This short’s timeline is built around one fictional day on the beautiful island of Tenerife in the Canary islands. It starts with the beautiful sunrises above the sea of clouds. Then embark on a journey around the island, visiting the Cacti of the south or the humid forests of the north. As the day unfolds we progressively climb the volcano to witness the magic of sunsets from the crater. There you can experience many twilight phenomena. For one the sun hanging right above the ‘Calima’- this cloud of dust and sand from the Sahara, giving beautiful colors. You can also appreciate the extremely fast twilight with Venus and the thin-crescent moon in the Earthshine setting on the western shore in the zodiacal lights, this strange pyramidal column of light coming from the sunlight being refracted into tiny interplanetary dust particles! From this moment when colors and light are fading away, you are in for quite a show… The second part of this film is the one I wanted to put the emphasis mostly because I’m an astrophotographer.
As I am following my journey into finding innovative sequences and techniques, this trip was the perfect occasion to test out these new skills on a part of the sky I was eager to capture: the center of our home galaxy and its many astronomical treasures. After twilight in April, you can witness the ‘winter part’ of the milky way setting on the south-western shore along with the famous Sirius, Orion constellations and its nebulae (Orion, Running Man, Flame, Horse Head, Rosette). It’s also a good time to peek at Vela, the Gum nebula and the Carina nebula (barely visible here because it is too close to the horizon to get a clean shot). I went to El Roque de Garcia to get a sequence of Orion setting behind the famous rocky pinnacles there to combine the red of the H-alpha emissions and the hues of the lava. Around midnight, you can watch Jupiter rise in the east followed by the head of Scorpius (Pi Sco, Dschubba and Acrab), announcing the rise of the milky way. About 15 minutes later, a very interesting region would lift up: The Antares region. For the first time in timelapse you will be able to gaze at the beautiful colors and shapes of the nebulae of Rho Ophiuchi along with Messier 4, and especially a signature shot of this area photobombed by some red and green airglow, making the yellow, pink and blue gas clouds literally change color! I also really wanted to get the best details of the core, which is rising almost horizontally 30 minutes later. I traveled and hiked to several locations for that and my favorite shot was for sure the core rising behind the telescope hill of Tenerife’s observatory. I used both motionless timelapse to get the red laser pointing at the stars, but also a tracked sequence to increase details and lights. Around 3:15 I switched to my 135mm lens to give you the best detailed view of the galaxy bulge seen on timelapse: the dark dust lanes blocking the light coming from a billion stars of the downtown region, the pinks of the Lagoon nebula and the pink and blue Trifid nebula. You can also watch many other wide angle shots of our home galaxy rising and hanging above the crater at various locations, whether it is above the Caldera, or the white dunes of Minas de San Jose, or even the many basaltic pinnacles of the craters. On top of that I also featured a 50mm shot of the Cygnus region and its nebulae, the Eagle and Shield region, The tail of Scorpius up to Norma with the Cat’s Paw nebula, the War and Peace nebulae, and the Prawn nebula all bathed in airglow. I am really proud and excited to share these unique and novel scenes with you in timelapse, and it sure took a tremendous amount of time, energy, ressources, preparation, work and learning to get to this point. I gathered 1 To of data, around 20 000 pictures, working from 4 pm till 8 am every day for 9 days with a 3 hour drive each day. It also took me an entire week of relentless work to post-process and edit the sequences and the film. All was recorded with the Canon 6D Baader modified, the Sony a7s, the Sony a7rII and a variety of bright lenses ranging from 14mm to 300mm. I used the Lonely Speck Pure Night and Matt Aust Light pollution filters to reduce light pollution and increase details, and also the Vixen Polarie to track the stars and get cleaner shots. Syrp Genie 3 axis system was used for motion control. All post production was made in Lr with the special timelapse plus plugin, Sequence for mac, TLDF, and final production was made in FCPX. I hope you like the movie as much as I liked shooting and processing it and I thank everyone of you for your support. All content is of course copyrighted AMP&F (except sountrack licensed through Musicbed), and no footage can be used in any way without the author’s permission. Please contact me for media and purchase inquiry. Please share and comment if you liked the video and follow me for more videos like this one! More at www.adphotography-online.com.
