Moonrise over Yosemite Valley

My last night in Yosemite I decided to head down to Tunnel View to shoot a time lapse of the stars and also some long exposure star trail images. As seems to happen with a lot of my photography, I stumbled upon something awesome. In setting up for the time lapse, I placed myself perfectly to capture the moon rising over the valley. The moon was about three days past full, but it was still plenty bright. Standing in that majestic place with the stars above and the moon revealing the beauty below, I was in awe. It was so quiet, and yet these massive cosmic forces were at work, spinning and orbiting through space. Words can't really describe, so I'll let you see a little bit of the grandeur that I saw. This 20 second video is comprised of 400 or so images covering just over 2 hours. Enjoy.



A little info for you techies out there. I used OnOne Software's DSLR Remote iPhone app to drive the time lapse. I connected the camera to my laptop that was running the DSLR Remote Server. I then logged on with my iPhone through an Ad Hoc network on my laptop. A bit cumbersome in the field, but a heckuva lot cheaper than buying an separate intervelometer for $150! And once it was set up, it was rock solid. I set it to take an image every 20 seconds and it went until the laptop ran out. I combined the images in Quicktime Pro at 24 framers per second. A tip if you're going to shoot a time lapse: don't shoot at the highest resolution. Shooting at a lower resolution makes the files much more manageable and you can get more on a memory card. And realistically you're not going to make a video at higher than HD resolution (1920 x 1080). I had my camera set to a medium jpeg and it made my processing later much easier, and the quality was still very good. The final movie at full resolution is like butta. Mmmm, butta.