1974: Super 8 Bicycle Ride Around Vancouver

We tend to be fairly lax in photographing our day-to-day existence. Sure, we gather periodically in front of the Christmas tree or at the pub to smile into the camera, but the little details usually fall by the wayside -- we don't snap panoramic shots of the street on which we live, the office, the messy interior of our car, the kitchen, our favorite restaurant, or the train station platform we loiter on for a few minutes each and every day.

We ignore the mundane, assuming that it's not very interesting because tomorrow will be much the same. But flash forward two or three decades, and something as ordinary as a weekend bike ride around the city becomes a precious time capsule.

As if to prove my point, photographer Hans Sipma shot this timelapse film with a Braun Nizo Super 8 camera mounted on his bicycle during a cool autumn day in 1974 or 1975. The camera was configured to snap a single frame every few seconds, allowing a single cartridge of Kodachrome to capture his epic cycling adventure around Vancouver for us to enjoy in the distant future.

For those interested in a little more detail, Hans created a longer edit that slows things down and intersperses a number of present day stills along his route. It's fascinating to see how much has changed and how some things remain virtually unchanged.