Monday, July 29, 2019

Alaska Time-lapse Video

During my last post I had mentioned that I had been working on putting together a video of some time-lapse that I had taken on my trip in Alaska.  I finally put them together and got them uploaded.  It took much longer than anticipated, but I am very happy with the result.

Ultimately, I decided that I should not be posting videos on my person account.  So I created a YouTube brand account where I could post everything related to my wildlife photography blog.  I decided to keep the name the same as my blog: Aaron Smith Wildlife Photography.  I had to re-upload my previous video to the new account and upload the new one as well.  From now on I will post all my videos on the new channel.


The new video is a compilation of time-lapses that I took on the cruise ship in Alaska.  I had taken a few time-lapse sequences in the evenings when we were leaving port cities.  Because it was a moving ship, they seem much faster than the previous video I had taken.  You can also see when the ship speed was changing and also some movement up and down due wave action.  So, the time-lapse's were very different than my previous time-lapse when the camera was completely still.

I had planned on doing some wildlife photography during last weekend but I did not really get many photographs.  Then this week came and went like a whirlwind, and I took a trip to Maryland to see my sister.  So I have not had to much time to photograph anything.  But while I was in Maryland I did visit a historic gardens area and there were more butterflies their than I have ever seen in one place.  I did not have a lot of time once we arrived but I am hopeful that I captured a few good shots.  There were also a lot of beautiful flowers and plenty of bees.  I am hoping to post more about those photographs once I get a chance to look them over on my computer.

I hope everyone enjoys the time-lapse sequences from my trip.  Until Next Time.             

Monday, July 15, 2019

Local Wildlife and Alaska Trip Continued



Over the last week or so, I have not taken too many new photographs. I have spent a lot of my free time fishing with my brother, and I have also been working on going through more photographs and videos from my Alaska trip. I’m hoping that I will be able to put out the time lapse videos in the next post. I am trying something new with them and I have never edited videos before. I have two time lapse videos that I took on the cruise. They are different then the first one I did because I was on a moving boat during these. So there was a lot more motion because of the movement of the boat. But I’m hoping they will be interesting enough.

On several occasions I took my camera with me when I was fishing, but I only managed to take about 100 photographs during those trips. I did manage to photograph a rabbit the one night, but it was getting quite dark. The photograph has a lot of noise in it, but I still wanted to post it. I also spent some time trying my luck at macro photography. I was using my Canon 6d mark ii with my fathers Tamron 90mm macro lens. I did struggle some to get parts of the tiny critters in focus. The auto focus on the lens can be a bit weird, and it does not always want to work the way you would hope. So I used a lot of manual focus towards the end of my macro session. I did manage a couple of photographs. I did like the photograph I managed of a bumble bee, and I also had some luck with dragonflies.


My plan is to spend some time this weekend out and trying to get some wildlife photographs. I will most likely head out to the Bashakill Wildlife Management Area or some other local areas. Hopefully I will be able to get there around the time when the sun is coming up. I would love to photograph wildlife in some great lighting. Hopefully the weather will cooperate.
During the last week I started to go through the pictures I captured on my cell phone during my Alaska trip. I took a lot of photographs on my iPhone, and I figured some would be good. I know the mega pixel count is lower but it was really the only chance I had to capture some of the areas. Because almost all the photographs were taken on the buses, trains, planes, and boats through the windows. So I had to shoot through glass and I figured my cell phone would be easier to press up against the glass to try and minimize glare. I did manage to catch some amazing scenery, so I wanted to share them. So all the pictures below were taken with my iPhone.











I hope everyone enjoys the photographs. Until next time.