Wildcat Creek in Time Lapse

Wildcat Creek did not run dry this year and still has a respectable flow. As I watched some leaves floating slowly by, I thought ahead when heavy rains will fill the creek above the rocks I was standing on. I also wondered how fast the leaves would be moving with the increased flow. One way to visualize this would be to take a time-lapse sequence!

Using the iPad I shot two sequences of 200 frames each. The first sequence was shot at 10 fps and the second at 1 fps. The two sequences were combined into a 40 second video using iMovie for the iPad and a soundtrack was added from a recording made a few years ago using a Sony MD Walkman. The first 20 seconds of the video shows the flow at normal speed and the second 20 seconds shows the flow at approximately 10 times normal speed. When the rains come, I can take a standard sequence and compare them. Perhaps not the most direct way to determine the comparative speed of flow in a creek, but it offers an alternative approach.