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A Timelapse from La Barillette
It is not rare for me to do a timelapse from La Barillette. Several years ago I tried a timelapse with a 360 camera where you saw clouds forming overhead and in a spherical video. I also filmed a timelapse of the Paléo parkings filling up. This time I went up the Jura in the hope of filming Autumn colours but as I got to the top my project changed.
The problem with filming Autumn colours is that you need to be there at the right time of day and with the light coming from the right direction. The light was coming from the wrong angle so stopping in the woods would have allowed me to get three or four frames before moving on to the next location.
When you’re in a car this type of filming is not interesting. It’s more interesting to get to one location and get a greater diversity of shots. The other advantage is that you can always head back down and get the shots you thought were still interesting.
As I looked from above and assessed the situation I saw that clouds were forming and dissipating. I thought that I may eventually find myself in a cloud with poor visibility. I was more interested in capturing the formation of clouds. They did form, but then they dissipated, and then they formed again but more sparsly before dissipating again.
This is fantastic when you’re filming time-lapses because the change is noticeable without being accelerated so you can imagine what it would give if you did speed it up.
The challenge with timelapse is knowing whether something will take minutes, hours, days or even longer to capture. I have one idea that I assess would take six or seven hours which I will not discuss at this stage.
Usually when I film timelapses I set the camera up so that it records one or two frames every so many seconds. In this case I just started recording. I did not know on what timescale the actions would occur so it gave me greater flexibility in post production.
The footage was sped up from 800 percent to 5000 percent. The clouds that were vanishing was fast. The river of clouds flowing down the valley was slower and thus sped up more. The other challenge is to decide how tight or wide you want the frame to be. With the trees and the river of clouds it’s hard to know whether to have a tighter shot where the action may render the frame boring sooner or wehter tom have a wide shot where the action only takes up half the screen.
In the end this is about gaining experience rather than getting things right first time. It’s about learning to see and anticipate how nature will behave. If you get it right then it can be of great beauty. If you get it wrong you ignore it and think of a new idea.
Later in the year, when Autumn comes we can expect the clouds to behave like this. It’s the “Soupe de Pois” as some call it. I have at least two or three ideas to experiment with and two of them can be done from the comfort of home.
I did see something exceptional on the way back down. A herd of five chevreuils as I drove down afer I finished getting my timelapse footage. That’s the most I’ve seen at once when driving.
Walking in Heavy Rain
I knew that it would rain heavy yesterday (at the time when you read this) so I considered running so that I would spend less time in the weather. The issue, at this time of year, is that if you run you need to do so before the sun sets but you also want to wear lighter clothes, for running to be easier.
Ready for Rain
For these reasons I went for a walk instead. I rolled up the trousers to avoid contact between the socks and trousers. I wore waterproof trousers, and a good rain coat. I walked for an hour and a half in the rain and crossed almost no one. In this weather even the dog walkers stay home. That is what I want. I like when the paths are empty of people, when I can enjoy my solitary walks in solitude, without being reminded of my isolation.
I wore barefoot shoes for this walk. They get wet almost immediately as they are not waterproof. Within 200 meters my feet were drenched. That’s what I expected. That’s what I planned for. That’s why my trousers were rolled up. I didn’t want the humidity to creep up my socks, and then my trousers, and into my t-shirt and fleece.
It worked. I stayed dry.
The Inconvenience of Touch Screen Phones When Wet
There is one challenge in such rain. When you get to the end of one podcast you need to find an underpass, or a lending library, or some other shelter. You need to dry the phone screen and your hands enough to use the phone to select the next podcast. After that you can keep walking.
For many it would seem to walk in the rain, but that’s because they don’t walk the same path every single day, for weeks or months, or even years in a row. Changes in weather are like changes in crops, changes in seasons and more. When it rains I see a different landscape. I see where the land is low, and where it is higher. I see where the water flows heavily, and where your feet remain dry.
Golden Hour
The greatest paradox is that despite the heavy rain, and the uncomfortable conditions you can still notice golden hour. As I walked today I saw that the light became more yellow, despite being under the rain. Despite the bad weather there was a discernable golden hour.
As I walked through one village I saw people burning wood in a barbecue. I don’t know whether it was to actually have a barbecue, or just to burn wood. If they were going to cook with it then it shows that the English are not the only people to barbecue in the rain.
As if that wasn’t surreal enough I also saw two children walking with someone dressed in a Santa costume. They all carried umbrellas to protect themselves from the rain. It’s not every day you see Santa walking in the rain with an umbrella.
In the end I wasn’t the only strange person out this afternoon, walking in the rain, as the heavy rain fell. If I was that type of person I would say that this walk was magical. Today was surreal, like Godard’s 1967 film, Weekend, where we see strange things as a car drives through a traffic jam.
And Finally
For many rain is an excuse to stay in. I don’t see it that way. The familiar landscape becomes unfamiliar. The rivers that were barely a trickle are now full. The water that is transparent when the rain has just started has become brown. We can see rivers of muddy water flowing from the Gravière into the river. We can see where the road is low, and water flooded onto a road, and left mud and other detritus. In another location I saw apples strewn about. The rain had made the apples float, and transported them into nearby fields where other crops were growing.
Walking during the rain is unique, and worth doing, when equipped for the weather.
Reading Alaska and Iberia by Michener
Introduction to Iberia
Between last night and this morning I began to read Iberia by Michener and the introduction is pleasant. It takes us back to a time when people trailed by coal ship to Italy, before bouncing around and dropping into Spain to pick up oranges. The scene described within the first few pages is a nice one. It reminds us of an age that is long gone. The notion of ships picking up oranges, the spain of poor seaside towns that rely on fishing, or orange sales and more.
It contrasts to the news stories we read about Spain and tourism today. Today with AirBnB tourism is destructive, rather than constructive and cultural. It’s important to be reminded that travel was not always a one hour hop on a plane from A to B to go partying and clubbing. In the past travel was a journey.
The Alaska Introduction
The book Alaska has a different introduction. It starts by telling us what is real, what is based on reality, what is invented based on fact, and what is entirely fictional. It then speaks about plate Tectonics and moves on to mastodons and more.
Sixty Hours of Reading
According to the Kindle App both books combined will take about sixty hours to read. One of the advantages of lowering the number of books I want to read this year is that it has freed up my time, to read longer form books. At a time when people speak of not being able to read more than a page or two at a time I am planning to read two voluminous books. If I succeed then that will be interesting. I will have learned a lot.
Kindle Read
I could get the books on Kindle, and listen to them as I walk, drive or cook but I prefer to read them on the Kindle app. In my experience long books, in audio form require a good reader, not to become tiring. Part of the reason I was tempted to read these books is that they were cheap. 3 Euros 81, as I check now on Amazon.fr.
And Finally
Until I reached my reading goal for the year I was choosing shorter books. Now that I have reached my book reading goal I can enjoy longer form content. Of course, if I want to get through these books I will have to read for more than a few minutes a day before falling asleep. I think I will be transported back in time, with these books.
Ninety Five Days of Blogging In A Row
I have managed to neutralise the inner censors. I have accomplished ninety five days of blogging in a row, once again. During the first 100+ days of the pandemic I did the same. At the time I thought that this would provide a document of how life was for the pandemic. The pandemic has lasted over 540 days and I eventually lost inspiration, and inspiration for new things to write.
This is a longer challenge than NaNoWriMo because it lasts for 95 days so far, and it has no end day. I don’t need to write three thousand words a day. I don’t even need to write three hundred words a day. I write this arbitrary number of words each day because I read that it’s better for SEO. The truth is that I don’t get any visits for most posts.
Consistent Writing
The point of blogging every day is to train oneself to sit in front of a blank text box and write. Some days the words will flow, and other days they will fall over each other and dam up the river of inspiration. This doesn’t matter. Writing doesn’t need to be good. It needs to be consistant.
My goal, and my hope, is to get myself into the habit of sitting down at a notes app, text document or other, and be able to write something interesting, without worrying. I want ideas to flow. I can edit later.
Amazon’s Mediocre Internationalisation Efforts
By changing from Amazon.de to Amazon.fr I have a new selection of books. I grew tired of using amazon.de because it is so hard to search through for English books. By using Amazon.fr I have found that there are numerous books about hiking in France, and Europe. This is great, because I spend a lot of time reading about hiking, for hikes that I would not do. Those that are in Europe are just a train journey away, and that’s good. It means it is realistic to try them. Especially the short ones.
We are going into the cold, dark months. The days of long nights, and short days, of fog and clouds. Now is a good time to retreat indoors and read and find inspiration for next summer. The probability that the pandemic is over by then is low, but we can always pretend to be optimistic. I will blog about the books, either individually, or as a group, when I get through one or more.
And finally
It finally feels like Autumn, at least for today. The rivers are still empty so we still need a lot of rain. At least for one day Switzerland felt like it had seasons.
Creux Du Van Meetup
It has been at least four or five years since my last meetup. A few years ago I went to meetups with people from Geneva and before that to Glocals events with people from Lausanne and Geneva. I stopped meeting people from Lausanne because I was working night shifts as a deicer and I stopped going to meetups with the Geneva meetup groups because of my broken arm. The pandemic then happened and I went for years without going to meetups.
COVID Isolation
Since then people have chosen to live with the risk of COVID rather than masking and getting to COVID zero so I have had no choice but to compromise on my values by doing things with people in the physical world once again. Of course I will only do outdoor things. I am not going to go indoors when there are constant flare ups of COVID, especially when the pandemic is not tracked, to sell the lie that the pandemic is not over.
Having said this going to a meetup event, to be with people, after five years of social isolation felt good. I didn’t feel any different than when I was being social in person two to three days a week for years in the pre-deicing and pandemic days. I couldn’t be social when working as a deicer because I was working night shifts and people were heading out just as I tried to go to sleep before waking at 2am for a 4am shift start.
Creux Du Van
I arrived half an hour early, and had time to park with ease, and wait for the group. In the process I heard church bells ringing for many minutes before eventually stopping. The group arrived in one or two cars, and a train. We did the walk but it was far busier than when I did it solo. When I did it solo it was almost rainy and foggy. I walked up and reached the clearing and saw bouquetins.
The conditions were overcast and rain threatened but did not fall. We had plenty of wind instead. The views were slightly less spectacular than the last time I went, because of the clouds and lack of contrast.
I spotted some yellow rock where a recent rock fall had happened. I don’t know how recent it was. The beauty of the Creux Du Van is that it’s a semi-circular cliff. You walk up from one side and then you walk along it. As you walk you see different portions of the cliff. Both times I have been I have done the walk from the same direction. Next time I would like to do this walk in the reverse direction, and I would like to walk to the base of the cliff.
When I walked this walk alone I didn’t go down to the Gorge de L’Areuse because I was worried that it would add too much distance to the walk when I was already tired. In reality I think it’s the same distance via both routes.
The Stats
According to the Suunto Peak 5 this was a 5hr44 walk covering a distance of 16.9km, made up of 27,380 steps, for me. We ascended 906m and descended 873. It was 2hrs 20 of climb and 1hr58 of descent, with time for a snack at the top. My recovery time is about 26hrs. I am down to 7hrs left, to recover, now.
And Finally
I like this walk and I will do it again.