The motion of the tide in Galway is fascinating to me (we didn’t have much in the way of tides growing up near the Bog of Allen). Last Saturday week, I went down to Salthill Promenade, as is my habit on a Saturday morning. I went down there a bit earlier than usual – around 7.30 – when the tide was highest. My purpose was to create a timelapse video of the retreating tide, which involved setting up a camera with a timer, and then …well, just hanging around for about 5 hours.
I set up two cameras on tripods – one with a wide view and one with a more close-up view of the same scene. Each camera was fitted with a remote shutter device. One camera took a picture every 8 seconds, the other every 20 seconds. Once the remote shutters are activated, I don’t need to do anything except wait.¹
Now, hanging around on Salthill Prom isn’t exactly hardship, though the breeze was a bit on the nippy side. I had loaded up my iPod with a load of podcasts, so thanks to Terry Gross, Blake Esken, Rico Gagliano & Brendan Newnam, and a host of others, the morning passed quickly (I rarely get time to read newspapers anymore – except occasionally online – but I am totally sold on podcasts). In addition, I have yet to set up a tripod anywhere on the Promenade without someone coming over for a chat, so I had some company on and off over the morning (and if you should see me on the Prom – or anywhere else – standing beside a bunch of cameras clicking away to themselves, be sure to come over and say hello).
The absolutely essential equipment for doing timelapses, apart from the cameras and tripods, are plenty of memory cards and batteries. The timelapses in the videos below consisted of 791 and 1191 photos respectively, and took up about 20Gb of storage. Between the constant clicking and the cold, the cameras went through the first set of batteries in 2 hours.
That’s where another vital accessory came in very handy. I had left the spare cards and batteries back in the house, so, after a quick phone call, my missus agreed to get up and bring them to me. Of course, since I taken the car, she had to walk the 3 kilometres to actually deliver them to me [and walk another 3kms back home again afterwards]. And while she was with me , she fetched a cappuccino and breakfast bap from Coco’s coffee shop nearby [ that’s the other really great thing about doing a timelapse on the Prom – you’re always close to a great cup of coffee]. B & H don’t supply wives, but if they did, I’d order a Langan.
Here are the timelapses – the first shows the Prom in a wide view (the camera was located at the walkway in front of the Waterfront Hotel) and the Bailey Point complex is visible at the left of the picture, and Seapoint can also be seen. Click here to view. The second video is a close-up of a huge rock [also pictured above] visible at low tide (also visible in the wide view) – click here to view.
¹The timelapse is created by uploading all of the pictures onto a computer and using Quicktime software to create a video. Watch them in HD mode if possible.