It has been a few days since I posted on this project but it has been mad going up and down mountains ok hills twice a day for dusk and dawn shots. I will try to keep the posts as coherent wholes as I have finished three separate although local areas, i.e. Nant Gwrtheyn, Tre Ceiri and Trefor Quarry. In this post I will be updating you on Trefor quarry with the completed images and time lapse video sequence. I will give a basic overview of the process so you know how that is basically done. The time-lapse is new to me so I have spent a number of days researching the approaches and the various applications in their creation. I will also share some of the things I have learnt with regard to planning and location selection.
In terms of compositional approach I wanted to connect the quarry with the town of Trefor as well as it position in the wider landscape. This I thought was important as the quarry provided the majority of work for the villagers and both where connected in a symbiotic relationship. Even though the quarry is no longer a major employer it does see some minor piece work activity there today.
In choosing the best time of day to take the images it had to be dusk as the subjects are on the North side of the peninsula and ideally suited to catch the last rays of the sun. After trekking for a mile from the car park I was fortunate that there was abundant cloud to make the image more appealing and in the case of the second visit more dramatic as mists blew overhead to create a vortex effect as it travelled into the distance. This vortex was created by the peak of the quarry as it deflected the low cloud overhead.
Single still using my Tokina 11-16mm mounted on the Nikon D700. I tried to make use of the flowers to help with the foreground. The road connects the quarry with the town of Trefor and helps to lead the viewer through the picture.
On the second visit I set up the tripod to do a time-lapse sequence as the technique is ideally suited to show the movement of the cloud and the play of light across the scene at an accelerated pace running in this case at 20x normal speed as the shooting interval was 3 seconds, i.e. 20 frames a minute. The final sequence shows that there was a vertex movement in the clouds as it moved into the distance over the distant hills. It was only noticeable in the time-lapse and at the very end of the video:
This was made up from 800 stills taken in manual mode. Constant care must be taken to monitor the histogram to make sure the exposure is good as the light diminishes. If the image is too dark I use the thumb dial on the camera to increase the shutter time. Three clicks of the dial give one whole stop of exposure or in other words a doubling of the shutter time. I use a intervalometer to control the number of shots and the time between them, i.e. interval. You have to make sure that there is sufficient time for both the time to take the picture and for the buffer to write to the card before the next picture is taken. I tend to add 2 seconds the the shutter time. The images where processed with LRtimelapse 3.1 (LRT) and Lightroom 5 (LR5). I also use Adobe After Effects (AE) to create the panning motion from the high resolution original video from LRT. AE is also useful as it has a motion stabilisation feature which can be a must if the wind is very strong as it was here.
In terms of representing the scene with a single still I had 400 to choose from out of the time-lapse sequence. I guess as there are so many you can select on the basis of the best light for depth:
While the camera was busy with the time lapse sequence I took the opportunity to use the available light to shoot other details in the near vicinity:
Details of the dusk light on features around Trefor:
Including the town itself.
As well as the chance encounters with light breaks:
The road to Caernarfon makes an interesting lead line to the light break in the distance:
I wanted to take this panoramic view to help define the context of the quarry in terms of its wider landscape:
A deep gouge in the rock face helps to frame Trefor and the hills in land:
Finally I wanted to get a few details shots of one of the ruined buildings that still stands within the quarry. It is clearly marked as being built in 1930.
One item of decayed machinery caught my eye resting on the window sill. I have no idea what it is.
The last image is sculptural in its approach as a fragment of rusty metal protrudes a piece of concrete that almost looks like pale flesh.
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