Time Lapse Photography - Part 5

Unless you're going to be hiking into the wilderness and camping at your own pace (i.e. no set rigid schedule to be kept daily), chances are that you will only get ONE CHANCE at shooting each of your amazing sights. So the last thing you'll want is for your once chance to be lost due to equipment failure!!!

Thats why we all take photos right? To try to help us remember the things we saw in real life and to show others their wonders.....

I have personally experienced the amazingly red blazing sunlight set over the the Fiery Furnace area of Arches National Park. I took a time lapse of it over a couple of hours and I was so excited to develop it!!!

But when the sun had set and it was time to go home i noticed that my camera was no longer pointing in the right direction!!! Yet, i was certain that i had not touched it or bumped it accidentally!?!?!?!

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Tip #9 - Do Not Use Inferior Equipment

I had set up my GoPro on top of my car's hood and due to a certain angle i wanted to capture, i could not use my tripods. So i slapped a ball of Blue-Tac onto the bottom of my GoPro and stuck it to the hood. UNFORTUNATELY, unbeknownst to me, in the sun's heat, the Blue-Tac became soft and as a result the weight of the GoPro had caused the camera to slowly move/tilt.

Due to to the slow tilting/movement of the camera, i did not notice it. However when you're making time lapse shots it becomes very evident (especially if you're compressing 2 hours worth of shots into 15 seconds). It basically looks like a video of my camera was falling off my car not a video of the amazing red sunset!!

It was almost heart breaking to realize that my one and only opportunity to capture the Fiery Furnace sunset was lost, simply because i used Blue-Tac, instead of taking the time to find a fixed and stable platform to place my camera on.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for  being able to adapt to the situation and if you don't have a tripod, blue-tac works fine. However if stability is paramount, then perhaps you should not compromise the one thing that makes time lapses' photography effective!


LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES!!


Here's an example of what NOT TO HAVE after taking a time lapse for two hours...i.e. a CAR DOOR in your shot!!!

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