Channelling the excitement and success of Portland Nights I decided to infuse my annual winter vacation to the Big Island of Hawaii with an extremely condensed and challenging time-lapse production. The Big Island is where I was born and raised and as a Videographer and Time-Lapse Photographer, I owe much of my inspiration to the beauty and diversity of the Island. And diversity is the key word. Not many other places in the world allow one to hang out in the snow at above 13,000 feet and then go surfing in 80 degree weather a couple hours later. South Point – Hawaiian Time-Lapse is an expression of diversity, however, the video doesn’t focus on all the different weather patterns and landscapes of the island, it zeros in on one incredible location, South Point. It might come as a surprise to many people that there are no palm trees in this video, the weather is often ominous and dark and the wind and rain come through like a freight train just about daily.

My brother Troy and I spent a total of five days at South Point over the course of two different camping trips. We worked around the clock using two DSLRs, a tracking rig, a telescope head and a grip of various other gear that we hauled in the back of our rental truck. Time-lapse was the mission. We produced around 33 clips and a large majority of them made the cut. We hope you enjoy and please, if you like what you see and hear, share it with your friends and family.

Be sure to check out our other two photo blogs documenting our production:

Click here to view Part One: The Boys and Their Toys

Click here to view Part Two: Challenging Shots

Part Three: Flash Storms and Long Exposures

This was the only shot in the video where we used Troy’s 50mm lens to acquire a focused perspective of the iconic South Point sign.

Just about 20 minutes after this photo was taken it started dumping rain out of nowhere and we found ourselves scrambling to pack everything into the truck before our equipment got drenched. Fortunately the shot was completed just before this happened. And about 10 minutes after that the sun came out once again.

This is near the beginning of the tracking/tilting night shot looking down at Green Sands Bay and up into the stars.

Like most shots in this video, I had the MX2 controller on interleave or “Shoot Move Shoot” mode. This method stops the motor(s) between each shot to allow the camera to fire long exposures and produce sharp images while continuing with the tracking motion.

“Shoot Move Shoot” mode was especially important for astro time-lapse as the shutter is usually open for 20 – 30 seconds. Here I am making sure everything is doing what I told it to do before I went into my tent and collapsed for a few hours.

Thanks for checking out our production photo blogs! Check back soon for more updates on upcoming projects.

-Lp-

Channelling the excitement and success of Portland Nights I decided to infuse my annual winter vacation to the Big Island of Hawaii with an extremely condensed and challenging time-lapse production. The Big Island is where I was born and raised and as a Videographer and Time-Lapse Photographer, I owe much of my inspiration to the beauty and diversity of the Island. And diversity is the key word. Not many other places in the world allow one to hang out in the snow at above 13,000 feet and then go surfing in 80 degree weather a couple hours later. South Point – Hawaiian Time-Lapse is an expression of diversity, however, the video doesn’t focus on all the different weather patterns and landscapes of the island, it zeros in on one incredible location, South Point. It might come as a surprise to many people that there are no palm trees in this video, the weather is often ominous and dark and the wind and rain come through like a freight train just about daily.

My brother Troy and I spent a total of five days at South Point over the course of two different camping trips. We worked around the clock using two DSLRs, a tracking rig, a telescope head and a grip of various other gear that we hauled in the back of our rental truck. Time-lapse was the mission. We produced around 33 clips and a large majority of them made the cut. We hope you enjoy and please, if you like what you see and hear, share it with your friends and family.

Be sure to check out our other two photo blogs documenting our production:

Click here to view Part One: The Boys and Their Toys

Click here to view Part Three: Flash Storms and Long Exposures

Part Two: Challenging Shots

The wind was one of our constant challenges throughout the trip. Here at the top of Green Sands Beach, the wind was whipping dirt in my eyes and trying to blow every piece of equipment I handled directly off the cliff. After finally getting everything set up I succeeded in executing a tracking, panning and tilting motion controlled time-lapse of the beaches enormous cinder cone wall.

Another precarious set up, the hardest part was safely getting all the equipment down into this cave of lava rock to time-lapse the surging ocean. I was slightly worried about the tide rising in combination with the sets rolling in but it worked out flawlessly.

About halfway through the shoot the telescope head began to malfunction and we lost the ability to pan our shot. After over an hour of troubleshooting we decided to improvise by turning the entire track on its side in order to transform the tilt function into a pan. The result was a success.

Thanks for checking out our production photo blogs! Check back soon for more updates on upcoming projects.

-Lp-

Channelling the excitement and success of Portland Nights I decided to infuse my annual winter vacation to the Big Island of Hawaii with an extremely condensed and challenging time-lapse production. The Big Island is where I was born and raised and as a Videographer and Time-Lapse Photographer, I owe much of my inspiration to the beauty and diversity of the Island. And diversity is the key word. Not many other places in the world allow one to hang out in the snow at above 13,000 feet and then go surfing in 80 degree weather a couple hours later. South Point – Hawaiian Time-Lapse is an expression of diversity, however, the video doesn’t focus on all the different weather patterns and landscapes of the island, it zeros in on one incredible location, South Point. It might come as a surprise to many people that there are no palm trees in this video, the weather is often ominous and dark and the wind and rain come through like a freight train just about daily.

My brother Troy and I spent a total of five days at South Point over the course of two different camping trips. We worked around the clock using two DSLRs, a tracking rig, a telescope head and a grip of various other gear that we hauled in the back of our rental truck. Time-lapse was the mission. We produced around 33 clips and a large majority of them made the cut. We hope you enjoy and please, if you like what you see and hear, share it with your friends and family.

Be sure to check our other two photo blogs documenting our production:

Click here to view Part Two: Challenging Shots

Click here to view Part Three: Flash Storms and Long Exposures

Part One: The Boys and Their Toys

The first shot of our production. Tracking, panning and tilting on the edge of the cliff. This was our first time using the telescope head in the field.

Another shot at the edge of the cliffside. This one looking out at the ocean as we track through the wooden structure.

In addition to assisting with the time-lapse production, Troy worked hard recording audio to go along with some of the clips. Here he is getting the sound of the wind blowing the grass and the waves crashing below.

We used Dynamic Perception’s amazing low cost motion controlled “Stage Zero” dolly kit for all tracking shots.

And for any panning/tilting you see, we used the Celestron Skywatcher Backpacker telescope mount and controlled it using Dynamic Perception’s “MX2″ controller. This is the beginning of our shot at the top of Green Sands beach.

Thanks for checking out our production photo blogs! Check back soon for more updates on upcoming projects.

-Lp-

Earlier this year, I purchased my first DSLR and after a few months of trying to figure out where the thing fit into my life I just happened to run across one of DakotaLapse’s breathtaking motion time-lapse videos on Vimeo, in fact I think it was this one, and I had an epiphany. I’ve dabbled in time-lapse here and there since I started my career as a videographer but it wasn’t something that particularly struck my fancy and I think it was mainly because of the limited time-lapse capabilities one has with a prosumer video camera. But that video I saw that had been taken with the same camera I already had and some very affordable motion control equipment had completely reinvigorated my thought process on the medium. I decided right then and there to become a dedicated time-lapse photographer and my DSLR was suddenly this fantastic little tool that fit in to the plan perfectly.

It’s been about two and a half weeks since I posted my first major time-lapse project, Portland Nights, and it has since been viewed over 25,000 times on youtube, featured on the evening news twice, included in OPB’s weekly newsletter’s “Click of Zen”, shared on various popular websites like Mental Floss, Laughing Squid, the Portland Monthly and the Portland Mercury and made it’s way to nearly 6,000 Facebook walls.

I have received nothing but amazing feedback about how much viewers love their beautiful city and how I presented it in a way that brought that feeling out in them. As I was creating this project night after night through the summer, I realized more and more that I had been creating not only a cool looking video but something that brought out the same feeling in myself. I was artfully documenting a time in my life when I lived and loved in this wonderful city and I have been rewarded with a mirrored response from thousands.

Since finishing Portland Nights I have been investing in some more time-lapse gear for the purpose of adding two more axes of motion control as well as bulb ramping which will allow for more dynamic time-lapse shots such as bright sunlight straight into the night stars. And next week I am off to the big island of Hawaii where I grew up to tackle a couple more projects with my brother, fellow videographer/didjeridoo artist Troy Page. Check out Troy’s blog as well as his latest video project on youtube. Stay tuned for more exciting time-lapse and various projects in the coming weeks and thanks for being my audience, it’s what it’s all about.

-Lp-

Here you have it, my first time-lapse project. Don’t forget to watch in HD! In my last blog I wrote about some statistics of how long this thing took to make and how it started. For this post I’ll go into a few specifics about the video that are worth mentioning and a bit about the techniques that I developed amidst the intense learning curve that came with this beast.

The fact that this was all shot at night (excluding the very beginning and end of the video) was an excellent way for me to learn the relationship between shutter speed and time-lapse. I generally used a shutter speed of around 2 or 3 seconds for everything involving a lot of movement. This creates a blurring effect that ultimately results in more realistic looking motion when all the photos are sequenced together. For the more dimly lit shots that didn’t have as much movement I went with more like 8 or 10 second shutters. Keeping the ISO very minimal.

The first and last shots are very unique in that I shot them using a technique called High Dynamic Range (HDR). For every shot the camera fires 3 times getting 3 different exposures and then in post they are fused together to make one image showing a nice exposure on things that would otherwise be really bright or close to a silhouette. So the bright sunlight on the clouds as well as the city buildings below them are both exposed correctly in the same shot.

There are a couple things in the video that I’d like to point out just for the fun of it. First of all I stirred up a bit of suspicion while getting the two parking structure roof top shots. The reason being I was literally hanging half of the six foot track off the edge of the building with the cart and camera slowly creeping out to the end as the shot progressed. The first one wasn’t too bad, right before I started the shot I was told by a security guard that I had to leave and after about five minutes of begging and pleading he finally told me I had an hour and he’d be back. So that was that, then a couple nights later I had another shot set up on the top of another parking structure and maybe two thirds of the way through the shot I noticed a bright light shining up at my camera. I looked down and saw a cop car blasting its flood light up at me. Then after the time it takes to drive in a circle 8 times there were two squad cars at the top of the building approaching me. I was spooked, thought I was really in for it. The first officer got out, asked me to take my hands out of my pockets and asked me what I’m doing. When I told him he then told his fellow officer “he’s just getting a time-lapse” and they got back in their squad cars and drove off. In the shot you can see the flashing brightness of the flood light and then the brief light from their headlights on the top of the building.

Every so often when documenting the distortion of time, there are sometimes some strange unexplained occurrences that end up in the photo sequences. For instance, during the second shot of the Portland Timbers crowd, there is some sort of weird blurry lens flare looking thing that shows up directly centered around the bright clock as soon as it’s revealed from behind the face statue and then dissipates. A lens flare would make sense if it appeared gradually but it shows up suddenly on one specific photo. It was raining and I had an umbrella over the camera so it’s possible that it’s a small drop of water but that too is a stretch. So if anybody can figure it out be sure and let me know!

I wanted to thank a few people for helping me through some of the production. First of all Thomas and the Momos crew for being so cool about letting me bring all my gear into the bar on such a busy night, Tim O’dell for hooking up that connection, my wonderful girlfriend Mariela Brooks for hanging out with me on some of the shots and putting up with the massive amount of gear I use, Andy Parish for the amazing soundtrack, Jared Yanez for the music connection and everyone who inspired me along the way. This project is for you, enjoy!

-Lp-

Hey everyone, just wanted to give you all an update on my “Portland Nights” time-lapse project and a bit of insight into its production as well. I was hoping to have it done, uploaded and flying around the web by now but here I am in Mountain View, CA blogging from a Starbucks while swimming in various post production work for Truthout and recovering from a 13 hour shoot yesterday. Not that I’m complaining, being the busiest I have ever been with video work is an amazing thing. So I’ll be heading back to Portland tomorrow morning and prioritizing post work but this time-lapse project is so close to being done I can almost taste it.

It started as a small project to help me learn my new motion controlled dolly system and as I continued to produce clips, I got more and more excited about structuring it and creating not just a compilation of time-lapse video clips but a fully formed journey through a beautiful city using the latest technology and an artistic perspective of distorted time.

The production of this thing was intense. I worked solo for the majority of it and many times found myself on foot hauling 2 heavy duty tripods, 2 bags full of heavy water bottles, a camera backpack and a 6 foot long dolly track to some part of the city where I was unable drive to. Over the course of about 4 months I produced close to 40 time-lapse clips and I’m using about 25 of them in the final video. I would generally leave my place with all my gear and return about 5 hours later with approximately 1 to 2 shots per night. The learning curve was immense. And I can now say with a great deal of confidence that a DSLR feels pretty comfortable in my hands and under my control, especially with time-lapse. But I still feel like I am just scratching the surface of the medium and I am very excited to go bigger and better on the next project. But don’t worry, I will have this one up very soon! So thrilled for it to see the light of day. When I post the video, I’ll go into some more detail about some of the shots and techniques and I would love to start some conversations on the project or anything related. Thanks for your patience. Stay inspired. Peace out.
-Lp-

Happy Friday everyone! This will be my first official blog post, one of many to come. I will be using this blog to update you all on my latest projects and creative workflow. But first, don’t be afraid to explore the site and possibly stumble upon my collection of short films, music videos and artwork. In this post, I’ve included one of my music video productions from back in the summer of 2009 that has never been properly exhibited outside of a mildly promoted youtube upload and a tiny embed on the lead singer’s website with a… less than satisfied blurb along side it. But we would love to get everyone else’s impressions of the video so… check it out!

And about that updating you on my latest projects bit, if you’ll notice in the Time-Lapse Photography section, I have a brand new project that will be making its debut within a couple of weeks. It’s called Portland Nights and it’s a structured compilation of creative and unique motion controlled time-lapse clips taken of downtown Portland at night featuring a fantastic soundtrack generously provided by Portland’s own Andrew Parish. Time-Lapse has been my latest inspired medium and will be making its way onto the site very frequently in the near future.

Lastly, pagefilms.com is brand new and needs a boost to get out in front of an audience. If you dig what we’ve got going on here, please take a second to give us a “like” and share our work with someone who might enjoy it and share it themselves. Also don’t forget to leave some awesome feedback. We’d love to hear your thoughts about what we’re doing and if you are a fellow artist yourself, let us know what you’ve got cooking. Stay inspired.

-Lp-