The Crane is Dismantled & Removed from Harpenden

On Tuesday, I heard the weather forecast was for drizzle in this area, so I realised that I would need to get some form of rain guard to put over the camera, so after l had located one, and purchased it, I put several charged batteries together with a series of cleared cards, and the new 32GB one for Wednesday's attempt to capture the dismantling of the Cerex crane at the Jarvis Foresters Development site in Harpenden. I also set everything up to check out my attempt to create a time lapse movie of the operation.

I joke about how I always seem to bring sunshine to the site, so the viewpoint I had looking directly into sun was based upon the grey overcast promised — the joke was bound to come back and haunt me, as no sooner than I had set myself up precariously in front of a dormer window window, and started, than the sun came out and gained in strength! I had started, so I would continue. How I cursed the sun. I also faced another snag, I still wanted to capture decent stills of the operation, but getting down from my lofty perch meant getting into frame, and risking jogging the tripod.

However, I did manage to get down and use another camera for other shots, and I also used the opportunity to grab yet another camera with a long lens on it, but this led to a minor disaster later in the day when one camera strap caught on my other camera and sent it sliding down the tiles and then a two foot drop to the wooden scaffolding planks, (though badly scratched, it survived to continue working), but that, my most expensive body is really unlucky and looks very secondhand!

I could hardly have chosen a more difficult task for my first ever venture into time lapse photography — wide angle view, making the action very tiny, shooting into the sun, precarious perch, no room to view the camera controls easily, every chance of jogging the tripod, and so cramped I could not get comfortable… no clear idea how to proceed after capturing the JPEGs, and having to rely on individual batteries, but I still rose to the challenge, I am now wondering whether I am going to get something worthwhile from all the effort.

I am still offloading the 32GB card, and then I have all the other shots to post process to create a gallery that covers that operation in slightly more detail, and certainly better quality, as the time lapse images were all shots as JPEGs. I am now writing several days later; the shots for the time lapse are now in three separate MP4 movies at various sizes, and all the stills are in two separate galleries. I have learned a lot, and realised a few mistakes I have made along the way, I have shown my family, a few friends and the site manager, and they all say that for a first ever attempt they are impressed, so despite my own misgivings, it would seem the outcome was a success — it has certainly kept me busy.