Monday, January 16, 2017

Friday, August 16, 2013

4K Time Lapse, Perseid Meteor Shower, and Northern Lights

So, I teased evidence of some of my astronomical activities a week or two back, and I'm finally getting around to posting about it! It was such a crazy weekend, I can't believe so much was packed into two days, and having been working every single day since getting back, It's felt like a pretty continuous whirlwind of activity.  Anyway, the first weekend of August this year was the 96th Annual Benson Reunion, a weekend camping trip usually held somewhere relatively close to our "ancestral homeland", as my dad calls it, around Talmoon, MN. This time, it was held in Tettegouche State Park along Minnesota's north shore, considering how big a fan I am of the area, I made sure I was in attendance.

Whenever I'm up north, my favorite images to capture are the stars at night. Anyone who has followed my work before now probably knows I'm a space freak, especially when it comes to parts of the universe that I can capture on film, as evidenced here, and here, and here. But sooner or later, taking plain old shots of the sky gets boring, not to mention it involves finding new or unique places to see lit up by stars which usually means spending daylight hours scouting locations followed by a night of little or no sleep. So this time I wanted to try something a little different. I'd never done any time lapse work before, save for some b-roll video of cars driving down the highway long ago with Billy Meiklejohn, so that seemed like something new to explore. It worked out perfectly in my head as I could just set the camera on auto pilot while I slept soundly in my bed. And with the whole universe spinning through the frame, any potential viewer would be in awe of the spectacle and not think about whether I lazily set my tripod down next to my tent and pointed it straight up rather than looking for an interesting composition! That's a win-win right there!

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Intro Blog

Hey there, so this will be the first blog on my newly revamped website. I'm always grateful to those who take the time to check out my work, so thank you for being here, whether on purpose or by accident.

My hope for this blog going forward is for it to be an outlet for me to gush about doing what I love, and hopefully there will be a person or two that finds it useful or inspiring along the way. I'll mostly just be talking about what photographic experiments I've been trying out lately, things I've struggled with, reviews of new gadgets I may have tried using or, most likely, just an avenue for me to speak my thoughts.. It will definitely be an exercise for me to get my ADD under control long enough to get some thoughts out of my brain and onto a page.

Check back from time to time to see if I actually get things going or if I drop off after a week or two. And if you have any nifty ideas for me, whether it be a shoot or technique I should try out or just something you'd like to hear about, head over to my Facebook page and leave a post about it.