Probably the best time-lapse movie I’ve made so far.
A few weeks ago, we had an amazing day full of fog that drifted in and out for most of the day. It was a real joy to watch it from my home, mostly above the fog. But, of course, I didn’t have a camera set up for a time-lapse.
I set up my GoPro on the deck outside my bedroom using a clamp mount my brother got me for Christmas last year. I have a USB power battery replacement for my GoPros that ensure I never run out of power.
Early this past week, the forecast mentioned fog for several days in a row. So I got out one of my GoPro cameras, put in a blank mini SD card, connected it to a full-time power source, and got it going taking one shot every 10 seconds.
That was on Monday afternoon.
Tuesday was a nice day. No fog. Not even much in the way of clouds.
Wednesday was kind of dreary with some clouds coming and going, but nothing really interesting.
Thursday was the same.
Friday was a bit more interesting, with clouds moving around a bit. I figured I could turn that into a time-lapse in a pinch.
But Saturday! Oh, Saturday, November 13, 2016.
This scene out the window beside my desk was my first inkling that it might be a good time-lapse day.
I was sitting at my computer finishing up a blog post about my home automation system when I happened to glance outside. My “office” window faces northeast. I see the Columbia River Valley as it narrows between cliff faces. And that morning, as it was just getting light, I saw the clouds clinging to the side of the cliffs near my neighbor’s house.
The fog was back.
I was almost afraid to see if the time-lapse camera was still running, but when it got light enough to see, I went out on the deck and took a peek. It was. Glad I’d bought that 64GB mini SD card.
I let it run. I went about my day, doing odd jobs at home and running errands in town. The camera continued to run. The fog came and went, the clouds moved around, it became a beautiful day. The wind kicked up and the clouds seemed to fly by.
And the camera continued to record an image every 10 seconds. All day long and into the night.
This afternoon, I shut off the camera and brought the SD card inside. I found the images starting at 6 AM and ending at 6 PM. I ran them through a batch action in Photoshop that cropped them to HD video size. I fired up QuickTime 7 Pro, which I have just for time-lapse work, and compiled the 4320 images at 6 frames per second. The result was too slow. I tried again with 15 frames per second. Perfect!
The result is what you see below.
Got five minutes? Take a break and watch my time-lapse. View it in full screen if you can.
If you’re wondering about the music, which seems to go perfectly with this video, it’s by Paul Avgerinos: Dance of Life from the album Sky of Grace.
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Truly beautiful, nicely paced.
Strange that the cloud moves in from left to right while the fog rolls right to left, down gradient, I assume?
Some textbook cloud types there.
I enjoyed it, thanks.
Thanks. And I agree: the cloud movements were completely weird. For a while, they seemed to spiral through the area. Sometimes looked like waves on a shore. Really my best effort to date. Perfect day for it. Today might have been good, too, but I’ve packed up the GoPro for my upcoming trip.
Awesome – The BEST five minutes of my day today! Really this is truly magical. Post this everywhere and I am confident it will bring you a host of new blog followers.
Thanks so much! I’m really pleased with the way it turned out. It’s the best I’ve done so far.