Trying to get hold of royalty free pictures can be a bit difficult – especailly if you want to illustrate your website.

Mike Williams has put together a collection of sites that can help you on your search – do check out the site licensing details carefully though

Making time – lapse shows can be great – especially if it is something the children are doing.

Many projects can be completed within a day:

• monitor movement of animals in a paddock
• observe how people use public spaces
• record changes in clouds
• observe the chemical dissolution of different metals in acids over time
• watch living cells in time-lapse movies (attach camera to a microscope)
• observe a piece of art as it is being created (e.g. painting, sculpture)
• record erosion of soil in stream flow experiments
• verify that stars rotate around the celestial pole
• observe ants feeding or tunnelling in an ant farm
• growing plants from seeds – watercress, runner beans etc
• looking at the movement of plants in the sunlight
• shots of the playground, hall, dinner hall etc

Some longer term projects include:

• compare mould growing on damp versus dry bread
• observe the growth of plants or germination of seeds
• monitor revegetation after a bushfire
• observe fungi or fruiting bodies growth and decay
• record seasonal changes in water levels or plant life
• observe the growth of crystals under different conditions
• taking a sequence of photos from a flying kite

How to do it:

Requirements:

• Digital camera that will act as a webcam, or a webcam (the one I use is an old cheap one, hence the low quality images
• PC or laptop with Windows XP and USB port
• The time lapse software
• A suitable place to do this (See link below)

• There are probably simpler ways, but this one seems to work and is free to use
• Go to Power Toys for XP
• Download Webcam Timershot
• Connect your camera to the PC and turn on
• Load up the software – Webcam Timershot
• At the bottom there is a little arrow>>
• Click on this and you have some settings
• The main on to choose is the time interval – in minutes, hours or days, according to what you are trying to photograph
• You also may wish to alter the photo size to see if you get better results
• Also remember where the pictures are being sent – it is to “My Pictures” in my documents unless you change it
• Ensure the little box “save a new copy of this file every time a picture is taken”
• Now your camera will start taking photos
• In order to view your photos as a series of quick joined up shots – like a proper time-lapse sequence
• Load up Windows movie maker
• You find this in your programmes list (go to start menu – programmes – movie maker)
• Make a new collection folder by clicking the little yellow folder icon with an orange star on it (near the right hand side) – make sure this collection folder is selected (blue)
  
• Click on File – Import into collections
• Then select the photos you want to add in
• As you will be adding them all, simply click on the first, and then whilst holding down the Shift key (the one with the arrow pointing up), click on the last picture in the list – or you could use the CTRL+A keys
• They should all be selected now
• Press the “Import” button and they will all appear on your movie maker page
• Again, select them all and “drag” them onto the line at the bottom that says video
• You now have a show
• Before playing, however, you need to change the amount of time a photo is seen
• Go to “Tools – options – advanced” and there you will see “Picture duration”
• Set this to a max of 0.5 secs, click OK and then click on “play” at the top
• If this looks ok then save your work
• It can only be used on this PC until you save it
• Most people will choose “save movie file” and then choose to save to CD (it will check you have a CD in and then burn it for you when you confirm) or to your memory key (choose to save to computer and then find your key)

I have a very simple show Movie.wmv

These shots were taken every 30 secs and with 0.5 sec interval in movie maker

Play and enjoy

advice on setting up your camera and location

If you have a digital camera and want to make better use of the photos you take, you might want to take advantage of some free software that is out there.

Picasa – Find and enjoy the pictures on your computer in seconds

Photo Story – zooming & sound slide show

Bubbleshare – online picture, photo and album sharing

and to help you resize your photos for easy uploading into Bubbleshare, use ImageResizer.exe

I think you’ll find these pieces of free software brilliant additions to your digital photo toolkit

Serratus

The key to making good digital panoramics is having the right photos and great stitching software. AutoStitch is just that – a free program which will take a multiple digital photos of an area and blend them together smoothly to create a panoramic photo automatically.

AutoStitch does an incredible job of aligning and blending photos, however, it does so without any user input so you can’t edit where Autostitch is putting what and make any adjustments. With a good set of photo pieces, the results are spectacular, like Lifehacker reader hufse’s AutoStitch’ed Panorama extravaganza Flickr set. AutoStitch is a free download, Windows only.

Visit AutoStitch website

thanks to Lifehacker blog

also check out

• Census data visualization
• Download of the Day: AutoStitch
• Make audio: Skype, Tiger and ringtones
• Download of the Day: Creative Element Power Tools
• How to turn a photo into a cartoon
• Less is more
• The repurposing roundup
• How to make a CSS photo gallery
• How to keep up with dozens of weblogs
• Download of the Day: Aardvark page layout editor
• Where to find desktop wallpaper
• Test your web site’s readability
• Test your internet connection speed
• Easier Amazon MP3 downloading
• Ask Lifehacker roundup
• Populicious links
• Free MP3s from Amazon
• Glassy button maker
• Color combination tester
• Download of the Day: Zoomifyer EZ
• Free sound
• Free CSS/HTML template roundup
• How to create panoramic photos
• Finetune Firefox
• On making decisions
• Download of the day: Paint.NET
• Create posters from any image
• Google satellite sight-seeing
• Look up acronyms
• More Windows keyboard shortcuts

plus lots more

You can guess from its name what 2 Minute Photoshop Tricks is. It’s a text, video, and audio blog that shows gives you tips, tricks, and tutorials for Photoshop, each in about two minutes.

Unfortunately it’s not updated especially frequently, but there’s a lot of good stuff there, from adding a dept of field effect to a photo to giving text a shiny Web 2.0 look.

They’ve got feeds for their videos, podcasts, and blog posts, so you never miss a tip.

Via the Download Squad…. & SVSD

Irfanview is a free Photoshop or Paintshop Pro alternative, allowing you to work with your pictures in something other than Microsoft Paint!

Multi language support, thumbnail option, preview option, slideshow, drag-and-drop support, fast directory view, batch conversion, e-mail option, audio CD player, print option, change color depth, scan support, cut/crop, IPTC edit, effects (sharpen, blur, Adobe Photoshop filters)

Runs on Win 98 onwards – thanks to Ambleside for the tip

Oh yes and this

Paintshop Pro is one of the most popular graphics programs for PC.  Version 4 is an evaluation copy that works without restriction, although if you find you are using the program a lot you are required to register it. In return you will receive Paintshop Pro 5 which has many more advanced features. The Paintshop Pro software is also available on the Internet or on magazine CD-Roms.

If you wish to add that special effect, sometimes seen in advertising, where the black & white photo has just one colour object in it, here’s a tutorial from Lifehacker