March 2018 and spring has yet to arrive in North Wales, as freezing cold winds from Siberia blew snow storms across the country.
Desperate to exercise my creative muscle, but not wanting to freeze to death, I only ventured as far as my back garden to film this time lapse sequence of dramatic storm clouds blowing overhead.
A magnificent old oak tree provided a suitable foreground subject, with my camera pointed upwards to avoid fence posts, washing lines and so on.
I was hoping to leave the camera running for an hour, catching the light of the setting sun hitting the undersides of those clouds.
But it was not to be, as after only a few minutes a fresh bank of ominous black snow clouds rolled overhead, sucking all the light from the scene and dumping snow flakes on the upturned neutral density filter attached to the front of my lens.
Time to call it a day then, having taken just 240 frames, enough for eight seconds of video at 30 frames per second.
Still, it was worth having a try, and although things didn't work out exactly as I'd hoped (they rarely do!) I was still pleased with the drama I'd managed to capture on those 240 exposures.
Filename - clouds timelapse 16.mp4
Camera - Canon 6D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 35mm
Exposure (start of sequence) - 1/4 sec @ f4, ISO100
Exposure (end of sequence) - 1/4 sec @ f4, ISO100
Filters - 6 stop neutral density filter used to slow the exposure time and blur the cloud movement.
Shooting interval - 6 seconds
Location - My back garden, North Wales
This clip - HD 720p 30fps
Clip duration - 11 secs
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2018 unless otherwise stated.
