Bracken Bat Cave, home to the largest concentration of mammals on the planet with 20 million Mexican free-tail bats, is opening up to the general public for a brief period.

This is awesome.

A few years ago, Jen and I saw the surreal exodus at dusk. So many bats fly out of the cave to feed, they create their own vortex.

Express-News Photographer Billy Calzada shot a very cool video of the bats in action. Check out the time-lapse photos.

When Jen visited New York to write about San Antonio’s ties to High Line park, she called me and wondered if it’d be a good idea to make a time lapse-video of a walk through the mile-long urban park.

Abso-freakin-lutely.

Time-lapse videos are full of awesome sauce. Most I’ve seen involve the placement of a camera in a stationary location. But another cool method is taking the camera with you and snapping a photo every few seconds. It creates a cool first-person view of a journey or event.

I’ve tried this technique a few times after seeing this video of a trip from Denver to Singapore by David DAngelo. I thought it was a cool way to show what the whirlwind journey was like:

This video by Express-News photographer Billy Calzada is about the difficulties kayakers face when they navigate a redeveloped stretch of the San Antonio River. About a minute into the video, Billy effectively used first-person time-lapse photography to show the hassle of being forced to take a kayak out of the river and walking about a mile to the next accessible location:

Jennifer Hiller

Most types of video editing software allow you to import a series of still images. When Jen got back I copied the photos to our hard drive at home and fired up Sony Vegas.

In Vegas you can import photos two ways. One is to go to “Options,” click on “Preferences,” then “Editing.” There you can adjust the sittings for the length of still images when you add them to your project. You can also have the images overlap slightly for a smoother look using cross fades.

For Jen’s project, the photos were at 3 frames per second:

Another options is going to “Project,” then “Import Media.” Check the box “Open still image sequence,” then select the photos you want to import. Vegas will merge all those photos into a single file for your project:

The finished product gives people a taste of it’s like to walk the High Line in a way that a traditional news article can’t do very well. These kinds of videos aren’t just trendy — they help journalists tell better stories.

Hard to believe Pete was born a year ago. At the hospital, Jen’s dad suggested we take a picture of him every day to make a time lapse video. Here’s the result.

I’m glad we took the time to do this because the video shows just how fast Pete is growing up. It’s also cool to see how Pete began smiling and interacting with the world.

If you want to do this kind of project, all you need is a camera, a tripod, video editing software, and the patience to stick with it. There’s no way you can take a picture every single day — you might be out of town, or the baby might be sick, or you might just simply forget. But I’d suggest taking a picture every day in the first few months at least. That’s when they really pack on the pounds. As you can see, it didn’t take long for Pete to become a cute little butterball.

Happy birthday, Pete.

“But he smells like ranch dressing …” Awesome jam and video by the Black Keys.

“Trash Day,” a hilarious video by Sam Lerma at KSAT, was featured on Vimeo this week. It’s the story of a woman’s obsession with her garbage man, based on an actual Craigslist ad, which says: “You are the hottest garbage man I have ever seen.”

It only gets better from there …

I snapped a picture every few seconds at my cousin John’s awesome wedding at the Drake Hotel in Chicago. Here’s a time lapse of more than 2,800 photos.

What is it about hurricanes that prompt TV reporters to broadcast live in the wind and rain? It’s like there’s an unwritten rule that they have to make a spectacle of themselves. Wouldn’t it be nice if reporters didn’t become the center of the story, and simply show us what was going on when Hurricane Alex made landfall?

Thankfully, this isn’t wishful thinking. Check out Express-News reporter Vianna Davila’s video showing the impact of Hurricane Alex in the Rio Grande Valley. Notice how this video is a mini-documentary — Vianna is simply an observer showing us the sights and sounds of a major storm.

I’m a big fan of these kinds of online videos, where the reporter is unobtrusively giving viewers a sense of place. For some stories, like a hurricane making landfall, the news article and the news video can compliment each other nicely.

I had a blast at my cousin’s wedding last weekend but getting to Chicago was an adventure. A massive storm hit O’Hare International Airport right before we landed. If we had tried landing a few minutes later we would have been diverted to Indianapolis. We ended up sitting in the plane on the tarmac because lightning strikes endangered ground crews. Crazy times.

OPERAPALOOZA!

A powerful story by Gilbert Garcia and video by Vianna Davila explore the rich history and slow decline of San Antonio’s East Side.

The video is different from your typical TV news broadcast. You don’t see Vianna talking into a microphone and interjecting herself into the scene. Instead, the video has a documentary-style feel to it. Vianna patiently let images and sound tell the story. Awesome.