Time-lapse Aconite flowers opening and snow melting

February 24, 2009

Winter Aconites are tough plants and can survive being buried by snow.

This sequence was filmed in my studio. The snow was taken from my garden and took all night to melt.

The flowers open once the snow has melted and the ’sun’ (my growlight) is switched on.

The view on Youtube:-

If you know you have a very fast or very slow connection, you may want to change your “Video Playback Setting” in your account to “I have a fast connection. Always play higher-quality video when it’s available.” or “I have a slow connection. Never play higher-quality video.”

To change your playback settings, follow the steps below:

  1. Go to your Account page.
  2. Under “Account” click the “Video Playback Quality” link.
  3. Select the playback setting that makes sense for you.
  4. Click the “Save Settings” button.

Snowdrop flower opening time-lapse

February 23, 2009

Time -lapse of snowdrops opening.

This sequence was filmed in my studio using x2 Nikon D200 cameras
x2 studio Flash
Growlight with blind

x2 time-lapse control units

Pan head for rotate shot

The sequence was filmed in a studio over a period of 5 days.

Exposure intervals ranged from 20 seconds to 10 minutes


Amazon can damage your health, wealth and sanity

February 22, 2009

It’s frustrating that once you’ve spent years producing a product that people might like to buy  but Amazon run out of stock and then spend ages ordering more.

Running out of stock just before Christmas has happened to me for the past four years in a row.  This is despite emails and phone calls. What is frustrating and unfair is that the competitors titles are always shown as in stock. This means that they either don’t sell and run out of stock or that Amazon look after the big publishers leaving the smaller publishers to suffer financially.

Not knowing if you’ll be listed as ‘in stock’ makes it difficult to plan an advertising campaign or stock control.

On the 13th December 2008, the Complete garden plant advice and pruning guide encyclopaedia CD-ROM was number 1 best selling position. Since it’s been ‘out of stock 1-2 months delivery’ our sales rank has not suprisingly fallen.

It might be a coincidence but I see that new garden software titles have been listed on Amazon and I wonder if my titles has been removed to allow the new titles to appear on page one without competition?

Without doubt I’ve lost sales and now question the integrity of Amazon. I’m not being given a fair opportunity to sell my Titles on Amazon and now left waiting and hoping that one day my Titles will be restocked.

Amazon Best selling garden software

Amazon Best selling garden software

I mention this as there might be other small independent publishers wanting to sell their titles on Amazon and from my bad experience with Distributors is, be warned, they don’t care as much about your work as you do. They look after the larger clients and their bonuses.


Time-lapse of plants

February 14, 2009

I’ve added my first digital Time-lapse of a snowdrop flower opening

Time-lapse snowdrop flower opening

Time-lapse snowdrop flower opening

on YouTube.

I will be adding more through the season.

I’ve used a Nikon D200 with a 105mm Nikkor lens.

Interval 30secs to 1 minute.

Filmed in my studio