After skipping a few days of shooting due to a lingering sickness and bad weather, I decided to set a camera trap Saturday morning. I was going to catch Amber and I sleeping in.

It really didn’t work out as I had hoped. My plan was to have a Pocket Wizard on the camera on intervalometer mode, shooting a frame every two minutes for an hour.

First problem: I would have to wake up to trigger it, because I couldn’t figure out a way to make a Pocket Wizard go off eight hours after I go to bed (I think I need a Time Machine for that). So I set my alarm for 6:30 a.m. and set a Pocket Wizard next to the bed. I’d wake up, press the button, go back to sleep and the camera would do its thing.

Second problem: I don’t have a pre-trigger cable to keep the camera awake, so the Pocket Wizard would have to be able to wake the camera and make it fire. I solved this by setting the contact time on the Pocket Wizard to three seconds. To prevent possible multiple shutter releases over those three seconds, I set my EOD 1Dmk III to silent mode, which keeps the camera from resetting the mirror as long as the shutter is depressed.

Third problem: I thought I was pretty clever for figuring out that last one, but that was negated as I slept when the half-dead batteries that I left in my Pocket Wizard on the camera became completely dead. When I woke at 6:30 and pressed the button on my Pocket Wizard next to the bed, it gave me the signal that the other remote didn’t get the message. So instead of going right back to sleep, I had to program the good remote for intervalometer mode, attach it to the camera, make sure it worked, and then go back to sleep. Which I never did, because every two minutes my damn camera clicked and woke me up.

Fourth problem: The picture isn’t very good. Needs some actual sun hitting the curtain, not an undescript glow.

2.07.09 — Salinas, Calif.