I love my new job! The commute? Not so much.

Click to view a neat high definition version. (48 MB)

Here’s a shot of the high-tech rig I used to shoot this. One frame every two seconds. I would have liked to shoot one frame per second, but the camera’s intervalometer maxes out at 1,000 frames, and I can not possibly make this drive in under 1,000 seconds. The trip took 1904 seconds this Sunday morning.

Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull – May 1st and 2nd, 2010 from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.

But there’s no debating the beauty of these renderings.

The animation was done entirely using 3Ds Max and V-Ray render and took about 10 days to complete. Professionally done 3D visualization is the perfect tool to present concepts or new products in a beautiful, photoreal style, while creating a mood with music and conveying a message, through on-screen text or narration.

We’ve seen this sort of work before, but the way this team of men worked the hot steel was something to see. Here are a couple of videos.

We left our beautiful room at the Inle Princess early in the morning to take in some of the sites on Inle Lake. On the way, we saw how leg-rowing can leave both hands free for untangling fishing nets. We stopped and had a delicious lunch and cool beers at a restaurant with beautiful lake views.

Click on the video to the left to get an idea of what it’s like in a boat on Inle Lake.

The hike darned near killed me, but it was well worth the effort. As you can see, we found millions of Convergent Lady Beetles, um, converging ten deep on the forest floor. There were so many of the tiny beetles that you could actually hear them. They seemed happy.

I shot the images above with my Nikon D3 and a fancy-schmancy 60mm Macro lens. My pal Andrew brought along his basic point-and-shoot and I was surprised to see that he was able to focus much more closely than I could. His camera also allowed him to shoot scary movies like this one.

BUGS!

I apologize for the poor video quality, the crappy sound and the lack of any sort of editing. We will definitely bring an HD video camera on out next trip!

But before he goes, there will be much celebration and dancing. After a blessing and feast, the young man is sent off in style on the back of a costumed dancing (or not) horse.

Some things are best described with sound and motion, and this was one of those events. If you’d like to see how the dancer moved and hear the band or if you’d like to see a non-dancing horse and some adorable kids hamming it up, click on the videos below.