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This timelapse was taken with a f9 aperture / 250 iso / 1/8 exposure / 15" interval / Processed in Lightroom / RAW format / Nikkor 18-55mm lens set to 28mm / Polarizer and ND FilterFor my birthday I was given a multi colored block of ice with frozen money inside (thanks Jean!) with the intention to use it for a timelapse. Since the gift was such an awesome idea I had to make sure I did something awesome with it! How predictable and boring would it be to just simply watch a block of ice melt in a bowl? Plus if my 6th grade art class taught me anything the mixture of yellow, green, blue, and red would make for nasty brown colored water. This got me to thinking...it is bitter cold out and well below freezing so how interesting would it be to watch an ice block filled with money melt in the middle of winter! Clearly the first obstacle wasn't related to the timelapse at all, how would I get this ice to melt, fairly quickly, when it is 11 degrees out?Fortunately I was stuffing my face with food while I was contemplating this issue when I noticed our wax diffuser. For the best lighting and effect I needed a way to light up the ice block to bring out the colors and this would do just the thing. Immediately upon setting it up I realized that the heat wasnt going to be enough (melting wax at room temp is much easier than ice in air below freezing). The wax diffuser was melting the ice block however very slowly and my battery would only last a few hours. This is where pouring large amounts of salt on top would come into play and why you saw the blue melting so quickly. Time was all that was left and watching an iceblock melt in real time is pretty boring so this made for a perfect time for errands to be run.Coming home to the iceblock in the snow and the camera dead was a huge disappointment and I was already saying it was a big failure of a timelapse, but clearly I lucked out because the clouds in the background and the blue streaks of water in the snow turned out pretty cool!As far as the techniques go I really wanted to focus on the focal points and depth of the shot. Just watching a block of ice melt makes it tough to gauge how much time is elapsed. This is why clouds moving in the background would be so important. Seeing the clouds whiz by allows the viewer to understand how much time is elapsing. Looking at those objectives I definitely feel that I did a very great job but failed to melt the block fast enough before the battery died. Whomp whompI have taken a little break from struggling with LRTimelapse and deflickering the timelapses. I'm doing this so that I can take a few weeks to focus on the photography aspect of timelapses. The more I research and the more cinematic timelapses I watch it is apparent how amazing the pure photography skills are. Understanding your scene, what the scene will do, how to best capture it and telling the story through pictures is what they excel at the most. I recently read an article on timelapses and a statement really stuck out. "Post-production can drastically change any image but there will always be a limit to what it can do. Capturing the highest quality and best framed picture directly in the camera allows the limits of post-production to be that much more impactful." (timescapes.org)The lightbulb went off, I realized I need to stop worrying so much about how to fix the flaws in my photography and instead focus that extra energy into eliminating the errors. By doing so I will be able to use post-production as just an extension of my creativity.As always I greatly appreciate all of the support, excitement, and curiosity you guys bring to this. It always makes my day when people tell me how they are excited for a new timelapse on Tuesday! All of the encouragement really helps me drive harder for better results.Still balding but not bald,-Kyle