where there’s smoke there’s fire

Seven Survivors by Peter Bill:

Hiroshima survivor trees that lived through the atomic bombing of Hiroshima

Hibaku Jumoku Camphor Tree

My initial interest in creating time-lapse work stemmed from my painting. I found that I wanted to capture the movement of the light. Watching a beat up Samizdat VHS copy of Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi projected on the crumbling wall of a squat in Prague in the 90’s gave me the idea I could do this with film. I started filming on a Minolta Super-8 camera that had an intervalometer built in with Kodachrome and Tri-X film that could be processed in Prague. I created installation loops with super-8 projectors that were nightmares to manage, but looked fantastic. It was not until I was a graduate student at the University of Washington at the end of the previous century that I was able to collect and digitize my super-8 film. With After Effects I could create a collage of the vision I had held in my mind’s eye for some years.

Since then I have continued to shoot time-lapse in film, and then with a procession of digital cameras starting with the Nikon D200. Currently my camera of choice is a D750, with its wicked sensor that has such a smooth dynamic range. I always try to shoot with primes, mostly using a Nikkor 24mm. I have found that as my eye has matured I no longer crave the widest of the crazy wide-angle lenses available, although I do like to play with full spherical fisheyes, and lust after Tilt-shift lenses.

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