December 5th, 2015 – 37 degrees @ 7:00 a.m. (sunrise @ 7:30 a.m.). It would go on to reach 49 degrees as they day progressed; sure beats 20 below. I setup in a familiar place; a favorite site any time of the year for a sunrise. I employed a 3-camera setup this morning as illustrated in the first image below. I moved camera 3 to three more different vantage points. I used footage from only two of four positions that camera 3 occupied. It is challenging enough to get the exposure correct on one camera as it gets lighter out; 3 different cameras had me running a bit. The more I dabble with time-lapse the deeper its hooks get into me. It is challenging.
From L to R – Camera 3, 2 & 1
Camera 3 moved for wave view
Here are a few single-frame shots from the time-lapse sequences.
Camera #1 View
Camera #2 View
Camera #2 View
Camera #3 View
Camera #3 moved from tree to waves – quick snap in-between
Camera #3 View
You can view more of my time-lapse projects via my blog or my youtube channel.
The end product of this time-lapse shoot is below. I hope you enjoy viewing it as much as I did creating it.
It’s been a while since I have dabbled with time-lapse photography. I had some time the other day and decided to give it another whirl. It was a picture perfect morning for a sunrise. The clouds were a bit thick, but that ended up to be a great feature. The sun rose through the clouds during the whole shoot. The sun rays danced on endlessly through the early morning.
Shooting time-lapse is a significant investment of time – or at least I think so. I brought along a book to pass the time. The three sequence were shot between 6:58 a.m. – 9:04 a.m. on 2015-11-11 in Bay City, WI.
I planned on capturing slightly different views and mashing them up together afterword. As it were, the intervalometer on camera 2 was only set for 90 frames (instead of 999). Live and learn; check every single setting twice. Set white balance. Compose and focus; then switch to manual focus so lens doesn’t attempt to focus for each frame. Manual mode for exposure. Check those setting twice to be sure. It is rather disappointing when you spend a few hours capturing time-lapse only to hundreds of unusable frames. I started shoot these sequences at ISO 200, 18mm; I did however make some adjustments along the way. I started at F/11 @ 1/40 sec and end up at F/14 @ 1/640 sec. The changes where gradual with several frames between changes.
I took this learning opportunity to move and setup with a dramatically different angle of view. There was a nice-sized bit of drift wood on he beach that created an interesting foreground. I’ve only used my new Manffroto PIXI Table Top Tripod a few times; this is exactly what I envisioned using it for.
I ended up with two shorter segments and one longer one – longer being completely relative here as the final product is only 57 seconds long. The time-lapse sequences were produced in VideoVelocity 3 by Candy Labs. The sequences were mashed up together in Windows Movie Maker.
The final product is below with music added by Kai Engle – With Redemption.
I neglected to post the sunrise shot from my visit to Fort Snelling State Park yesterday. This particular landing on Snelling Lake doesn’t afford a direct line to sunrise at this time of year. It does offer a view of the Hwy 55 Mendota Bridge along with reflections from its lights; with some clouds in the sky, it is a rather picturesque view.
I also skipped over posting photos from the previous day when I scouted out Pike Island. I arrived at noon and the park was pretty quiet. I met one photographer returning to the parking lot as I headed out. He said he photographed a few bucks. That’s all I needed to hear. I found one buck out on Pike Island along with a doe and a several turkeys. All good signs that the trip tomorrow morning would no doubt be action-packed; it was. Here are some photos from the 2 hours I spent on Pike Island on Friday afternoon.
