I wanted to choose subjects that focused on constant movementānot just capturing my own movement, but also the motion of the world around me. Specifically, I aimed to document the flow of everyday life using different techniques. Thereās something fascinating about speeding up or slowing down the mundaneāthe things we do every day without often appreciating. Every interaction and emotion we experience becomes part of that unnoticed routine.
Time Lapse – Roundtrip walk to CVS for Cough Medication
The first capture is a time-lapse of my roundtrip walk to CVS to pick up some cough medication. I thought it was interesting because, with each new street, a different scene unfolds. I chose this subject because I find time-lapse tricky to keep engagingāif it doesnāt feel like the scenery is changing, the footage can seem stagnant, which becomes boring quickly. While I enjoyed the overall result and various scenes experienced, the camera focus was slightly off throughout the video, and I couldnāt adjust it, so the footage wasnāt as sharp as Iād hoped. I also realized Iām quite a bumpy/uneven walker!
Slo Mo – Monday Morning CMU Rush Hour
The second capture is a slow-mo of people walking around me. After watching life sped up, I wanted to see how it looked slowed down. Weāre always living life at such a fast pace that we rarely slow down to notice the detailsāexactly what I wanted to capture. I filmed during the busiest part of the day, when students rush to their next class. Slow-mo is great for picking up small, intimate details, but I forgot just how slow it really is. I caught a funny moment of a freshman struggling with his backpack strap, clearly wrestling with it in slow motion (0:25). Another part of the video, where the sun completely overshines the person in front of me, made it look like they were walking into heaven (2:10). I loved observing each personās reactions and interactionsāthereās something fascinating about seeing these small, often unnoticed moments up close. It highlights actions we might hope go unseen, but in slow motion, these movements become more pronounced and scrutinized. As a critique, my footage was a bit shaky, and I focused too much on the person in front of me, missing some great interactions happening elsewhere.
Skeletal Tracking – Monday Morning CMU Rush Hour
Finally, sticking with the theme of people and movement, I experimented with the Ghost Vision app, which uses skeletal tracking to detect human figures in real time. I was curious to see how well it could capture motion and wanted to test its limits in terms of the number of individuals it could track. When I tried recording horizontally, it didnāt work, but switching to vertical mode captured almost everyone around me impressively well. It was fun to see how accurately it outlined people walking past. Although the heat-sensing features and other gadgets cost extra, Iād consider paying the $1.99 if I needed those functions. But even without them, I was really impressedāit was very accurate with itās tracking!