SCENERY - Austin

Take a fast paced timelapse tour of Austin, the fastest growing city in the United States. Filmed in 2016 and 2017, "SCENERY - Austin" is an independently funded and solo-produced timelapse and hyperlapse project exploring the growing skyline of the flourishing capital of the Lone Star State.

"SCENERY - Austin" is a compilation of highlights from 200+ hours of shooting and 600+ hours of post-production. All motion control was performed manually with hyperlapse techniques (for long-run scenes) or by leveraging my own custom designed and manufactured digital motion control systems (for the short-run scenes).

Music is courtesy of Le Nonsense (soundcloud.com/lenonsensebeats).

A Few Shots from July and August

Here are a few photos from the past two months that I haven't shared yet; I very easily get swallowed up in big projects and start to neglect all my social media stuff, which I've been really bad about this summer.

One of my favorite shots in July came when I captured the moon transiting the capitol dome. The clouds were perfect and I managed to get just the image composition I was looking for.

The Moon transiting the Texas State Capitol dome

Earlier this week I was doing some traffic shots in south Austin, from which I noticed the UT tower's lighting was going on and off and had a bizarre non-tungsten color balance.

Evening Mopac traffic

When I got closer I saw that they'd brought in a special lighting system and were running through various test programs on their equipment. I realized this must be preparation for the 2015 Gone to Texas ceremony scheduled for the following night. Gone to Texas is a UT ceremony to welcome incoming freshman to the university and is so named because legend has it families that pulled up roots to move to Texas before it became a republic would write "GTT" on the door of their vacated homes, short for "Gone to Texas."

University staff ran through every color of the rainbow in varying combinations on different sections of the building and were even projecting animations and video onto the south facade of the tower. I have more photos from that night posted on my Instagram page.

Gone to Texas Class of 2019 UT tower lighting test

Austin Nights

It's been just about a year since I released Riding the Light, and, despite shooting a ton of footage in that time, I hadn't gotten around to releasing another short film. I finally set aside some time this month to put together my latest film, Austin Nights, which I'm both excited and proud to present to you now.

The music is courtesy of yng vapor, a most excellent electronic producer and composer out of Baltimore.

Take a voyage from nightfall to daybreak across Austin, Texas.

Selections From the Backlog

Having not posted in over a month, I've accumulated quite a few still frames in my backlog that I wanted to share. I've also got a few incomplete blog posts waiting on me to process and scan a batch of B&W film when I get the time.

I spent an evening a few weeks back testing out some in-car camera mounting techniques, giving me a chance to pay homage to one of my favorite scenes in Koyaanisqatsi. I was pretty happy with the results, and I was glad I could figure out such a solid mounting solution. Previous attempts nearly a year ago had been plagued by camera vibration.

Last week I stopped off at Zilker Park after a day of shooting hyperlapse footage. The view from the Great Lawn is always nice, especially after sunset. I highly recommend checking it out on a warm night if you feel like just sitting around with some friends in the dark and having a few drinks. The view of the skyline is excellent, and there's a quiet contemplative feeling to the whole place.

The hours and minutes before and after a big storm can yield some spectacular and dramatic views, creating a powerful backdrop for the skyline of any city. This first shot was taken from Castle Hill right after a huge rain/hailstorm rolled through town at the end of March.

Getting out there in the right place before (as opposed to after) a storm is the tough part. Enabling the desired image composition for an incoming storm largely comes down to luck because the weather forecast is typically useless when it comes to small scale local phenomena.

Today I had a bit of a lucky break. I saw what looked like the beginnings of some awesome undulatus (wavy base) clouds forming overhead as I was on my way home (iPhone shot at right) and decided to immediately head out to the side of the freeway to try to shoot some footage of the clouds with a wide, unobstructed view. By the time I got there, all the undulatus-like formations had dissipated or moved on; instead, I was treated to quite a show from the backlit cumulonimbus clouds of an approaching thunderstorm. This storm was particularly intense, with hail, extremely heavy rain, and high winds.

Finally, I'll leave you with the fruits of an attempt to take some cliche bluebonnet photos of my dog friend. As she was being completely uncooperative and constantly looking at traffic, I settled for taking a portrait of the Metrorail instead.

Print Shop and Site Facelift

After getting a few requests that compelled me to work out some technical issues, I finally got around to adding a Shop page where I can sell prints of some of the still photos I've posted. Taking me back to my days restoring my often-missed Datsun 240Z, I had a case of "while I'm at it" syndrome -- one thing led to another and I wound up spending all night overhauling the entire site interface!

I think I've worked out all the major bugs, but there are likely to be a one or two that will slip through the cracks. If you have any issues with the Shop page, please let me know via the Contact form on the About page.

In the meantime, here's a photo I shot two months ago of the Texas State Capitol on a night of below freezing temperatures. I realized I'd posted this to Reddit at the time, but forgot to write a blog entry about it. The fog emanates from the massive HVAC system that heats and cools all the above- and underground facilities of the capitol complex. Usually it's invisible, but the low temperature that night caused the humid air to immediately condense into fog.

A print of this photo is available for purchase on the Shop page.

Riding the Light

I'm excited and proud to present my new film, Riding the Light, a flying winter journey around downtown Austin. Shot during the winter of 2013-2014, Riding the Light is my third solo hyperlapse cityscape project, building on the techniques I honed in Sleepwalking Austin and Spectral Austin. It is the product of many late nights and early mornings shooting, many numb extremities in the coldest conditions Austin has to offer, and a very great many long hours in front of a computer screen. I hope that you enjoy watching this film as much as I enjoyed creating it -- if you do, I encourage you to share it, especially with any friends who are inbound for SXSW over the coming weeks!

Music courtesy of Draper -- Do It Right from Sonder EP, an excellent release I highly recommend in its entirety.

Congress Avenue, Abandoned

I stepped outside early this morning and saw that low well-defined clouds were rolling over town, their features illuminated by the city lights below. I decided it would be a good time to test out a new skyline shooting location I'd discovered, but not before feeling the need to clean the low pass filter on my camera sensor and get rid of a dust bunny that popped up in the middle of my last shoot.

This otherwise mundane camera maintenance task gave me a chance to try out a new item I picked up last week, the Pentax Image Sensor Cleaning Kit, O-ICK1. To start off, let's just say it turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. After seeing a recent F-Stoppers review of an identical product sold under a different brand (and not yet available through that vendor), I was sold on the idea of this potentially easier dry cleaning method. This little rubber-cube-on-a-stick didn't work nearly as well for me as it did for the F-Stopper reviewer. There were a great deal of dust specks that showed up clearly at f/32 that I could not remove with the Pentax tool, no matter how many times I blotted it back and forth between the low pass filter and the little sticky sheet. Before I began my cleaning attempt, I managed to somehow blow an oily speck of some sort onto the filter with my rocket blower, and the Pentax tool did nothing to lessen its appearance. After messing with it for a few minutes with only marginal results, I got out my bottle of Eclipse and a sensor swab and did my usual wet cleaning routine. Two swipes and the sensor was almost perfectly clean, and it got that difficult oily speck on the first pass. I suppose I'll keep it around for later attempts -- maybe it works better on some types of dust than others (like pollen), but it's definitely no replacement for a good wet cleaning.

Anyway, back to my little photo trip -- as I was making my drive across town I noticed the clouds had become very diffuse in the 15 minutes I spent on my 3:30AM sensor cleaning misadventure. I decided to check out the shooting location anyway, and snapped a few unimpressive test shots before heading home. On the way, I was amazed at the total lack of activity downtown, specifically on Congress Avenue. I had done a lot of downtown night shooting before, but never on Congress at 4AM, a time at which there were no buses, and the only traffic appeared to be a few early morning delivery trucks.

I managed to snap a few shots I thought were interesting, mainly because I could stand in the middle of one of Austin's busiest streets without fear, giving me a perspective I'd been unable to shoot from before.

Prints of both photos are available for purchase on the Shop page.