Due to overwhelming demand, I’ve finally added a new Gallery of nothing but time-lapse videos.  Some of these are also posted on You Tube, but you can click on the thumbnails and watch them without leaving my website (so convenient!).  And they’re short, mostly less than 30 sec, so you won’t be wasting your time, even by viewing them all.  So far I’ve focused mostly on clouds and their interactions with the mountains here in the Eastern Sierra, but I plan to move farther afield with my efforts at compressing time, and will post more in the coming months.  Hopefully this summer will be a good one for monsoonal thunderstorm activity.

In the meantime, here is a new one (from last year) of stratus clouds ebbing and flowing west against the mountain wall of Wheeler Crest, just above our house.  I love watching (and riding) surf at the beach, and these clouds move like waves washing up the shore and back out.

Stay tuned and thanks for watching!

Check out more time-lapse videos by Stephen Ingram.

High stratus and lenticular clouds at dawn

Clouds are – both literally and figuratively – one of nature’s highest forms of abstract art.  Alfred Stieglitz, who had a passion for photography as Art, was the first photographer to photograph clouds “solely for their artistic merits.”  He called his series of cloud photographs Equivalents, and his cloud images are widely recognized as the first intentional abstract photographs.  Stieglitz’s Equivalents were also a source of inspiration to Ansel Adams, who claimed his first “intense experience in photography” was when he saw some of Stieglitz’s cloud images.

Altocumulus lenticulularis

Spring is generally a great time for cloudspotting in the Eastern Sierra, and this year is no exception, so I thought I’d post a few of my favorites.  I enjoy watching and photographing clouds because of their perpetually changing light and form.  Even if a Sierra Wave cloud stays in one place all day, it changes form, and it changes with the light and in contrast to other clouds that float by during the day.

Cirrus with Iridescence

Color is also an important aspect of clouds.  From bright white to dark gray, and every color of the rainbow, clouds reflect the sunlight.  And as Stieglitz observed, they can reflect your mood as well.

Clouds Above the Mountains

As I wrote in an earlier posting about time-lapse photography, cloud forms lend themselves perfectly to time-lapse videos where hours can be compressed into seconds.  This has been especially true this winter and spring with several storm systems forming stationary wave clouds above Coyote Ridge and Round Valley.  Like a standing wave that forms downstream of a large river boulder, wave clouds form as cooling air is forced up to where it condenses at the front edge and then dissipates on the lee side as it sinks down the wave’s backside.  Click on the link below to see a recent time-lapse video of clouds forming and dissipating eastward, and notice the towering lenticular cloud up above.  For scale, the highest peaks in the frame are close to 14,000 feet high.

Clouds Moving and Building above Coyote Ridge, Eastern Sierra, CA

Winter Light on Mono Craters

The Mono Craters are among the youngest chains of volcanoes in the country, having initially erupted less than 40,000 years ago.  In contrast, Mono Lake is one of the oldest lakes in North America, dating back over 760,000 years.  From the southern edges of Mono Lake, the Mono Craters rise to 9169 feet.  Viewed here from the north, the warm afternoon light catches their western flanks, which is partially reflected in the cold blue waters of Mono Lake, seen through barren, winter cottonwood branches.

I first saw the potential for this photogenic scene as I descended from Conway Summit on my way home from Carson City.  This image was captured with my trusty Nikon F4 on Velvia film, in the days before digital, but has been scanned with a high-resolution drum scanner, and has been printed with great results.

Mt. Tom and Eastern Sierra peaks from Aeolian Ridge, Volcanic Tableland

My wife Karen and I stumbled upon this “cave” along a ridge while hiking around in the Volcanic Tableland north of Bishop. I call this area “Aeolian Ridge” for the wind-scoured pits and holes eroded into the volcanic tuff rock. When we climbed up into this large hollow, I noticed how part of the roof matched the horizon line of Mt. Tom, the most prominent mountain west of Bishop. I returned several months later when photographic conditions seemed more favorable, and placed my tripod-mounted camera up to the roof at the back of the hole. Fill-flash was used to light the roof of the cave because it would have gone black when exposing for the rest of the view out the “window.” The rough texture on the rocks is well-suited for canvas prints of this image.

If you don’t have hours to spend lying on your back watching the clouds float by, you can compress a few hours of photos into a minute or less, and enjoy the clouds in a time-lapse video. Since I’m a big fan of clouds, and because I’m lucky enough to live in one of the best cloudspotting locations on Earth, I’ve been making time-lapses of clouds for the past few months, but I sure wish I had started sooner! Here are two of my favorites from this past year.

This cloud eddy on the lee side of Mt. Tom can best be appreciated through time-lapse. This top video is a sequence of 248 images taken 7 sec. apart, and played back at 15 frames per second (fps).

One of the amazing aspects of digital photography is the ability to shoot time-lapse intervals. Time-lapse videos offer a new perspective of the vibrant natural world. As you watch a sequence of photos played back at a much higher rate than their original frequency, you can really appreciate the dynamism of our natural world. Opening flower buds, hot air balloon rallies, the night sky, and busy city scenes are other common subjects for time-lapse videos.

There are a few good websites that go into more detail than I have space for here, such as

http://content.photojojo.com/tutorials/ultimate-guide-to-time-lapse-photography/   and

http://www.lightstalking.com/timelapse

For subjects such as clouds or sunrise on the mountains, I usually shoot at intervals of 6 to 15 seconds. When this sequence is played back as a video at 24 fps, a 1 to 2-hour sequence of moving clouds and changing light can be seen in less than 30 seconds.You’ll need an SLR that lets you program an interval setting, or get the perfect tool – an intervalometer. The main things to remember are to set your light meter and white balance on manual, and plan ahead for the interval length and total time of your sequence. Although I shoot in RAW format for most of my photography, I usually shoot in JPEG for time-lapses because the file sizes are more manageable.

This video of restless cumulus clouds dropping virga (rain that evaporates in air) is from 728 images taken 9 sec. apart, and played back at 24 fps.

Experiment with time-lapse - you won’t regret it! Check out more time-lapse videos by Stephen Ingram.

Old-growth Redwood forest

One of my favorite places on earth is Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park on California’s north coast. After renting a Fuji 617 panorama film camera (before purchasing a used one), I made a fall road trip up to the redwood forests to try it out. After a day or two of searching for the right spot to try and capture the essence of old-growth redwoods, I found this stand along a trail. It seemed to have it all-huge redwoods, snags and fallen trees, epiphytic mosses, a lush understory of sword fern, and the powerful feeling of a healthy, functioning ecosystem. And fortunately, it was overcast and calm for this 8-second exposure.

Twilight Photo, Mt. Tom from Buttermilk

While searching for an appropriate rock outcrop to light-paint in Buttermilk Country west of Bishop, I inadvertently found a large rock with a crack that looked familiar.  This was the rock made “famous” by Galen Rowell and his photo of “Split Rock and Cloud” on the cover of his book, “Mountain Light.”  I was after something altogether different, trying to get the silhouette of Mt. Tom behind something I could lighten with a flashlight that would add some interest to the foreground.  This dark image of stars and Eastern Sierra peaks needed something for added interest and contrast.  But this photogenic boulder was a piece of art itself, as Galen discovered in 1976 while chasing down a “single strong silhouette” foreground for his ephemeral late afternoon cloud.  (I have the feeling this is the beginning of a long, fruitful relationship with this boulder).

The first photo, made during the rich, blue twilight (9:05 pm), shows the silhouettes of the boulder and the skyline with Mt. Tom.  The Big Dipper is visible at upper right.  This image was made with a wide-angle zoom (17-35mm) lens at f/3.2, for 4 sec. at ISO 1250.  The last two of these three images, made around 4 am, were shot at f/4 with a shutter speed of 20 sec. at ISO 3200.  Through trial and error using different light sources, I learned that painting for about 5 seconds was sufficient to light the pale granite.  Part of the summer Milky Way is visible above Mt. Tom in the horizontal image and above the left part of the boulder in the vertical.

Milky Way above Mt. Tom from Buttermilk

Buttermilk Boulder with Night Sky

Mammoth Creek Aspens, Eastern Sierra, CA

I had been watching the stunted aspens that line Laurel Creek (center of frame) for some time before trying to get a strong photo of that sinuous yellow line. But while driving near Mammoth Creek during a stormy day, I knew this was the spot for getting a better image of classic Eastern Sierra fall color. The sun shone briefly onto the aspens, while dappled sunlight hit the slope with Laurel Creek. One thing I like about this image is the five lines of earth and sky, the sagebrush scrub, the riparian aspen forest, the Jeffrey pine forest, the slopes below Bloody Mountain, and the cloudy sky.

Mule Deer below Mt. Tom, with Clearing Winter Storm, Eastern Sierra, CA

The Round Valley mule deer herd spends the winter in Round Valley and the surrounding hills where deer rely on bitterbrush to get them through the winter. The Eastern Sierra Land Trust (ESLT) holds several conservation easements in Swall Meadows, an area of over 100 homes situated in the heart of this herd’s winter range and migratory route. These two deer were enjoying the open space safeguarded by an ESLT easement on our neighbor’s property. Many deer spend much of the winter here, but when the snow gets too deep they move down-slope into Round Valley.

One cold morning in mid-December as a winter snowstorm was clearing, I noticed this handsome buck, and approached with my 80-200 mm zoom lens. Because I wanted to use all of the dramatic Mt. Tom in the background, I had to zoom out until the peak of the mountain was visible.