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Slow life - timelapse footage of marine animals

Life Too Slow to See – Timelapse Footage of Marine Animals

Last month, in a post about hummingbird singing slowed down by a factor of eight, I asked whether “our human-based perception of events in time blind us to certain aspects of ‘reality'”. That principle isn’t limited in one direction to things too fast for us to see or hear though – see the stunningly beautiful video below (fullscreen and HD that thing) showing ‘slow life’, made observable in our natural timeframe only by speeding up timelapse observations:

“Slow” marine animals show their secret life under high magnification. Corals and sponges are very mobile creatures, but their motion is only detectable at different time scales compared to ours and requires time lapses to be seen. These animals build coral reefs and play crucial roles in the biosphere, yet we know almost nothing about their daily lives.

…To make this little clip I took 150000 shots. Why so many? Because macro photography involves shallow depth of field. To extend it, I used focus stacking. Each frame of the video is actually a stack that consists of 3-12 shots where in-focus areas are merged. Just the intro and last scene are regular real-time footage. One frame required about 10 minutes of processing time (raw conversion + stacking). Unfortunately, the success rate was very low due to copious technical challenges and I spent almost 9 long months just to learn how to make these kinds of videos and understand how to work with these delicate creatures.

Could there be ‘slow life’ at the extremes, moving on the scale of millennia, all but unobservable to beings like us limited to a century of life?

(Video by Daniel Stoupin – art prints of his photography are available there. Found via Explore)

Mobile menu - fractal