At Home with Tech

February 23, 2020

How your Timelapse Videos will Reveal a Different Reality

Shooting timelapse videos will remind you about the very nature of existence. Here are a few of the ways they can expand your perspective.

Capturing that perfect moment with your camera can be a life-long ambition. Along your photographic journey, you might want to also consider the opposite exercise. Explore the opportunity to scoop up the ever-changing landscape in front of you… across time.

Use Your Camera as a Time Machine
Many cameras and smartphones today can act as a time machine and perform the trick of timelapse video capture. You’ve just got to give some thought to which environments you’d like to explore and how they might look when you squeeze twenty minutes down to twenty seconds.

Shooting timelapse videos is easy to do. You’ve simply got to keep your camera steady and allow it to slowly snap a frame of video every two or three seconds. Along the way, it stitches the frames together to generate a scene that moves at lighting speed when you play it back.

Beyond the exploration of timelapse video as an art form, this technology is also exciting, because it bottles up time and then reveals your world in ways you’ve never experienced before. It’s a whole new way to experience reality.

Here’s what I’ve learned from these timelapse videos I’ve recently shot.

So Many Rushing Clouds
I’m always impressed by the hidden intensity of ‘normal’ weather conditions in timelapse mode.

Clouds do not lumber along. Here on a beach, I see that they are clearly on a mission to quickly reach some important destination.

Our Fleeting Existence
When you speed up time, people become momentary blips. While this video’s final form creates a dance of frenetic fun in a snow storm, it’s also a sobering reminder of our own brief presence in space and time.

So, always remember to enjoy the dance.

Your Own Sunrise
Capturing a quickly-moving sun at dawn is hardly an original concept. It’s a scene we’ve all be exposed to countless times on TV and at the movies. Still, there’s always a way to make a sunrise your own.

Where you choose to experience your sunrise is always the unique factor.

Adding Motion
You may have noticed the panning movement in my time-lapse video examples. This trick is courtesy of the ‘motionlapse’ mode in my DJI Osmo Pocket Gimbal camera. After every snapped frame, the gimbal auto-pans a wee bit as part of a preprogrammed move. And that creates the effect of a smooth pan across the shot.

Patience
Timelapse videos are fun to do and usually generate amazing results. Just don’t forget one important variable. These videos will take a while to shoot. So plan ahead.

Capturing time takes time.

February 16, 2020

How to Walk Across the Hudson River with Your Family

Where can you get this spectacular view of the Mid-Hudson Bridge in Poughkeepsie, New York? You’ve got to hoof it to the middle of the Hudson River. Here’s how…

Yesterday, my family and I jumped in the car for a fun day trip. We went to Poughkeepsie, New York to walk across the Hudson River (and back).

We drove to the ‘Walkway Over the Hudson,’ the world’s longest elevated pedestrian bridge, which was originally built in 1889 as the Poughkeepsie-Highland Railroad Bridge.

After a 1974 fire destroyed the tracks, the steel cantilever bridge was eventually transformed into a pedestrian walkway and re-opened in 2009 as the
Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park.

Walking Across the Walkway Over the Hudson
We drove to the bridge’s parking entrance at 61 Parker Avenue in Poughkeepsie. We found an unpaved lot, and it was free to park.
(There’s a sister parking lot across the river at 87 Haviland Road in Highland, New York.)

My wife, nine-year-old son and I jumped out of the car, and we began our trek. It was a 1.28 mile walk across the bridge each way. (You can also bike or jog across.)

There was barely a cloud in the sky, and it was quite simply an exhilarating experience. The views up and down the Hudson River were spectacular.

The Value of No Destination
I should admit my better half put this inspiring family activity together.

At first, I didn’t quite connect to the attraction of driving for an hour and twenty minutes to walk across a repurposed train bridge on a frigid February day. And then… walk back again.

Throughout my life, I’ve sometimes had to be reminded that the journey is often more important than the destination.

When I was a kid growing up in New York City, my parents would occasionally rent a car from the Hertz garage down the street to go for a drive for the day. I would ask them where we were going, and my dad would say, “nowhere.” And I absolutely couldn’t understand the value of driving around without a destination in mind.

Sure, I was just a kid, and I didn’t comprehend getting out of Dodge for the day and simply driving in the countryside. It seemed pointless. And of course, I was missing the whole point.

Fast forward to adulthood.

Walk across a bridge. Walk back.
Why?

Well, I still needed to actually do it. But this time, I got it.
It’s all about the experience.

Never Forget Your Journey
Walking across The Walkway Over the Hudson is a must-do activity for kids of all ages. It’s certainly invigorating in the cold, and I look forward to the opportunity to also experience it in warmer weather.

The exercise is also a valuable reminder that destinations can often be fleeting. Instead, it’s the experience of the journey that we should always hold onto.

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February 9, 2020

Who Has the Biggest Discount on Apple EarPods?

Apple EarPods are yesterday’s news with AirPods and AirPods Pro grabbing all of the headlines. Still, if you’re in the market for a new pair, here’s the best deal I found.

I misplaced my Apple EarPods recently. They simply vanished. I couldn’t find them in the top zipper of my trusty Briggs & Riley black knapsack that I use for work. I was more annoyed at my memory glitch than the actual loss and replacement value. And then I thought about what Apple charges for a new set of these… $29.00.

These days, earbuds feel like a giveaway item. They get thrown around like pretzels on airplanes, and if I still ate Cracker Jacks, I’d expect to find a pair at the bottom of my next box. Granted, the audio quality of Apple EarPods is going to be better than some no-name earbud. Still, with tax, I don’t feel the price tag should be creeping over thirty bucks. They’re yesterday’s tech, especially with Apple focusing so heavily on their wireless AirPods and AirPods Pro lines.

Guilt-Free Purchase for Old Tech?
And while I definitely have felt the full-court press by Apple to upgrade to one of the wireless models, I still believe it’s worth having a back-up wired pair that you can carelessly throw in a bag.

But paying full price for old tech doesn’t feel that good.

Best Deal of Apple EarPods
So I went online to research if any retailers were offering discounts on this legacy Apple product.

B&H Photo offers a pair of Apple EarPods with Lighting Connector for $26.99.
That’s something.

But get this…
Walmart has them for just $19.99.
Wow!
That feels so much better.

Amazon Prime also offers the EarPods for $19.99.
But I worry sometimes about fakes being sold on Amazon and then receiving some knock-off in the mail that pretends to be a genuine Apple product. (75% of Amazon reviewers gave this offer five stars. Yet, some reviewers did cry foul.)

Walmart Wins
So, Walmart got the prize for the best deal on ‘genuine’ Apple EarPods.
Click.

Keeping the price point to twenty bucks made my purchase less painful, especially when I know I could have put my money towards a wireless set.

I continue to tell myself there’s value in having a throwaway pair of earbuds.

Still, I can’t deny the irony surrounding this whole situation.
You know why?

Because I found my original missing pair of Apple EarPods!

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