Tag Archives: night

#52weekproject: Week 3 – The L From Above

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52weekproject week 3

Week 3 of my 52 week photo project…

Takes me to the rooftop of the Kinzey Wells parking garage, which overlooks the Merchandise Mart stop. (Photos were taken Tuesday, Feb 18th, 2014.)

I took the hike over after work, and set up my tripod and camera precariously on a ledge of the roof to get this shot. The roof was un-shoveled from the heavy snowfall the night before, and luckily there were no cars or people around to have to explain myself to. It was a little windy, and standing in foot high snow didn’t make it feel any steadier, but I think the shot turned out pretty good. I have a couple ideas for how to make this shot better, so I’ll be back here to take a few different angles under different conditions (possibly after a storm or during a summer sunset)

I originally preferred the image in black and white, but I think the color version has some merits as well. What do you think?

52weekproject week 3 vColor

Big Sur Timelapse

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So after Christmas with my family in San Jose, California, I rented a car, and drove down the coast to spend time with my friends in Los Angeles for New Years. My plan was to camp for a night in Big Sur, and do some timelapse photos, but with everyone being on vacation and the weather being super nice, all of the campsites ended up being booked before I got there.

I didn’t get to spend much time in Big Sur, since the sun was starting to set by the time I got there, so I just found an area I could pull over, and hike around a bit. I set up my camera and started shooting, but after the sun set, the air cooled, and the fog and moisture seemed to literally, come out of thin air. So, in my mind, I thought I wasn’t going to get really great photos of the sky since it was starting to get foggy, so I ended up skedaddling after about an hour and a half to find a hotel.

Anyway, after checking my photos, it turns out I didn’t end up with enough shots to make a real long timelapse, but I decided to put it together anyway and make it more like a fast moving slideshow.

But I guess it’s a learning experience. Just another reason for me to return to the West Coast sometime, and plan on spending more time out there!

That’s it for now!

P.s. Be sure to watch it in HD for full effect.

Montana Timelapse

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Greetings from Ashland, Montana from Justin J. Le on Vimeo.

Stick around, the cool part starts at 00:00:35.

I tried to manually bulb ramp, which is why the exposure bounces around in the beginning, and then I moved the camera later on. Would have loved to have a longer timelapse, but I pulled a total rookie move, and had my battery die on me at the end there. Would have loved another 30 minutes worth of photos.

Shot over Thanksgiving, 2013 from the top of a water tower.

Somewhere in South Dakota…

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The Drive Home…

JLE_8015

Sometimes, when you have hours and hours to drive solo, you just need to take breaks, and give yourself things to look forward to. Even with a metric crapload of music, podcasts and audiobooks at my disposal, it’s still nice to get out of the car once in a while. I’ll usually stop every couple hours to stretch, walk a bit, get a drink, or use the restroom. On the drive back from Montana, I knew I’d be driving through some pretty desolate areas during a new moon, which is great for us city folk who can’t get enough of the night sky. I kept one eye on the road, and one eye on the sky. As the sun went down, and the temperature dropped, I waited for the clouds to dissipate (or at least fade in my rearview mirror) to find a good spot to take a picture.

Get away from me!

I drove about 5 minutes away from I-90 to find an isolated spot to take a photo (somewhere off of the road where I wouldn’t be afraid of getting hit by a car or shot for trespassing… When you’re in the middle of nowhere, you start feeling like you’re doing something wrong, lurking with a camera in the dark). I threw on my sweater and beanie, and grabbed the camera. When it gets this dark out, it’s really hard to compose a good shot, so you just point it in the general direction (for me, usually towards the Milky Way), set the camera manually, and keep your fingers crossed as you wait and see what pops up on your LCD. You can then recompose and take another shot, but, even then, you might not get anything better. This was actually the first shot in the series that I took, and it turned out to be the best. (Also, I didn’t run into anybody else, so I didn’t need to explain why I was peepin’ on them stars.)

Hopefully everyone made it home from Thanksgiving safely!

p.s. 2 posts in under a week? Sorry about that! I promise we’ll be return to our regularly scheduled irregularity and sparsity.