Creative vacatons

Creative vacatons

Friday 22 February 2013

On Time Lapse Photography

I have a little hobby: time lapses.

I have to call it a hobby because it's not something I make money out of and the quality is not on the professional level, yet. I still consider myself an amateur with anything that has to do with video. But, remember: That's not a bad thing. An amateur is someone who does it for the love of it. A professional does it for the money. I do time lapses because I love them, and because I love the Aurora Borealis and the landscape around Tromsø.


Normally when I make a time lapse to make things that move slow appear to move faster. It can be the tide, the moon, a slow day at the office what ever. The one below was the first I made.



When I make a time lapse of the northern lights it's not because I want it to move faster, but because I cannot make a video. In video there is typically 25 frames per seconds. When I take still photos of the Aurora I typically have shutter speeds between 10 and 30 seconds. It's just impossible to take 25 ten seconds exposures and put them into one second. It's a math thing, and I have a bachelor in fine arts and I'm not too good with math. So I do time lapses.


The challenge is to make the Aurora not to move too fast.  So I want to take as many photos I can, as fast as possible. That means I have to try to make the shutter speed of each shot as short as possible. The way to achieve short shutter speeds is to crank up the ISO as much as I dear, and to have a big aperture (low number). Dance with me was made with a 14mm f/2.8 lens with 10 seconds exposures, ISO 4000 or 5000. I had to make the exposures a bit long both because I used the 14mm that has a max aperture of 2.8, and because there were no moon and very dark.


The above time lapse was shot during full moon, with a 28mm f/1.8. I got away with exposure times of one to two seconds. The moon makes an enormous difference in the exposures at night.

How much the Aurora moves varies a lot. I mean a lot! Sometimes she sits still on the sky for hours. Sometimes she dances like there is no tomorrow. The night that I made Dance with me she was moving so much that I would have needed a shutter speed of 1/60 seconds to freeze the movement.

To trigger the camera I just use a normal cable release. I set the camera to take series of photos and lock the cable release.  That way the camera is shooting all the time. For other types of time lapses I use a intervalometer that I can set up to trigger the camera every ten or fifteen seconds.

Even the lowest JPG setting on my camera has a higher resolution than HD video. I used to shoot in a low jpg, but have now changed to RAW. Canon has three different RAW settings and I use the lowest one. RAW gives me such great possibilities to do post process work that I much prefer that. At the end I make all the photos into jpg and crop them to 1920px X 1080px. Then I number them from 0001 to whatever.

To cut it all together and put music on I use Adobe Premier Pro. Not because it's best, but because it's what I know. I use Premier Pro for all my other video stuff. In the last video I made Dance with me, I set the frame rate of the footage to 12.5 fps. That way I managed to slow down the movement a little. I realize that I should have done that on the other Aurora time lapses as well.



To make a time lapse is a commitment. You set the camera to take pictures in a direction. After that you cannot move it.  Remember that you need 25 or 12,5 images to make one second. So if there suddenly is Northern Lights somewhere else in the sky you just have to hope it comes back to where you are shooting. Or risk ruining the footage that you have started.

It's nice to have some music together with the images. In the best cases the music will lift the images, in the worst it will put them down. Finding the right music is not easy. If you are Vincent Laforet you can call Moby to ask him if you can use one of his songs for your video. I have a friend who is a musician and a video maker who just improvises on the piano when he needs some music. The rest of us has to be careful. I don't like it when someone uses my images without my permission. I expect to get payed if someone uses my images. I can not steal someone's music. There are many websites that offer royalty free music. I use AKM. I find that they have a broad selection of music to fair prices.

I still have a lot to learn about time lapses and about video editing. I hope you enjoy these time lapses.

Vidar


Thursday 21 February 2013

An Angel Looking Over Us


There has been an angel looking over us in February. So far I've only had one night out where we haven't seen the Northern lights. We've had many nights with very strong lights. Under this Aurora a couple got engaged! We have had some great nights going to many different places, but there are two places that are special in my heart.


The North Facing Fjord



In the bottom of this little fjord we stay protected from the wind and we enjoy a great scenery even without Aurora. I sometimes tell myself that I should stop coming here but, it's so beautiful that I cannot help myself.

When Aurora come to visit; this place is breathtaking.









 The Restaurant at the End of the Universe



This place that some people call "The Moon," I call "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe." Or if we have had our dinner in the fjord I call it "The Café at the End of the Universe." Even without Aurora it's a nice place to stay. This is where I used to ski when I was a kid. (I'm still a kid in many ways, so you might catch me skiing here when my leg gets better.) When the moon is up we enjoy the landscape. When there is no moon we can see the stars better, even the Milky Way as on the above picture. 


Even though Aurora is a bit shy, we still enjoy taking photos and having a snack. It has happened that a group that has been chatting away in the car gets completely silent when they come here. It's like being closer to the Universe when you see all the stars and Aurora is dancing for you.

When Aurora comes to visit we feel really blessed.





 The picture under is special to me because it is taken looking south. It is rare to see the Northern Lights so far south towards the horizon. I think it's because we have a peak in solar activity this year. In Tromsø we can see the Northern Lights any year, but this year we see them more often to the south than usual.


This timelapse was largely shot at these two locations.



Sunday 10 February 2013

Last Night in Skibotn




Skibotn is a very popular place to go to see the Aurora Borealis. Last night there were two big buses and lots of cars. The reason is simple. Skibotn has the most clear sky on an average in the whole region. And there is a clear view to the north. Remember that it's also called Northern Lights, because we most often see them to the north. The thing is that the big buses always leaves at around eleven if they have seen the lights. That leaves the place empty. The other thing is that most people from the big groups don't want to walk those 50 meters down to the beach where the best place to take pictures (and to hang) is. So last night I made this time lapse video:

Sunday 3 February 2013

Epic Epic Epic


Saturday February second was nothing less than EPIC.





When we got out of the studio after the work shop Aurora made a special dance just for us. Everybody started practicing taking photographs of the northern lights, like they had just learned in class.
They all nailed it. Straight A to the whole class.

 Putting theory into practice right away.


After spending some time just outside the studio we went on to find other sceneries. We did, but the "dona Aurora" decided to take a brake. We all understood. The show she had put up must have been exhausting. 

We went to the classical place Ersfjordbotn. The scenery there is one of the best ones in the entire region. 


After a while we got hungry and decided to go to "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe." or Rekvikeidet as the locals call it. After some soup and chocolate imported directly from Paris by one of the members in the group, we were ready to look at the sky once again.
What a shame, we thought. It's cloudy.  

We stayed an waited patiently because even though it was cloudy there  was lot of activity. The group was great. Nobody went inside the bus or gave up. We all waited patiently.  
I for one thought the clouds gave an extra dramatic aspect of the photos. 

 Then it started to clear up. The sky opened up more and more. 





 The people in the group were taking photos like there was no tomorrow. Like if photographing the northern lights were going out of fashion, like this would be the last chance to ever take a photograph again, like this was the end of the universe. 



 We stayed until 1:30 am. Then we figured out we were cold enough, the batteries were dead, the memory cards were full, Aurora was getting tired, and the clouds were moving in again.