Month: May 2016
Day-night time-lapse: a first attempt…
So after a few previous attempts using a Go pro, I decided to have a stab at using myDSLR at shooting a day-night time-lapse. I had read about how difficult it was to get the balance between shot interval and exposure length, so the clouds don’t move too much whilst it’s daylight with the bright light, but then when it’s dark making sure that there is a large enough interval between shots to allow you to take long exposures and time for the images to be saved onto the camera. Given this was a first attempt, I was expecting it to go wrong, I was attempting to use the “holy grail” approach which required me to manually adjust the settings on the camera at set intervals in order to compensate for the reduction in light as the sun goes down. In hindsight this probably wasn’t the best approach given that I can’t change these settings without touching the camera, which can result in small movements of the shot. It’s the kind of thing that could really irritate you in post production, having to make adjustments to the photos to get rid of any such movement. Anyway here is the first rough edit. I say rough edit as I don’t currently have any software to smooth over the changes in exposure. So it may look a little rough but for a first attempt I’m quite pleased.
My main regret from this shoot is that I stopped too soon. I only had one camera with me and I had plans to do some long exposure shots, but in hindsight I should have kept running the time-lapse as the stars really came out an hour or so after I stopped. This is definitely
First wild camp of the season
The weather has been pretty poor for camping so far this year, but last weekend I finally managed to get out for a hike and my first wild camp of the year. I have done a fair bit of camping and wild camping in the past but this was actually my first solo will camp. I have gotten to know the eastern fringe of the Brecon Beacon national park fairly well so firths year as it is one of the easiest places to get to by public transport. As I don’t drive, I’m completely reliant on public transport or blaging lifts off my partner or friends, so being able to just jump on the train and be in the hills fairly quickly is great.The only down side is that train stations are rarely at the start points of trails and so often you have a lengthy walk through the town before you can get to the hills. This time however I was quite lucky as I had been in the area walking with my partner (who does drive) during the day and so I didn’t have to rely on the public transport to get into the hills. Whilst the walk from Abergavenny to the hills isn’t too bad, once you have done it a few times it’s nice to skip out the hour or so walking on narrow lanes to jump straight into the proper hills.
As this was my first wild camp of the year, and first ever solo wild camp, I decided to go somewhere that I was familiar with. The eastern end of the Brecon Beacons provides loads of great places to set up a small camp for the night and so I decided to head North East from Abergavenny. I set off late with the old adage of set up late take down early in mind. The benefit of doing a late evening walk before camping is that you don’t have to bother carrying the added weight of a stove and pots for cooking. I had spent a nice hour or so at a local pub in Abergavenny with my partner getting nicely fed on some local cooking, s good as camp food is, it’s not pub grub! As I was only out for a single night my pack should have been fairly light but the punishment for doing landscape and astrophotography and solo wild camping is that you have to carry everything yourself, which always means a bag slightly heavier than you’d like.
After the essential pub grub and a quick stomp you very quickly get to some great views from Skirrid Fawr looking over towards the Welsh border to the East and back over towards Abergavenny and the Brecon Beacons to the East. This is a great spot for a bit of landscape photography, there are also some interesting rock formations to add some interesting foreground to your pictures. One of my plans for the evening was to attempt to produce a day to night time-lapse (this will be uploaded in a future post), as in this area you can get great views of the sun setting over the rolling country side whilst at the same time the street lights of Abergavenny starting to turn on. Fingers crossed this will turn out!
It had been a while since I last went wild camping in the UK but I quickly remembered why I love doing it. I was fortunate that the weather was great, a little windy and cloudy at times but the views of the sun setting, the stars and planets rising, the lights of the towns and villages in the valleys below, the cacophoney of bird song at both dawn and dusk it was awesome. I was also treated to a rathe rare sight of a stote walking to within two meters of where I stood talking photographs (sadly it was way to dark to get a picture of it!
Over the coming weeks I’m going to write some specific blog posts about what it’s like getting out int the hills and being partially sighted, what the specific things I have found difficult and the tricks I have found for getting around them. But for now here are some pics from the trip!
Blurred Adventure 