Tag Archives: suviseurat

Suviseurat 2010: How 70 000 came and went – a timelapse of eight days

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The laestadian summer services descended upon the fields around our house about a month ago. We’d been watching the buildup of the area over the last months and I thought I’d record a timelapse of the build and event itself. In fact, there’s a post detailing the beginning of the project. Unfortunately, due to various circumstances I wasn’t able to document the whole process – not that anything interesting happened in our field of view most of the time.

But, starting from midnight 29.6.2010 to the end of 6.7.2010 I set our old Canon 300D to shoot a wide-angle shot of part of the area. While the event itself officially started on 1.7.2010, the 29th was the day when the logistical organization started functioning and people started to arrive. During those eight days, the 160 hectares (395 acres) of fields around our house were the home for 70 000 people. Most of them either had their own RVs or caravans although some rented houses and cottages in the area and were day visitors.

I set up the camera to shoot a picture every minute, which gave me around 1400 pictures per day. To save space, I selected the image size that was closest to FullHD resolution and finally just cropped the images a bit. Not every single minute of the day was captured since we had to switch batteries in the camera and a thunderstorm forced us to switch computers commanding the timed shooting. But we got close enough to a minute of footage from each day (24 frames per second).

Without further ado, here’s the final product:

There are some brief appearances of us and our dogs in a few frames…

Creating the timelapse was very much a learning experience. I’ve documented the technical challenges in creating the video itself, but there were many other challenges as well. Some of the lessons I’ve learned can be summed up in the following bullet points:

  • First of all, any timelapse project that spans more than a few hours really needs a continuous power supply for the camera. Swapping batteries creates lags that are unfortunate.
  • If you’re shooting from inside through a window, watch out for reflections. You sure can see plenty in the timelapse
  • Finding a good framerate for the final video is hard and depends on the use.
  • Creating the video takes a lot of time.

But, it was a good learning experience and hopefully at least a few viewers will be able to enjoy the end result.

SoFoBoMo 2010 – it’s a go

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Well, I guess I have to count last night as the official starting point of my SoFoBoMo project for this year. I was originally planning on starting about a week from now, but last night the rising fog and sunset created a set of circumstances that couldn’t be resisted. I may have just gotten my cover shot…

I’ve already posted about the summer services (suviseurat) that are taking place this year in the fields immediately surrounding our house. The event is huge. It’ll make our county of around 12 000 inhabitants into Finland’s fifth largest city – if only for five days. Based on previous years, it is estimated that around 65 000 people will attend the event. All this in the 150 hectares of fields around our house.

So I will be documenting the event. After all, how often does such an opportunity rise? I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to fine-tune my shooting. Most likely I will shoot general journalistic shots of the event and people just for practice. But I’m mostly interested in documenting what all it takes for a small county to momentarily be so large. In a sense I’m more interested in creating my book from a more behind the scenes perspective.

Suviseurat timelapse – day X

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Well, due to various circumstances my project to make a timelapse of the whole build-up of the area for the Summer Services (see my previous post on the topic) failed. The main reason was that my order for a mains adaptor for the camera didn’t come to the seller and thus being able to shoot a continuous timelapse was impossible.

There were also times when we’ve had to turn off our computers because of thunderstorms etc. which would have caused their own interruptions. I do have some material that I’ll practice creating timelapses with so that when the event itself starts I’ll be prepared to create the final movie.

In fact, the event is basically starting in a week. A week from now the area will be opened for travelers’ to arrive. So from the time the area opens to when the main part of the cleanup ends I’ll have one camera shooting and we’ll see what kind of movies I can generate from the material.

Once I get some experience on composing the movies etc. I’ll post a behind the scenes post on the equipment I’m using.

Suviseurat time-lapse – Day 1

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This year’s Suviseurat (Summer services) will be held in the fields immediately surrounding our house. It is the main event of the year of the Finnish religious movement known as Conservative Laestodians. Around 70 000 people visit the event each year.

Today they started their volunteer work in building the area. The build-up will take about two months, with the event taking place during the first weekend of July. And then in several days they will tear the whole area down and the farmers can return them to fields. Some work already took place last fall when contractors worked on building some roads on the fields.

While the knowledge has filled us with a certain level of annoyance – after all it does create quite a disturbance in our life – it also provides opportunities. One of which is documenting the build-up and tear-down of the area as well as the event itself. Our house has a nice tower (we called it our traffic control tower), which offers fairly good views of the surrounding fields. So I set up our old 300D to take timed shots of the area. The camera is pointing fairly directly to NNE, so sun glare etc. shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

Unfortunately the view towards the area where the big tent (seating 4200 people) will be is mainly blocked by some trees in our yard. But the current camera position will still be shooting the general direction of a fairly active area. Also, the camera is pointing fairly directly to NNE, so sun glare etc. shouldn’t be too much of a problem. And once the people and their motorhomes / trailers start arriving there will be plenty to see. The shot above is one of the first frames taken (FullHD version).

I’m planning on creating on time-lapse movie of it all, but just to practice the process and keep up timely updates on the whole project I will try to make weekly clips as well. And if nothing else happens, it will also document the progression of Finnish spring and summer, if nothing else.