One year in one image

eirikso, , , ,

Follow me on Twitter if you want to know about my projects before everyone else: @eirikso

Update: the videos I made from the same footage is here.

I’m currently working on a new time lapse project. Not a sort-of-time-lapse. But a true one. To put it short: I’ve had an SLR camera in my window at the same spot for one year. Snapping an image every half hour. Resulting in some pretty nice time lapse videos I’ll post here in a couple of days. But first a still image.

The resolution of the 16 000 images I now have from 2010 are 3888×2592 pixels. So I selected 3888 images snapped during the day. Then I got some generous help from my blog readers and twitter followers. To make a script that would take one line from the first image, the next line from the next image and so on. Jo Christian Oterhals, Nikolai Kristiansen and Aslak Hellesøy provided complete code for the solution.

I used the script from Aslak and made the following image:


You can click it to make it bigger.

It shows one whole year. January at the left and December to the right. You can clearly see that we have a pretty long winter and a decent summer here in Oslo, Norway.

The spring and autumn are both quite short.

It would have been nice to make an interactive version of this image. Where you could mouse over and get info on exactly when the image providing the line was taken. And maybe also bring up a thumbnail of the complete image. Maybe I’ll post all the 3888 images and hope that someone will make a solution like that…

Update:
I have now posted the full 3888 resolution image on flickr.

The diversity

Light and timing are some of the most important factors in an image. I have huge amounts of images snapped at the exact same spot. With the exact same focus point and the same f-number. The only thing that have changed is the season and the light. Bringing diversity like this:

But now I have some amazing videos to finish… 🙂

One year in one image

165 thoughts on “One year in one image”

  1. Bryce says:

    That is AMAZING. I’m going to favorite this so I can one day remember to check out the videos when you post them. I’m fascinated by time lapse so I’d love to see em. Gnarly, keep up the good work 🙂

    Reply

  2. Really lovely idea! Would be great to see the full resolution final image though. It seems a shame to use 3888 slices of photographs and then have the click-through image be only 1280×860.

    Reply

  4. Wow, that is cool. And you even have quite a nice view! If I did the same, I would end up with 3888 almost identical images of the block across the street. :-p

    Reply
  9. Taahir Khan says:

    Eirikso,

    I would like to do this same project. Would you be willing to do a tutorial on it? I would like to know what program you use to merge the images. Where would i place the script of code to complete this? Thanks!

    Reply
  11. Dan says:

    would it be possible to get a torrent (or direct download) of the 3888 images? I think I could do a (java based) interactive version fairly quickly…
    That being said, 3888 images is 10.65 images per day, which seems a bit strange 🙂

    Reply

  22. […] день и делали фотографию одного и того же пейзажа? А Эрик Солхейм весь 2010 год так делал и вот что у него получилось […]

    Reply
  32. Mark says:

    Hey Erik, is the full resolution original version sans text going to go up for sale? It’s a HUGE hit on Reddit right now, and I would love to make it my desktop background. It really moved me as a piece of art.

    Thanks,
    Mark

    Reply

  35. I would love to see a 3888 frame video where each column of pixels is gradually shifted.

    I am a programmer, so please let me know if you would like me to write this! It would be awesome, I promise.

    Reply

  36. Dude this is super awesome! It looks so surreal and I love the fact you posted the diversity of some of the originals below it. That’s a project that must have taken an amazing amount of patience! To basically give up one of your SLR cameras for a year! Love it!

    Reply
  48. franklin says:

    I once was talking to a friend about the following. Take the universe space, times, everything included. You can imagine it as a multidimensional (as many dimensions as you need) figure. Let’s say, that locally it is a bunch of 3-dimensional pictures in a stack that accounts for the pass of time. Our consciousness is manifested by looking at those pictures once after another in the time-wise direction. Then I was entertaining the idea of considering beings who’s consciousness is manifested in a different direction. Perhaps a direction that moves both a little bit time-wise and a little in some spacial direction(s). Here it is then that someone has created a cool picture of what such a being would see in an instant of its life.

    Now I am really eager to see a video of what such a being would see in a ‘time’ lapse.

    Reply

  51. Hi Eirik, great project! I had the same idea that Nathan suggested of having a video where time moves from left to right. I think the time shift effect would look really awesome. I hope you can figure that out.

    Reply
  52. Jim McKeeth says:

    Did you manually align the individual photos in post processing, or was the camera anchored well enough that the photos were taken pre-aligned? I saw your video on the other timelapsed videos and you showed manually aligning them. It would seem a pretty onerous task for 3888 photos.

    Reply

  56. Warm greetings,over there in lovely and amazing NORGE! I have liked so much your wonderful Creations.Indeed you have brought into being uppermost Photographies.I´d like to keeping up beholding your uttermost and workmanlike creations.Glad to meet you.I look forward to thy next message.Have you and yours a thriving New Year! Cheers! Heartily Alvarson.

    Reply

  60. WOW!!!!!!!!! That’ so Amazing!!!!
    I’m Very surprise!~!!!!!!?
    That’s very wonderful~ I can see Norway’s 4 season in this Wonderful and fun ‘<>. Very good!!!!!
    And, I know Norway’s 4 season length have a glance.I’m from Korea~~ I’m surprise too. ☜This mean, Korean is be surprised too.. As all that, This picture is Very exllent~!!b Umm~~ good!!!!!!♡♥<~ (That's (b's) means is very good~, exllent, and very wonderful.)))

    Reply
  61. LeeSooHun says:

    Wow! It’s awesome! What a great picter this is! I think you are genius. I impressed your picture. I think Your idea was very fresh. Anyway, thank you for upload your nice ficture. I wish you have good 2012.

    Reply
  65. Trevor says:

    Hi Eirik, I love the images that you’ve put together. If possible, I’d like to get copies of the original full-size images you used. I tutor a course on image analysis, and an image collection such as this could prove very useful for giving students some hands-on experience with image manipulation.

    Looking forward to seeing your future works.

    Trevor

    Reply

  66. […] ظهرت فيها الفصول الأربعة باسم “عام في صورة” أو “One Year in one image”؛ فمن اليمين شهر يناير، والثلوج تكسو الأرض والأشجار، […]

    Reply
  69. edward says:

    …I’d like to see the same technology capture a cross section of the earth’s surface from pole to pole… showing the length of seasons/photosynthesis represented by the visible color range of the photos (gradually expanding and contracting from top to bottom).

    Reply

  103. […] Eirik Solheim started shooting pictures out of his window daily, then realize that with coding help from colleagues and readers, he could compile a time-lapse collage of an entire year. “The resolution of the 16 000 images I now have from 2010 are 3888×2592 pixels. So I selected 3888 images snapped during the day.” From there, he created a series of videos as well as the finalized composite still image above. […]

    Reply

  113. I wonder whether some interpolating of light levels between images could reduce the prominence of the vertical ‘streaks.’

    I could give that a shot. Contact me if you’re interested.

    p.

    Reply

  115. Hi. If you provide me all photos and info, I will prepare version were you could rollover each line to get info about day and photo 🙂 It should take me about one day to code it 🙂

    Reply

  119. nice work!
    photographing that much is quite some work – especially without moving the camera!

    i did something similar, though on a different time-scale.
    I photographed ten days, spread out at different – not too irregularly spaced – intervals during the whole year, but at 2880 images per day ( one every 30 seconds ), and put it together into an animation where the time of day is the same in each day… so one can see the light levels in parallel:
    https://vimeo.com/12871781

    nice work Eirik!

    miska

    Reply
  135. Devin says:

    Hi there, just wondering if you would be willing to send that algorithm for this, its stunning, so many possibilities. or even the name of the software you used would be awesome,
    please let me know

    Reply

  136. You find the code here:


    tmpdir=tmp
    if [ -d "$tmpdir" ]; then
    rm -rf $tmpdir
    fi
    mkdir $tmpdir
    height=2592
    width=10
    n=0
    for f in *.jpg
    do
    offset=$(($n*$width))
    c="$(printf "%05d" $n)"
    echo "Creating slice $tmpdir/$c.png"
    convert -crop ${width}x${height}+${offset}+0 $f $tmpdir/$c.png
    n=$(($n+1))
    done
    count="$(ls -1 $tmpdir | wc -l)"
    echo "Joining $count slices into out.png"
    montage $tmpdir/*.png -mode concatenate -tile ${count}x out.png

    view raw

    eirikmagick.sh

    hosted with ❤ by GitHub

    From the comment and instructions from Aslak Hellesøy on this page:
    https://eirikso.com/2010/12/13/i-need-some-image-programming-advice/

    Reply

  145. […] que el capitalismo mercantil busca conseguir. La imagen que nos acompaña es del fotógrafo EIrik Solheim, compuesta por 3888 fotografías y que nos enseña todas las estaciones. Si miramos el final del […]

    Reply
  147. Lauren says:

    The people who keep posting this with the caption “A year in 365 slices!” are rather misleading. That caption made me think they were claiming the image comprised of only 365 photos, which I thought are way too few for such a uniform image. 3,888 makes far more sense! Great job (:

    Reply

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    Reply
  156. Ong Zijun says:

    Hi eirikso
    I am a 17yo student who would like to make a similar project but i don’t really know how to use the program……
    The resolution and number of pictures i have are different from you i i wish to get some kind of guide……
    I would be really happy if you would reply to me.
    Thank you

    Reply
  157. Sunwaver says:

    Hi. As data scientist and graphic design enthusiast, the composition annoys me since a moving average instead of raw pixel columns would help to create flow and continuity smoothing the image. A gaussian kernel with periodic boundary conditions would create an awesome effect. I can write a python script that will do it in minutes, just let me know if you want to give it a try. Cheers.

    Reply

  158. […] time lapses.  A man photographs the same tree, everyday, for a year. In a  similar project, the photographer splices parts of the photos together until it forms the entire tree, from winter to win…. A year-long moon in 2.5 minutes.  I’ve always been drawn to photos like that. So damn cliche, […]

    Reply

  164. […] If you want to see a unique type of visualization, check out this photo by Eirik Solheim. At first you might not see what makes this photo so special but after a closer look you may start to realize that this photo is actually comprised of many different snap shots in time. This is actually 3,888 photos to be exact, taken every day for an entire year put together to form what he calls ‘One Year in One Image‘. […]

    Reply

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