Dancing With Peppers: A Timelapse Video from Seed to Plant By Jim Rohling

It was around December 2011 when I read a blog article about gifts for the gardener who has everything. Well, I must admit, I have a lot of gardening stuff:  a greenhouse, 700 square feet of garden area, everything I need to start seeds, a plant sale to help support my habit, and most important of all, a wife who understands my passion. But, I didn’t have a timelapse camera. Guess what I got for Christmas!

During the first week of February, the time when I usually start my pepper seeds, I thought how cool it would be to capture the different stages of the pepper plants from germination to killing frost with my new camera. I started out taking 10 exposures a day when the first cotyledon (seed) leaves appeared. After about a week or so, I went to one exposure in the morning and one in the afternoon. I moved the plants to the greenhouse the first week of April and then to the garden at the end of May.
At the end of the season, I had three videos that needed to be combined. After discussing some options with another CMG, I downloaded moviemaking software and turned my videos into one.  It was a good video, but it still needed something more. The answer was music—the “right” music, of course.  My wife, early on, had said the peppers looked like they were dancing, so I titled the video “Dancing with Peppers”. Another CMG commented, “I didn’t think those little guys could move like that” (the secret? lots of rehearsals!).


As you watch the video, you will see three exposures (accidental) of this strange guy; that is me. Hey, if Alfred Hitchcock could have cameo appearances in his movies, so can I.  However, it is probably too soon to be talking “Oscar,” but, you have to start somewhere, right? 
Happy Gardening!

Specifics:
Camera – Wingscapes TimelapseCam 8.0 (@$110 at http://wingscapes.com)
Video Software – Windows Essentials: Windows DVD Maker (free)
Music – Amazon.com music site (from free selections)