I’ve never been very adept at shooting timelapses. Maybe I just don’t spend enough, well, time, on the preparation. I usually get caught up in the moment, training my camera on other vistas, other details, big and small, near and far, before finally reminding myself to set up the tripod and capture those dang clouds, the sunset, the stars, the passage of time. Often, almost inevitably, I’ve not got enough battery, or the power bank is half depleted, or something else precludes me from fully capturing the passage of time I’d hoped for, I’d envisioned.

But, I still love timelapses. There’s a magic to them, watching the usually-glacial pace of weather and chronology do in a moment what actually takes hours, days. The moments of beauty we rarely see – or perhaps rarely notice – forced from the ether and into our consciousness by turning the tempo up to eleven.

To salvage some of my less-than-perfect (AKA, botched) timelapses, I’ve recently turned to playing with time stacking, blending the hundreds or thousands of frames together to create surreal depictions of the world as it was over a long period of time, but stuffed into a single frame. And, further, then merging each step of the time-stack into a new timelapse that shows the accumulation of change, of transition and metamorphosis, that occurs while we go blithely on.

It's not only a fun (albeit time consuming) process, but I find the results – in their subtle combination of the illusory and the tangible, the wished-for and the already-happened – to insist on the opposing necessities of making the moment count and dreaming of future possibility.

In these times, I look to images and to the natural world to keep those forces – present and future, immediacy and possibility – in my vision of hope and inspiration. And, as always I turn to the words of others, their eloquence and ideas that spark the same.

So, on this Friday, I leave you for the weekend with a couple of passages about time, action, dreams, and hope. Enjoy, be well, and keep the fires burning.

We Indian peoples have come in order to wind the clock and to thus ensure that the inclusive, tolerant, and plural tomorrow which is, incidentally, the only tomorrow possible, will arrive. In order to do that, in order for our march to make the clock of humanity march, we Indian peoples have resorted to the art of reading what has not yet been written. Because that is the dream which animates us as indigenous, as Mexicans and, above all, as human beings. With our struggle, we are reading the future which has already been sown yesterday, which is being cultivated today, and which can only be reaped if one fights, if, that is, one dreams.
- Subcomandante Marcos

Dear Mr. Nadeau:
As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion [of hope] may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness. Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society—things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time, waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out. Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day. Sincerely,
E. B. White, March 30, 1973 (from On Democracy)

There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.
- James Baldwin