Video Log

Last night I went looking for locations to shoot the sunset somewhere in Ventura. My idea was to shoot the setting light falling while the city lights started to come to life. Despite giving myself an hour or so to scout locations, nothing really panned out, so I drove to Surfer’s Point, Seaside Park in Ventura. I set up my D200 for a time lapse (1 frame every 10 seconds for an hour, give you 10 seconds of video) with the composition towards the sun. Well, the batter died on the camera about 5/6 of the way through the shoot so I packed that up, turned around and noticed how beautiful the sky was and then… the Moon! The way the clouds were dancing around the sky in front of the moon was stunning. Dragged out the video camera, shot a quick clip and called it a night.

This video came out of a request from a friend to shoot the full moon since it was in perigee this month, and a close one at that. Well not being one to just shoot a picture of the moon – been there, done that! – I decided to shoot a time lapse instead. The problem was the first night, the real night of perigee, I screwed up the focus and the images were useless. However, I did manage to shoot a full moon shot after the spoiled time lapse that night. The time lapse portion of this video comes from the next night. At that size (I used a 70-200 at about 100mm on the D200), you can’t really see that it’s not quite full. Nonetheless, I perhaps more fun with the credits then I did with the actual rise since time lapse is passé for me now. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy doing it but this entire process of learning video is just that; learning. Anyway, it’s fun and my friend loved it.