Food Rehab.TV - Rehabilitating The Way We Eat Video Blog

Here's a video blog I prototyped last summer. I haven't done much with it since. However, I'm ramping it up again. It's basically a one man show. I shoot, star, and edit in it. Crazy. Yes, indeed.

In this episode I show you how to make my world famous uber muy caliente salsa. OK, it's not really world famous - but it is a very hot. Guaranteed to make you sweat. Most of the ingredients used are from my vegetable garden.

The reason I want to do this blog is to help chronicle my efforts to change the way I eat. It's personal. It's painful. But I have no choice. It's time to make a difference. As you all know, shooting video is a very physically demanding job, and I'm simply not as strong as I used to be. I want to change that. Hence, Food Rehab.TV - my video blog about changing the way I eat.

My video blog was filmmed with a Canon 5D Mark II mounted on an Oracle controlled Kessler Crane Cineslider on a Hercules Head and K-Pod. The camera was controlled by the Canon EOS Utility. It would be a superior experience to have multiple cameras operated with other camera operators. But, hey, it's a video blog. It's supposed to be done on the cheap. All the motion graphics are done in Motion. Editing is done in Final Cut Pro 7.

There are several other episodes on FoodRehab.TV. There will be more episodes coming soon.

My Time-lapse Learning Experience In Chile

I'm really really late to the time-lapsing party. It's something I've been wanting to do for a long time. Last November and the early part of December, my wife and I visited our daughter and her husband in Los Riscos, Chile. It's the Northern Pantagonia region of Chile. The crown jewel is the Mt. Fuji of Chile - Volcan Osorno. We drove up to about the 6,000 feet level. There I attempted to do a few time-lapse sequences - testing both my patience and that of my family.

Learning is best accomplished by getting your hands dirty so to speak. I made several mistakes. I'm disappointed in the over all quality. But there it is. I'm baring my soul.

Some things I would do differently:

1) Sandbag the tripod. Man, it was howling windy up on the volcano. You can see the camera being buffeted by the 50+ mile per hour wind. At one point the wind gusted so strongly that it toppled my camera to the ground. Fortunately I was able to grab the camera before it struck the ground!

2) Use a lower interval between exposures. I spaced my exposures too far apart - about 5 seconds between each photo. The results are choppy.

3) I would prefer to use my old manual Nikor lenses to minimize flicker. Some suggest turning the lens on the mount until electrical contact is cutoff. However, my experience with the Canon 5D Mark II and the very heavy L glass lenses is that the lenses can easily fall off the mount. I'm not risking it. It's not worth it.

4) Read the manual! I attempted to use LRTimelapse to even out flicker and followed one of the more popular time-lapse video tutorials on the RAW workflow. It's basically wrong, but took me a good several hours of experimentation to realize that. Follow the instructions step-by-step on LRTimelapse's website and your time-lapsing life will be good. Too bad the video tutorials get this one wrong. The bottom line is you must open your RAW images in LRTimelapse BEFORE you open them up in Adobe Bridge, Lightroom, Camera RAW.

I assembled the time-lapse sequences in Adobe Effects. It's very simple to do, thanks to Chris Fenwick's helpful instruction. The final edit was assembled in... ah, you know, it doesn't even matter.

I'm going to keep on trying until I have some sequences that are of the calibre of Philip Bloom and Tom Lowe. This is my first step of a journey of ten thousand steps.

Using Hipstamatic on iPhone, Talented Filmmaker Vitùc Creates Stunningly Mesmerizing Stop Motion Film

This film reaffirms why I believe the iPhone is the single most amazing tool ever - in the palm of your hand you have a digital darkroom with an astonishing array of inspiring post-production tools. In one device you have a camera, post-production editing suite, and music production studio. If you hit a creative mental roadblock, you can relax with a game of Angry Birds.

Create wherever you are.

Oil Painting Time-lapse: The Jade Pond

This is something I've been wanting to do for some time now: record a time-lapse of me doing an oil painting.

Usually I use a set of painting knives to lay the paint on the canvas. However, this time I decided to use brushes since I have not used brushes in a long time. First, I start with a ground of burnt sienna on stretched canvas. The burnt sienna sparkles through the semi-transparent layers of paint, adding a vibrancy to the finished painting. I then draw in the shapes of the lily pads. Next comes the water. I finish the painting by embellishing the lily pads, adding the lily flower, and signing the painting. I did it all in one day. There is something about painting that makes you forget the passage of time.

The time-lapse was taken with my Canon 5D Mark II. I used a 24-70mm f2.8 L lens. In retrospect, I should have stuck with using one of my old manual Nikor lenses so as to avoid flickering between shots. I attempted to use LRTimelapse to deflicker, but something went wrong that I could not figure. Oh, well... I continue to experiment with it. I love the idea of documenting the development of the paintings I do. It helps me to remember the process I used for each painting. Having a record of the creation of the painting would, I think, also enhance the value to my customers who purchase the painting. They now have a record of how it was created, adding an additional connection with the artist.

Below is the finished painting. Yes, it's for sale. Contact me by email if you are interested.

The Jade Pond - Oil Painting By Carl Olson, Jr.

Update on Monday, January 30, 2012 at 1:38PM by Carl Olson

I rendered another version of the time-lapse, this time bypassing the use of LRTimelapse. I adjusted the exposure for one image in Adobe Bridge Camera Raw, and pasted that setting into all the images. And now there is very little flicker. One advantage of shooting in RAW is the lattitude you have in adjusting the image. I still haven't figured out what is happening with LRTimelapse. People are swearing by this app as the end-all in deflickering, but so far my results have only worsen the end result. I must be missing something in the workflow.

Update on Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 2:31PM by Carl Olson

OK. I've got it now. It's not LRTimelapse. The key is to open your RAW sequence first in LRTimelapse, allow it to create the meta-data files, save, and then open in Adobe Bridge. In Adobe Bridge, you then Select All the thumbnails and open in Adobe Camera Raw. Select the first image, make whatever adjustments you need, and then click Synchronize. Finally, open the last thumbnail and adjust as needed (say for instance you want the white-balance to change over time - LRTimelapse is going to allow you to keyframe that). Click Done and you're, well, done. Go back to LRTimelapse, which should still be open and reload. Now you can deflicker and save.

The video tutorials on RAW workflow for time-lapse using Adobe Bridge and LRTimelapse appear to have this wrong, and also leave out some key details. I'll try to do a video tutorial soon that is more accurate.

Sneak Peak of Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop CS6

Adobe Senior Product Manager, Bryan O'Neil Hughes, demos Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop CS6. I'm digging the new, dark interface, and the enhanced features of Camera Raw.