Wonder Endlessly

Here's a cool, new star-filled time-lapse video from Jack Fusco:

Wonder Endlessly from Jack Fusco on Vimeo.

Kilauea - The Fire Within

Check out this amazing time-lapse movie of Hawai'i's Kilauea Volcano. It makes me want to return to the Big Island to see it in person again.

 

Kilauea - The Fire Within from Page Films on Vimeo.

Sunrise: November 21, 2014

Yesterday morning's sunrise was pretty nice. Thankfully, I was able to capture it. Have a look:

Yesterday's Cloud Time-Lapse

Here's a short iPhone time-lapse movie of the clouds yesterday afternoon:

Golden Sunrise

Yeah, Wednesday's sunset was pretty fantastic, but Friday's sunrise wasn't too bad either.

Here are a couple of shots of it, followed by a timelapse that I captured with my iPhone.

iPhone Time-Lapse Videos

The new iOS 8 operating system for the iPhone has a nifty time-lapse feature. I recently picked up the wonderful Joby tripod for the iPhone and have shot a couple of short cloud videos.

Yesterday morning:

Yesterday afternoon:

This morning's sunrise:
This is a fun feature and I'll be shooting some more of these. When I get something especially interesting it will certainly get posted here.

Lightning Storm!

The summer monsoon season in the desert southwest is a wonderful time. It gives the region life-sustaining rain. At the same time it gives photographers a vast treasure trove of beautiful sunsets, rainbows and (my favorite) lightning.

Last night there was an impressive lightning display in and around Tucson, Arizona and I was able to catch the show from my back yard. Lightning is easiest to photograph when it is dark and when the storm is relatively far from you. This puts the lighting in one general direction (helping you to know where to point your camera) and keeps the danger at a minimum.

My first catch of the evening wasn't all that impressive as the lightning bolt was too far away, but things got better. Except where noted, all exposures were 30 seconds.

Two 30-second exposures combined in Star Stax

I decided to try a new direction and caught two shots (combined above) and realized that I was pointing in the wrong place and that the real action was just beginning. Below are some of my favorite shots from the lightning display.

I couldn't resist combining all of my images into one mega shot of all the lightning strikes. The combined images represent 22 minutes of exposure. I also dropped the images into iMovie to make a quick time-lapse video. Here is the result:

There's a chance of more thunderstorms tonight through the end of next week. Hopefully, I'll be able to catch some more lightning.

Volcano! (Part 1)

My wife and I visited Hawai'i in 2004 and were fortunate enough that we were able to view lava from Puʻu ʻŌʻō, erupting on Kīlauea's East Rift,  flowing into the ocean at night. The experience was one of the most amazing sights in Nature that we'd ever seen.

I didn't have much of a camera then or even a tripod with me, but I did manage to record a few decent photos of the site. Here's one of them:

As we were planning our 2014 trip I knew that I needed to bring my DSLR and a decent tripod to be able to record any nighttime lava action.

Of course Pele does what she wants and there was no lava flowing into the ocean during our recent visit. Lava is still erupting from Puʻu ʻŌʻō, but was not easily accessible during our visit. We later paid a visit to Puʻu ʻŌʻō but that will be in Volcano! Part 2.

Fortunately, there is Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park.  Within the park is the Kīlauea caldera and within that is Halemaʻumaʻu crater. There's a lava lake in Halemaʻumaʻu and, while the lava isn't directly visible, after dark the glow of the lava illuminates the volcanic gasses. It makes for a wonderful show.

 Even in the daytime the crater is an impressive sight. 

We headed up twice (July 26 & 28) to see Halemaʻumaʻu--both times just before sunset. I did some time-lapse photography. I adjusted the position of the camera a bit now and then, but the results aren't too bad. 

Here are some stills that I shot from the second evening.

There were low clouds streaming just over the crater, adding to the effect of the volcanic glow. 

As darkness fell, I was starting to get pretty worried that we wouldn't end up with clear skies at all.

Look closely and you'll see that there are stars in the photo above. Two in particular were of special interest to me. Look on the right just above the darker clouds. That's Alpha Centauri (the leftmost of the two) and Beta Centauri (to the right). Alpha Centauri is, of course, famous for being the brightest member of the system of stars that is closest to our own solar system. It is too far south to be seen from Arizona, so catching it was a thrill.

As the sky grew darker the low clouds cleared away leaving a magnificent star-filled dark sky, free of all artificial light.

Only the glow of Halema'uma'u itself competed with the stars. Well....the annoying people trying flash photography of the crater were causing their own periodic light pollution too but I digress.

One way to catch the volcanic action without making the trip to Hawai'i is to look at the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory's website. They have a live webcam pointed looking down at the lava lake. Here's a shot I grabbed from last Saturday:

It looks like the recent hurricane has kept the webcam from updating right now but it provides dramatic look into the crater showing the darker crusted over lava sheets floating on the bright molten lava lake. 

While we were in Hawai'i we had another volcano adventure which will be the subject of my next blog post.

The Window Seat

When flying it sure it nice to have lots of leg room. That makes the aisle seat a very attractive choice, but the window seat can offer some pretty amazing views that are tough to pass up. I just took a whirlwind trip to Portland Oregon and back and very much enjoyed looking out the window.

On the way up I unfortunately sat at a really scratched up window that also had a fair amount of condensation, which later became ice, between the window's layers. It didn't offer the best of views, although I did manage to see Crater Lake National Park and snap this shot of it with my phone:

If you look closely, near the bottom of the photo you can see the big, round caldera of Crater Lake and also Wizard Island within it. I was fortunate enough to be able to visit CLNP in person in the summer of 2008. Here's how it looked back then:

It certainly is a beautiful place.

For this morning's flight back home I had the window seat again and a better window. I tried some more photography with my phone. I took some still shots like this one of some snow-covered mountains:

I also tried out the free Motion Pictures app for my iPhone, allowing me to make some time-lapse movies of the views.

This was shot with one frame every second and 30 frames are in each second of the resulting video. The app is very easy to use. I'll have to find some other interesting ways to make use of it. Here's another short video shot looking out the air plane window with the same settings:
You'll notice that I didn't do the best of jobs holding the phone very steady. When we flew over the Grand Canyon I was even worse at holding the phone steady. So instead of subjecting you to that bumpy video, I'll just post a still:

 I've got a some more trips coming up soon. If I get any interesting videos, I'll be sure to post them here.