California Film — Nathaniel Young

I hope you enjoyed my film which is a combination of both slow-motion and time-lapse video. From the mountains to the coast to the forest, this film captures the beautiful light, atmosphere, and night sky of the various places that I have visited in my home state of California over the past two years. When I started shooting it over two years ago, I did not set out to create a film like this. I just wanted to go for a hike to visit some cool places and take some cool photos or videos. For that first year, that is what I did. Within that time, I captured some photos that I was pretty happy with. In addition, I took some time-lapses and video footage; however, I did not really know what to do with them yet. So, they just sat on my drive unedited. While I felt pretty good about my photo editing skills, it took me over a year later to figure out a good workflow so that I could edit my time-lapses efficiently. In the following summer, I purchased a Syrp Genie II slider kit. I took it on a couple of our family trips to take some motion controlled time-lapses. This enabled me to create motion in my time-lapses like I had been doing with my video stabilizer for the slow-motion video. Towards the end of summer, I finally felt like I had enough video footage to start editing something together. So, in my free time between work and school, I slowly started to edit the film together. Once I found the soundtrack from Soundstripe, the film all started to come together.

The general locations featured in the film include Yosemite National Park, Lassen Volcanic National Park, the San Francisco Bay Area, Pinnacles National Park, Morro Bay, and Mount Shasta. For the rest of this blog, I thought I share some of the stories behind my favorite photos from the time-lapses that I took (in chronological order).

Golden Gate Bridge Sunrise | Sony Alpha a7 II + 24-70mm f/4 @ 24mm, f/11, ISO 100, 8 sec

It was January 1st, 2018. I woke up early to catch the sunrise at the Golden Gate Bridge with my dad at this classic viewpoint. I was using the cheapest tripod that my mom and I could find in Hong Kong since I forgot to bring a tripod on that trip; now, it was best tripod that I had. Furthermore, I did not have a proper bag to carry my gear. I manually took consecutive photos as the ambient light grew. While this was not my first time-lapse that I have taken, it was the first one that made the cut for this film. This was also the last time-lapse that I took manually triggering the camera. I am glad that I figured out how to properly use my intervalometer for my subsequent time-lapses. Read the full story behind that morning adventure at the Golden Gate Bridge here. It is a good one, and it features the story about how I almost lost this entire time-lapse due to an SD card failure.

San Francisco Sunset | Sony Alpha a7 II + 24-70mm f/4 @ 50mm, f/16, ISO 100, 0.8 sec

The sunset colors that I ended up capturing in this photo are really beautiful; however, most of the evening was blanketed by fog. Honestly, I do not even remember seeing this scene like my camera captured it with all these colors because the clear view only lasted about 8 frames in my time-lapse which was about 30 seconds or so in real time. Since I set my time-lapse up to automatically take photos, I was not even looking when the fog cleared for the brief moment to reveal all of these beautiful colors. Also, this was one of the most difficult time-lapses I edited. It was because I had a lot of dust on my sensor, and the fog was quickly moving through the frame. This meant that the everchanging fog exposed many dust spots that otherwise were not visible when the fog was not there. Instead of doing a batch spot removal, I had to manually go through each frame of the time-lapse in Lightroom to clone out the dust spots. This time-lapse is probably the main reason why this final video took so long to finally complete. Ideally, I would have brought an ND filter to slow down my shutter speed a little bit, but since I left mine at home, I shot this at f/16 in order to try to get a little more motion blur in the moving fog and cars. The serious downside of shooting at small aperture is that the dust spots are easier to see in the photo.

Foggy Golden Gate Bridge | Sony Alpha a7 II + 24-70mm f/4 @ 24mm, f/16, ISO 100, 1/5 sec

This photo was taken on the following morning. And just like the previous evening, the fog was in full effect. And just like last time, I also shot this at f/16 which resulted in a lot of visible dust spots on the photo. However, unlike the last one, these dust spots were pretty easy to remove with a batch spot removal in Lightroom as it was just mostly white. I initially started shooting once we arrived while the lights on the bridge were still visible, but that part of the time-lapse did not make the cut as there was just too much fog. Since I did not clear my memory card from the previous night’s time-lapse, this time-lapse ended once I ran out of space.

Here are a couple of behind the scene photos of my camera setup. I took these two time-lapses during our free time when I was invited to the San Francisco Adobe office along with a small group of other student ambassadors as we met with the Adobe education team to share our highlights from the past year, provide feedback, and participate in Q&As. We were all given an Uber stipend while we were there, so we used it to take us around the city. On both occasions, I was initially disappointed that the fog covered up most of the view, but the fog did create nice interest for the time-lapses.

Pinnacles National Park Star Trails | Sony Alpha a7 II + 16-35mm f/2.8 GM @ 16mm, f/2.8, ISO 2000, 15 sec continuously over about an hour

Back on a weekend in the summer of 2018, my family headed to Pinnacles National Park to do some hiking in the day and to see if we could catch the Perseids Meteor Shower at night. As it started to get darker, I set my camera up to continuously shoot photos to try to catch some meteors alongside the rising milky way. This photo was created from merging the time-lapse sequence of the 15 second exposures taken over the course of about an hour before the milky way core was in position for my planned milky way photo (read my blog post on that story). And the thicker streak in the middle is Jupiter. The star trail time-lapse in my video was also created from these same photos after a little work in After Effects. While editing together the final video, I made sure the music matched up when the stars turned into star trails.

El Capitan Winter Sunrise | Sony Alpha a7 II + 24-70mm f/4 @ 70mm, f/11, ISO 100, 1/40 sec

For winter break, my family and I headed to Yosemite National Park to enjoy the stunning scenery and hike amongst the towering granite walls. On the eve of 2019, we woke up early to catch the sunrise of this classic view of the valley. Originally, I wanted to capture a wider shot of the whole valley, but I opted for a tighter composition as there was no visual interest in the sky due to the lack of clouds. It was very beautiful seeing the valley wake up to the morning light as it painted the face of El Capitan. It was also very cold and windy which proved difficult for my camera as well as myself. To combat the cold, my parents brought me a thick Yosemite blanket to help me keep warm.

My Camera Setup at Yosemite National Park

As for my camera, it shut off because it was too cold for the battery to operate. I had initially hoped to get a time-lapse of the light painting the whole face of El Capitan, but my camera could not stay on that long. Failing that, I had to warm the camera battery in my pocket and then hope that I could get my camera to stay on for a long enough time-lapse. While my camera setup did not get blown over like I saw another photographer had his, the wind did create cause some of the frames of my time-lapse to be blurred. So, I had to interpolate those frames with the surrounding sharp frames.

Brokeoff Mountain Sunset | Sony Alpha a7 II + 24-70mm f/4 @ 70mm, f/11, ISO 100, 1/10 sec

Now in the summer of 2019, my family and I headed north to visit Lassen Volcanic National Park for the fourth of July and my birthday (I haven’t finished my blog post on that adventure yet but stay tuned as I have some good stories to tell). After leaving home early in the morning, we stopped by our inn and celebrated an early birthday dinner at a cool Mexican restaurant. Then, we drove into the park with plans to stay out into the night to see the milky way rise. Once we arrived at the location before sunset, I found a nice spot to setup for the milky way. While waiting, I setup a time-lapse as I noticed the sunlight catching on the top of this mountain peak.

Lassen Volcanic National Park Milky Way | Sony Alpha a7 II + 16-35mm f/2.8 GM @ 16mm, f/2.8, ISO 4000, 15 sec

This was taken at the same location as the previous photo after the moon set and the milky way rose. It was so beautiful gazing up into the night sky and trying to identify the different stars and constellations. Like many American households, we typically go out to watch the fireworks on the fourth, and my parents always told me when I was young that the fireworks were in celebration for my birthday; however, this time, we went away from the city and crowds to enjoy the beautiful of the night sky in silence instead.

Here are two behind the scene photos of my time-lapse camera setups for the two previous photos. This was the first ever time I used my new Syrp slider motion control kit, and I think it turned out pretty well as I was able to pan at the same rate as the milky way was moving across the sky while sliding in the reverse direction. The funny looking thing on top of my camera is a power bank that is powering my camera via a dummy battery. This was important as I already used half of my battery life taking the sunset time-lapse earlier. In addition, I do not think my internal camera battery would last long enough throughout the night. Also, the reason why my video head is on one of the tripods instead of on top of the slider is because I could not unscrew it from my tripod. Luckily my brother was able to unscrew it before our trip to Mount Shasta after sticking it in the freezer.

Mount Shasta Sunset | Sony Alpha a7 II + 16-35mm f/2.8 GM @ 20mm, f/11, ISO 100, 1/4 sec

Later that summer, our family headed up north again to visit another mountain in the Cascades – Mount Shasta. Once again, I brought my Syrp slider kit with me to setup a sunset time-lapse overlooking the glacial lake and Mount Shasta in the distance. This time, we hiked some 800 to 1000 feet of elevation gain to reach the viewpoint, and the scenery along the hike was very beautiful. Even with all the weight I carried up here for the time-lapse, I still thoroughly enjoyed the hike – probably one of my favorite hikes our family has done of late. I also wrote a full blog post where you can read the full story on this adventure and a little bit about how I captured the time-lapse.

Central Coast Sunset | Sony Alpha a7 II + 24-70mm f/4 @ 70mm, f/9, ISO 100, 3/10 sec

This past winter, our family headed down to the Central Coast where it was nice and warm opposed to the cold and windy weather that we experienced on our Yosemite trip the previous winter. We were behind schedule the whole first day, and we did not have time to head to the coast once we finally checked into our inn. With the sun setting in just half an hour, we decided to head up the hill to find a good viewpoint for sunset. I honestly had no expectations to come away with a photo from this evening; however, once we arrived, I ended up setting up my camera for a time-lapse as the clouds were looking so good. In my last blog post, you can read about the stories from my trip to the Morro Bay.

Posing by my slider setup at Mount Shasta. Photo by David Young.

When I look at the video I created, I am not only proud of it because of the time and effort that I put into it, but also because it reminds me of home. I think it is so easy to take for granted many things in life, but often you do not really appreciate it until it is taken away from you. And while nothing was taken away from me, going to college out of state made me realize how much I miss being home and spending time with my family. So, when I look at this video, I think of all the times that I got to spend with my family during break in some of the most beautiful locations in my home state.

If you made it this far (my longest blog post so far), thank you for reading all about my stories from this video project that I worked on. If you are interested in reading about the gear or some of the post-processing techniques that I used in creating this film, see the feature article on Digital Camera World. Even though I never really advertised it, thank you to the few people that are subscribed to my email newsletter. I sent out my first email today, and I hope to share some more in the future. I promise there will be no spam (I mean, it took me the better part of a year to send out my first email). Not entirely sure what I should use the email newsletter for, but I was thinking some behind the scenes as well as some inspiration.