Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Fast Forwarding Through Life

My home security cameras, which both comfort me and make me paranoid, have given me an idea for an art project. (Well, what a geek with minimal creativity considers an "art project"!) Each camera takes a still photo every 30 seconds, and most evenings, I fast-forward through the pictures from that day. Hardly a day goes by without something interesting being captured: squirrels chasing each other up and down trees, that sweet but shy orange tomcat who likes to hang out under the wooden deck behind my house, and flocks of birds that descend on my yard en masse for a few seconds then disappear as fast as they came. Watching snow accumulate over a period of hours or intricate patterns of dry leaves formed then dissolved by gusts of wind is fascinating. And those are just the natural events; I’m not even counting the human passers-by.

I think the view I enjoy the most is from the camera that points at the driveway. That’s the one that has the best view of the vegetation in my yard and in the neighbors’. What if I picked a time of day (late morning, I think, when the sun is well up but not shining right in the camera and causing lens flares), and saved the picture from that time, from that camera, every day for a year, then fast-forwarded through those? Wouldn’t it be cool to watch the seasons change? And given the number of crimes that have been captured by Google Street View, who knows what else I’ll see?

No comments:

Post a Comment