Tag Archives: Catbells

Lake District September 2009

By Will | Published 22/11/2009

It wasn’t so long ago now, but it seems like an eternity away when we visited the Lake District for the second time this year. We were very fortunate with the weather and had a wonderful two weeks of hill walking. It was challenging, but also immensely satisfying and despite eating well, I still managed to work my belt down a few notches!

Some of the fells we climbed this time around included:

  • Skiddaw 931 metres (3,054 ft) – after several failed attempts due to bad weather on our previous visit, we finally managed to reach the summit.  Perhaps, it was because it was the first big walk we did on the trip, but it felt like the toughest.  Incredibly windy on top!
  • Catbells 451 metres (1,480 ft) – my most climbed fell and I never get bored of the view from this relatively low climb.  It’s from here I was able to capture some sunrise time lapse sequences.
  • Barrow 455 m (1,494 ft) – one of Catbells’ neighbours.  Not a difficult walk, but still a very rewarding view from the summit.
  • Binsey 447 m (1,467 ft) – another relatively low fell, but with an amazing 360-degree view.  It’s such a shame I took a camera without any memory cards and didn’t get a chance to revisit!
  • Helvellyn 950 metres (3,117 ft) along Striding Edge – Our most exciting walk to date was on England’s third highest peak.  Fantastic views and an exhilarating climb from the Striding Edge to the summit via the loose, rocky face.

Here’s a couple of photos from the trip and a few more over on Flickr.

Striding Edge, Helvellyn

Striding Edge, Helvellyn

Swirral Edge, Helvellyn

Ullswater

All in all, it was a fantastic photo break, but I think I could do with a better way of carrying photography equipment especially when primarily shooting with a combination of a Nikon D700 and 14-24mm f/2.8 lens.  That’s a couple of kilos of mass which I need to be able to stow away securely and easily whilst still having it at hand without too much stoppage time.  My trekking rucksack and Lowepro Toploader worked out a little cumbersome at times, but on the whole did the trick.

If you’d like a few suggestions for places to dine whilst in the Lake District, I highly recommend the following:

Posted in Blog, Travel | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Time Lapse Photography – A Whole New World

By Will | Published 20/09/2009

Like most people, I find it difficult to detect gradual changes. For example, when you don’t notice the change in people you see everyday, but you notice the changes in those you don’t see often. The same can be said for things such as the movement of the sun, clouds, tide, flowers which open and close with the sun and other such phenomenon.

One way to make these gradual changes more visible is to record snapshots over a longer period of time and then review them over a shorter period. Like drawing a line on a wall to record a child’s height over a period of years. Viewing the snapshots together in a sequence makes the change easier to see.

Photographs are one such means to record snapshots in time and I’ve been experimenting with creating videos made up of photographs of the same scene over a period of time aka time lapse photography. This is where individual photographs are played back in a sequence – as frames of a video clip – effectively compressing time and allow the viewer to more easily see gradual changes in a scene.

Here’s one of my first attempts at time lapse photography from my recent trip to the Lake District (Cumbria, UK)

To make this, I shot 999 exposures using the intervalometer function on the D700 over a period of 2.8 hours, from 06:50 to 09:36 12/09/2009. Then, I batch process the images in Lightroom and used them to create an image sequence in Quicktime. From Quicktime, I exported the sequence as a video file and imported it into iMovie where I added the titles and carried out the final export.

I feel like I’ve discovered a new room at home, since I started doing these time lapse videos. I’m only just starting to touch on the possibilities and I’ve a few more ideas to try yet. I just hope the shutter on my cameras last for the duration!

Quick tip: having a second body to use whilst your first is tied up shooting time lapse is immensely useful and helps to ensure you don’t miss other stuff that’s going on.

Posted in Blog, Mac, Nikon, Showcasing, Technique | Also tagged , , , Leave a comment