Rocky Mountain National Park, Canon 1Ds MKII with 90mm TSE lens on tripod. The tilt/shift function helped with achieving focus from the front all the way to the back. It makse a nice computer screen background too. Comments, critiques welcome.

Hi Buddy,

I have never seen someone do this before in a post. May I ask how did you do this?

James

Hello James - First let me say I've enjoyed the NWP site and forums over the past many months and appreciate the quality of images, information and interactions found here.

My passion for photography has been mainly directed at studio still-life portraits featuring handmade custom cutlery (art knives)- modern, antique and antique reproductions. I write and photograph for publications catering to the collectors and artisans in that tiny corner of the universe.

I do love to get outdoors with my camera though, and Colorado affords many wonderful opportunities for that.

To produce the animation above I located this stream in Rocky Mountain National Park which falls vigorously down and through an area that experienced a great flood some years back - thus all the relatively light colored boulders and rocks.

With my gear set up in a wind-sheltered spot I picked a calm moment and shot four frames within just a few seconds. My intent was to avoid changing light due to cloud movement. I don't remember exposure details as I was more concerned with working the tilt/shift lens (I'd never used one before - now I use it quite often for a variety of purposes).

Producing an animated GIF image is apparently doable in Photoshop but I use a very nice little program called Easy GIF Animator published by Karlis Blumentals.

The process is simple:
Duplicate the images, edit and re-size for the internet.

Import each one into Easy GIF in order.

Adjust the duration for each image as you like (in this case each of the 4 images appears for the same length of time to mimic a continuously flowing stream).

Save as a GIF file.

Two details:
Posting a GIF animation on the internet is no different than posting a regular image, as long as the site does not dis-allow the use of GIF files.

In the animation above I varied shutter speed slightly with each exposure then arranged the four images to produce the flowing water effect I thought played/looked the best. That is to say, I wanted some of the effect that one gets when shooting moving water using a slow shutter speed. But I also wanted some of the detail that a faster shutter speed yields. The mixture of shutter speeds, the specific order of the images and the duration of each image in the sequence are the variables that must be manipulated to produce the final effect.

These animated GIFs are a lot of fun - at least I get a kick out of them.

That is so cool! I like the idea of it quite a bit. On another note, thank you very much for the compliments on the website. I am honored that we have the great folk that we do here. It really is a very nice place, and I am very happy to see the new faces coming and joining.

Cheers
James

PS Have you done other of these animated gifs?

Yes, I've done quite a few GIF animations. Here are links to 3 the subjects of which fall within the purvue of these forums.

Hummingbird feeding:
http://www.fototime.com/DF2A0EB233368FC/orig.gif

Clouds over Long's Peak (RMNP):
http://www.fototime.com/74FA4AAEEFFC652/orig.gif

The chipmunk says 'no' to me:
http://www.fototime.com/997EE9C12B02549/orig.gif

These are simple fun ones. I've done studio shots of rotating objects with as many as 13-14 views. They're not hard and the are a lot of fun.