The Chinese Can Build 15-Story Hotel in Six days! Why Can’t We?

A construction crew in the south-central Chinese city of Changsha completed a 15-story hotel in just six days! Holy crap! When you take a look at the amazing pace, organization and precision of the work it makes you think that the US absolutely SUCKS at construction!

And by the way, the Chinese aren’t putting up crappy buildings that you wouldn’t want to be caught dead in! Just take a look at the amazing buildings Trey Ratcliff captured on his recent trip to China over on StuckInCustoms.com.

Anyway, here is the description from Yahoo News on this new building:

The work crew erected the hotel — a soundproofed, thermal-insulated structure reportedly built to withstand a magnitude 9 earthquake — with all prefabricated materials. In other words, a crew of off-site factory workers built the sections, and their on-site counterparts arranged them on the foundation for the Ark project.

Despite the frenetic pace of construction, no workers were injured — and thanks to the prefab nature of the process, the builders wasted very few construction materials. Below is a time-lapse video that shows the hotel being built from the ground up in less than a week:

Time Lapse Video of the Space Shuttle Discovery

Thanks to Mitch over at Planet5D for finding this little gem

Six weeks, and over 100 hours of footage shot on several Canon EOS 5D Mark IIs culminate in this remarkable, 4-minute time lapse of the second to last Space Shuttle Discovery launch.

With the help of everyone from shuttle technicians to crane operators to escorts (86-year-old NASA retiree Charlie Parker was particularly valuable in squiring Andrews’ team around) the photographers positioned multiple cameras—up to nine at any one time—inside the cavernous assembly building to click away while the orbiter, fuel tank, and twin solid rocket boosters were “stacked” for launch.

Scott Andrews figures the finished video represents tens of thousands of individual frames and at least 100 hours of shooting, using the highest-resolution digital single-lens-reflex cameras on the market. Jirman did the color correction, which took a week alone.

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Los Angeles Fires Raging Uncontrollably

LA Fires Caught on CameraThe fires in LA are seriously out of control. If you have any doubt, here is a very impressive time-lapse video that Brandon Riza shot, with his Canon 5D Mark II I might add.

First of all, the fires are very scary, and I feel bad for the folks in California right now. I hope none of you guys are being affected, but I’m sure a few of you are, so my heart goes out to you. Secondly, it goes to prove how little control we have over our environment. After thousands of years, and with all the technology we possess, mankind still lacks the ability to put out a forest fire.

Sad.
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Time Lapse Photography – Flight From Amsterdam to San Francisco

time-lapse-flightThis one doesn’t really require much more introduction than the author’s (Ettubrute) description:

On my night time flight back to SF from Amsterdam, I noticed that the lights from cities were making the clouds glow. Really spectacular and ethereal – it was really seeing the impact of urban environments from a different perspective. Each glow or squiggle represents one town or city!

Luckily the flight was half empty, so I was able to set up an improvised stabilizer mound made up of my bags, pillows, and blankets for my camera to sit on.

We were around the midwest at the beginning of the clip, and there were fewer cities once we hit the rockies. the bridge at the end is the san mateo bridge.

Technique: 1600iso; beginning – 1 (30sec) exposure / 45secs; end – 1 (4sec) exposure / 10 secs; total elapsed time: around 3 hours?

Equipment used: Nikon D300 (interval shooting mode), Tokina 12-24mm.

Music: Bloc Party – Signs

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Slow Motion Video Compilation

Water BalloonFor those of you who happen to be fans of the timelapse videos that I’ve posted in the past, here is basically the exact opposite.

The stop motion videos allow us to see what happens over a very long period of time, in a short video. The slow motion capture allows us to see what happens in a very short video by watching a whole lot of frames slowed down to normal speed.

This video has a whole host of interesting things happening like:

  • A water balloon hitting a guy in the head.
  • A lighter flaming on.
  • Guns being fired at various things.
  • A bird taking flight.

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Incredible Timelapse Volcanic Lava Flow Video

Liquid Hot MagmaWhen I went to Hawaii one of the coolest things I did was check out the live volcano. To this day it was one of the most awesome sights I’ve ever witnessed. Seeing a mountainside with liquid hot magma pouring out of it was enough to make Dr. Evil proud.

Well, since none of us has all night to watch lava make it’s way down a mountain, someone was kind enough to film a lava flow throughout the night and then speed it up for us. So here is a time lapse video taken on the Big Island of Hawaii for your viewing pleasure.
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Panama Canal Time Lapse Video

Panama CanalOk. People are going to think I’m obsessed with the Panama Canal pretty soon since I already featured this other video of crossing the canal.

The difference is, the previous video followed just one boat’s journey through the canal, and this video is fixed and shows tons and tons of boats actually going through the canal.

I find it mesmerizing.
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Julian Beever Chalk Drawing Time-Lapse Video

Aveeno Fountain of YouthI’m assuming that most people have seen the awesome photos of sidewalk chalk drawings that have floated around the Internet for years now, but almost no one has seen a time lapse video of the creation of one of these images!

So, here is noted sidewalk artist Julian Beever creating the Aveeno Fountain of Youth chalk drawing in Union Square, NYC on 01/15/07.
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Aurora Borealis Time Lapse Video

Aurora BorealisAuroras are caused by the collision of charged particles in the magnetosphere with atoms in the Earth’s upper atmosphere.

These charged particles are energized to levels between 1,000 and 15,000 electron-volts and as they collide with atoms of gases in the atmosphere the atoms become energized, then emit their energy as light.

For those of us that will likely never be fortunate enough to see the Aurora Borealis in person, here is a time lapse video of one of the most extraordinary sites in nature. Wikipedia also has a fantastic entry for Auroras.
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