#sunset

these are all the star-lapses i shot on the journey i took from chicagoland to california and then to florida, between september and november of 2012

[a.k.a. life on the road]

locations include:

Bicentennial Park
Brooker Creek Preserve
Clearwater Beach
Cooper’s Bayou Park
Courtney Campbell Causeway
Crystal Beach
Dunedin Causeway
Fred Howard Park
John Chestnut Senior Park
Lansbrook Lakefront Park
Philippe Park
Pop Stansell Park
R.E. Olds Park
Sunset Beach
The Dunedin Youth Guild Park
Veterans Memorial Marina Park

 

somehow managed to get out and shoot some video while literally spending the whole month editing the old life on the road films..

[in california]

it’d be much easier to do the aerial shots with a first person live view of what the camera is seeing or with a preprogrammed fly by gps waypoint system that modern quadcopters have.. not having either, i had to guess composition + direction and try to keep track of the tiny white dot in the sky and trust it’d come back :)

some locations include:

Crystal Beach
Dunedin Causeway
Fred Howard Park
Honeymoon Island State Park
Wall Springs Park

here’s a shorter version of the december 2015 time-lapse video i posted the other day..

i was asked by Udi of diyphotography.net to write about how this was made so i will explore some of it below. i did write a bit about the technique and idea the other day when i posted the long version of the time-lapse. you can check the film and writing out at:

most of the shots in both films were created with either [...]

 

this is a compilation of all 72 days of the journey i took from chicagoland to california and then to florida, from september 6th to november 16th in 2012. this is running at 5x the normal speed (otherwise it’d be around 19.5 hours long). it includes all of the following parts:

– from chicagoland to california [a five week adventure]
– life in california [three and a half weeks]
– from california to florida [just under two weeks]

[...]

[a.k.a. life on the road]

i’m very grateful that i was able to recover the quadcopter with my iphone on it.. i recall on one of the shots where i had it flying out over the middle of the lake, i couldn’t tell which way it was pointing as i had spun it around to get different views (and it was a tiny dot in the sky), and the return to home emergency button didn’t seem to be responding. i tried different modes to try to bring it back to me though i didn’t know if it had gotten the proper gps lock and compass direction or whatnot.. the flight had gone longer than other ones and i didn’t know how much longer the battery would keep it in the sky so was a bit concerned. i think i had to ask for divine grace to help me at that point and surrender to the possibility that i might lose it in the water. shortly after that, i don’t remember exactly what i tried (as this shot was over a year and half ago), though i somehow managed to fly it back. i was so glad to see that it appeared to be getting bigger and that i was able to tell which direction it was heading as i guided it towards me. as it kept getting closer, i kept hoping the battery would last long enough to get it back over the dock or close enough nearby as i saw the red light blinking indicating it was just about out of power. another time after this at honeymoon island, i don’t know if it was in this series of shots or some other time, i had an issue where it wasn’t responding and i think it was windy and i didn’t know if i was going to get it back. i’m really grateful i’ve always somehow managed to fly it safely back (and was able to retrieve it from a tree the one time i lost sight of it and it crashed way up high in a 40+ ft tall tree).