A series of time lapse videos recorded in the southwest region of the US. Most of these were recorded during December of 2010 in locations including Death Valley NP, Zion NP, Valley of Fire SP (NV), Dead Horse Point SP (UT) and Lake Mead. Luckily, I went to this region during a time of frequent snowstorms, which made for lots of cloud action above the landscape. There are two things that time lapse can reveal, events that unfold too slowly for you to notice them progressing and patterns in events that occur rapidly. In an outdoor landscape shot, you will most often be dealing with the first type, watching shadows and stars move as the earth rotates or watching the development of cumulonimbi.
One new thing that I decided to do here was to create the entire movie in black and white. I usually post landscape photos in black and white because I like the contrast. I wanted the clips in this video to literally be landscape photos with moving scenery. I use Silver Efex Pro to convert to black and white in photoshop. Because the camera (and most of the scenery) is stationary during a clip, I could record a number of operations (contrast adjustment, burning, dodging) and then automate the application of those same operations to all the frames in a clip. I had resized all of the frames to 1024x720 px before doing this so that the automation would run faster.
Surprisingly, this video represents only about 5 hours of actual picture taking time. I recorded about 9000 images at an average of 1 frame every 2 seconds while making these videos. I only needed to stay in each spot for about 12 minutes because the clouds were moving so quickly. I used considerably slower settings for recording moving shadows during sunset, and usually spent about an hour taking those clips.
You might notice that the camera appears to be slowly panning in some clips. This is pure luck on my part. Sometimes I was using my tripod to take still images with my other camera and would set my camera recording time lapse on top of my camera bag while it recorded images. I think that the slap of the mirror inside the camera was slowly moving the camera around on the bag. Depending on the slope of the bag it would appear to pan upward, or twist, or pan side to side.
The best way to find really good stuff to record time lapse in nature is to just get out there and look around. So many of the clips in this video were of things that I had no plans to photograph. I would be sitting there waiting while my camera was recording one thing that I had been planning to capture and would notice something spectacular occurring in the other direction. I'd quickly snatch my camera and change lenses and would only be able to catch a little bit of the action. However, these are my favorite clips, not the ones that I went out there intentionally to get.
One new thing that I decided to do here was to create the entire movie in black and white. I usually post landscape photos in black and white because I like the contrast. I wanted the clips in this video to literally be landscape photos with moving scenery. I use Silver Efex Pro to convert to black and white in photoshop. Because the camera (and most of the scenery) is stationary during a clip, I could record a number of operations (contrast adjustment, burning, dodging) and then automate the application of those same operations to all the frames in a clip. I had resized all of the frames to 1024x720 px before doing this so that the automation would run faster.
Surprisingly, this video represents only about 5 hours of actual picture taking time. I recorded about 9000 images at an average of 1 frame every 2 seconds while making these videos. I only needed to stay in each spot for about 12 minutes because the clouds were moving so quickly. I used considerably slower settings for recording moving shadows during sunset, and usually spent about an hour taking those clips.
You might notice that the camera appears to be slowly panning in some clips. This is pure luck on my part. Sometimes I was using my tripod to take still images with my other camera and would set my camera recording time lapse on top of my camera bag while it recorded images. I think that the slap of the mirror inside the camera was slowly moving the camera around on the bag. Depending on the slope of the bag it would appear to pan upward, or twist, or pan side to side.
The best way to find really good stuff to record time lapse in nature is to just get out there and look around. So many of the clips in this video were of things that I had no plans to photograph. I would be sitting there waiting while my camera was recording one thing that I had been planning to capture and would notice something spectacular occurring in the other direction. I'd quickly snatch my camera and change lenses and would only be able to catch a little bit of the action. However, these are my favorite clips, not the ones that I went out there intentionally to get.
