Over the course of my wife’s pregnancy last fall and this spring, we decided to document the inevitable expansion of the bump into a full blown belly, and then an actual living, breathing, screaming infant. Every week we took about 5 shots standing in front of a glass door, with Sonya wearing the same outfit for the sake of continuity. 132+ shots, nine months and one delivery later, we had a stack of images that chronicled the life-changing event, seemingly so slowly at the time.
However, take those 132 shots and compile them into a timeline, add a soundtrack and you’ve got something quite compelling: the pregnancy time-lapse video. Our purpose was mostly to chronicle it for our son to someday see what his mom went through before he arrived, and to share the progress with friends and family. It was also pretty cool to watch the seasons outside change from summer to fall, then winter and finally green up again in spring. Post production was a bit more involved than I had originally intended, as the camera location drifted slightly from week to week and the shots needed to be aligned or adjusted and cropped very carefully. Should have just marked a spot on the floor after all and left a tripod up.
So this video has been sitting on YouTube (a very handy way to post and share video + bandwidth for friends and family mind you) for several months now, almost drifted out of consciousness when out of the blue I got an inquiry from a Canadian newspaper that had found the video and others like it and wanted an interview. Sure, no sweat, happy to oblige. We are mentioned briefly in the article, which is nice, and for the most part all is good.
And then the comments. Granted, some people are born to be negative all the time but some went so far as to call the videos vulgar and gross. Vulgar? REALLY? C’mon, it’s a belly. If you can’t take a bare belly or the site of a pregnant woman, then you have more serious issues at play. Seriously. Don’t ever turn on your television, NEVER leave your house and don’t even THINK about opening another magazine. Ever. But whatever you do, do NOT surf YouTube and play any video that says ‘pregnancy time-lapse’.
Killer Design 