MICHAEL LEVY STUDIO † /

Chers lecteurs,

Il est grand temps que je vous pro­pose un nou­veau TIMELAPSE d’exception, tant par son tra­vail icono­graphique que typographique, (auquel je suis sen­si­ble), sans oublier la musique choisie avec soin, et qui approche sans sur­prise le mil­lion de spec­ta­teurs en quelques jours.

Tout le monde en parle, dont des médias améri­cains aussi pres­tigieux que the Wash­ing­ton Post, USA Today, VH1, Newsweek, Giz­modo, io9, Uni­verse Today, France24, The Atlantic…

Le voici :

Ce TIMELAPSE vous est pro­posé par JOE CAPRA, qui habite Los Ange­les.

Je l’ai décou­vert comme tout le monde sur le web, et réal­i­sais à la 3e lec­ture — avec une cer­taine fierté je dois l’avouer — que Joe est un de mes lecteurs !

Il a en effet pré­paré son voy­age pho­tographique en lisant mon ROADTRIP, et en achetant mon eROAD­BOOK en jan­vier 2011, 6 mois avant son départ.

Je lui ai envoyé un email de félic­i­ta­tions pour son tra­vail, et en prof­i­tais pour avoir un pré­cieux feed­back sur mon eROAD­BOOK, afin de savoir s’il avait été utile à son expédition ?

Voici sa réponse :

“Hello Michael ! Yes I did use your eROAD­BOOK dur­ing my trip and it was a HUGE help ! You did a great job and I am glad I had it with my on my trip and to use for plan­ning the trip. It was my main book to use for plan­ning the trip. The images you included were very help­ful, and your pho­tog­ra­phy is amaz­ing! It was good to be able to relate an image with the names of the locations.

The eROAD­BOOK was exactly the type of infor­ma­tion I was look­ing for to plan and use on my trip! I spent along time though try­ing to con­vert it to Eng­lish because I don’t speak French. I highly rec­om­mend your eROAD­BOOK to any trav­el­ers to Iceland.”

Tou­jours curieux des expéri­ences de cha­cun, j’en prof­i­tais pour lui pro­poser une petite inter­view, Joe s’y est prêté de bonne grâce, la voici donc, en exclusivité :

JOE CAPRA / SCIENTIFANTASTIC /
INTERVIEW  

How old are you Joe ?

I am 33 years old.

Where do you live ? 

I was born and raised in Santa Bar­bara Cal­i­for­nia. I lived there until I left for col­lege at the Uni­ver­sity of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia (USC) which is in Los Ange­les Cal­i­for­nia. Since mov­ing to LA for col­lege I have never left. I still cur­rently live in Los Ange­les.

How long do you prac­tice photography ?

I have been into pho­tog­ra­phy and film ever since I was young. I had a few sim­ple cam­eras when I was younger, but I got my first real SLR cam­era (Canon Rebel XT) in 2005 and that’s when I started get­ting more seri­ous about pho­tog­ra­phy. Since then I have had many cam­eras, lenses, and gear. I mainly do pho­tog­ra­phy as a hobby, but hope one day to make it my full­time job.

What decided you to go in Ice­land ? Was it your first trip to the north ?

The main inspi­ra­tion for my trip to Ice­land was watch­ing Michael Reich­mann’s (from luminous-landscape.com) video jour­nal on his trip to Ice­land. It looked and sounded like the per­fect pho­to­graphic loca­tion, espe­cially for land­scapes which is what I pri­mar­ily shoot. I love to be away from peo­ple and crowds when I shoot and Ice­land seemed to offer me amaz­ing land­scapes with hardly any peo­ple around.

Also the fact that it would be light out 24 hours a day giv­ing me hours of golden light. Ice­land seems like the most ideal loca­tion for me and it did not disappoint.

Why going there in june ? Because of the light ? and why alone ?

I went in June (June 17-July 3 2011) because it is a lit­tle early for the tourist sea­son, which meant there would be less peo­ple and crowds at some of the pop­u­lar loca­tions. I also went in June because of the mid­night sun and the 6 or so hours of golden light that it offered me for pho­tog­ra­phy. I went alone because I was plan­ning on shoot­ing pretty much 24 hours a day, hik­ing in the mid­dle of the night, sleep­ing in the car (tiens, ça me rap­pelle quelque-chose… NDA), and just eat­ing when­ever I had free time.

I don’t think any­one I know would want to go on a vaca­tion like that.

I am the type of per­son who does not want to go on vaca­tion and just walk around cities or just lay on the beach all day long. I like to get out and see and expe­ri­ence the coun­tries I visit. Going alone also allowed me to go where I wanted, when I wanted, and stay at loca­tions as long as I wanted with­out hav­ing to worry about the needs of another per­son with me. It allowed me to take my time and get the shots that I was able to get. Pho­tog­ra­phy, espe­cially Time­lapse Pho­tog­ra­phy is not for every­one and is very demand­ing both phys­i­cally and men­tally.

Why plan­ning a time­lapse instead of still photographs ?

I actu­ally planned on doing still pho­tog­ra­phy, time­lapse, and shoot video while I was there, but my main focus was time­lapse and still pho­tog­ra­phy. I would shoot still pho­tographs and video in between time­lapse shots. I came back with 38,000 images total from Ice­land. I wanted to process and get the time­lapse video com­pleted before I went through all of my still images from the trip.

So now that the time­lapse video is com­plete I will be focus­ing on my still images and some of the video I shot while I was there. So stay tuned for some still image gal­leries and maybe a short full motion video.

I won­der Joe… how do you man­age the work­flow & the post-production process for a time­lapse ?
I mean : Do you adjust col­ors, con­trast etc. for sev­eral pho­tos at the same time ? Do you use Light­room before import­ing them in After Effect ?

My work­flow was a lit­tle dif­fer­ent for this video because I was using LRTime­lapse (lrtimelapse.com). LRTime­lapse allows you to adjust raw pro­cess­ing set­tings over a period of time. I would open the time­lapse image sequence in Light­room and process only a few of the images in the time­lapse sequence. For most images I did the usual pro­cess­ing required for raw files such as expo­sure, con­trast, and saturation.

Then I open the image sequence in LRTime­lapse and allow it to make the raw adjust­ments for the rest of the images. When LRTime­lapse was fin­ished I would import the image sequence into Adobe After Effects to com­bine them into a movie file and edit the video. I used the Warp Sta­bi­lizer in After Effects to remove any cam­era shake and move­ment from the wind. Over­all it worked out pretty well, but there are a few things in my work­flow I could improve on for the next video. It took me a lot longer then I expected.

How was the weather ?

The weather was both good and bad dur­ing my trip. When I first arrived I had per­fect weather. It was warm (maybe 60 degrees fahren­heit), the sun was shin­ing bright, and there was not a cloud in the sky. Although this was great weather, it was bad for pho­tog­ra­phy and espe­cially time­lapse. Clouds in the sky show move­ment dur­ing a time­lapse, and with­out any clouds or other mov­ing objects the time­lapse shots I could do were very lim­ited. You can see a few shots in my video where not much is hap­pen­ing other then the cam­era mov­ing. As I moved to the West Fjords the weather started get­ting bet­ter pho­to­graph­i­cally. More clouds appeared in the sky and the sun­sets and sun­rises gave me very good col­ors in the clouds. The North­ern part of the coun­try is where the weather started get­ting bad, but never really bad.

At first the weather was pretty good in the North, a good mix of sun and clouds. After a day or two it started becom­ing over­cast with clouds cov­er­ing most of this sky. This was kind of a dis­ap­point­ment as the sun­set and sun­rise was not that great because of the clouds. I did man­age to get some decent shots though dur­ing peri­ods where there were breaks in the clouds. The east­ern part of the coun­try was very sim­i­lar to the North. Then as I moved to the South the sun started com­ing out again and offered a good mix of sun and clouds. At the end of my trip it started to rain and I was not able to shoot much at all dur­ing that period.

Over­all the weather was very good and offered great shoot­ing con­di­tions. I found the say­ing “If you don’t like the weather in Ice­land then wait 5 min­utes” (Ce fameux adage ne se véri­fie mal­heureuse­ment pas tou­jours ! NDA) to be true because the weather con­di­tions changed so often. Wind was the biggest issue with weather on my trip. There were many loca­tions where it was just too windy to shoot time­lapse or stills. The wind is really bad espe­cially for time­lapse.

Any spe­cial  (good or bad) mem­o­ries about the trip ?

The entire trip was one amaz­ing mem­ory ! Noth­ing bad hap­pened luck­ily. One thing that really stands out is the story behind the ver­ti­cal shot of the Lupin flower field at the 1:00 minute mark in the video. This was a day that had been cloudy, windy, and a lit­tle rainy all day. It was about half way through my trip and I had decided to stay in a hotel. I think I checked into the hotel at around mid­night, took a shower, and then started trans­fer­ring images off my cam­era and onto exter­nal hard dri­ves. It was about 2 am in the morn­ing and I was still trans­fer­ring files to my hard drive when I decided to look out the win­dow. I pulled the cur­tains back to look out­side and I was com­pletely blown away by what I saw.

Some­how the clouds cleared out a lit­tle bit and the most amaz­ing and col­or­ful sun­set I have seen was hap­pen­ing right in front of me inside my hotel room. So I grabbed all my gear and jumped into the car to try to find a loca­tion to shoot at. I drove maybe 15 min­utes down the road and I came upon this amaz­ing field of Lupin flow­ers on the banks of Lagarflot Lake. So I setup a cou­ple time­lapse shots in the Lupid field. This sun­set was one of the most amaz­ing I have ever seen, and I had almost missed it by stay­ing in a hotel for the night.

Any idea of your Next trip ?

I have not thought to much about my next trip, but a friend just came back from Patag­o­nia and some of his images were amaz­ing. So I may research Patag­o­nia more. I would also love to go back to Ice­land dur­ing the win­ter time.

Thanks again for offer­ing such a great eROAD­BOOK, it really really helped me out.

Joe.

» La page Vimeo de Joe se trouve ici : http://vimeo.com/30581015

NEW ! Buy THE ICELANDIC eROAD­BOOK FRENCH and ENGLISH VERSION on this page :

https://international-photographer.com/en/maps-guides/