hvordan jeg skal få satt inn en julehilsen på intranettet (har fått en cd i hånda med flere filer, både _RM og _TS og vet ikke hva som er hva…) – jeg brukte søkestreng “hvordan lenke video TS” og paradoksalt nok kom jeg til din blogg. Paradokset er: Du har holdt en underholdende foredrag for min arbeidsenhet nettopp i dag. Og da viste du denne filmen med årstidene…

    Så liten er Internett, eller så stor er du 🙂

    Anita

    Reply
  80. Anita says:

    Fnis. Lite og håndterlig. Lest på en dag.
    Fant ut (helt av meg selv) at å lenke til ifo-fila var bra. Så nå virker snutten. Herlig.
    Snart gå hjem, hurra. B-)

    Reply

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