Last Monday I headed up to the Alabama Hills to try out some time-lapse with some stormy skies. This was my first official attempt at time-lapse after experimenting a bit over the past few weeks. I have been heavily influenced by both Michael Shainblum and Michael Oblinski, and while this attempt isn’t remotely close to what these guys are posting, it was definitely fun to see what I could come up with as a first effort. I’ve also been watching a ton of storm chasing videos lately and even though this was a weenie storm compared to what they are getting in the midwest, at least it was SOMETHING as we typically don’t see anything like this in North Orange County in the Summer months.
Secondly, I’ve never used Adobe Premiere before, and so I had quite a bit of fun combining footage from my GoPro and iPhone in addition to the time-lapse footage from my D750. I’m hoping to post more video content onto my youtube channel in the near future.
Last week, I took off on the first free weekend that I’ve had in a month. I had spent the previous few weeks up to my eyeballs in work between beginning a new school year and various home improvement projects. Somewhere in there I also found time to build a makeshift platform for a bed of sorts in my Prius and I was eager to try it out on a quick two night trip up to the Eastern Sierras in an attempt to grab some Autumn color before it was gone for the year. 
As hard as it might be to believe, there was a time when I wasn’t very excited about shooting the Eastern Sierras. I think I took my first trip up the 395 about 15 years ago as I was trying to find a way to get to the Reno Jazz festival without having to take my students through the snow over Donner Summit, and as I was the one who was driving for 8 hours, all I remembered after I got back home was seemingly hundreds of miles of unbroken, desolate desert. “Bah”, I thought to myself. Next time I’ll stick with the 99 as there are more restaurants and gas stations. Not a cloud in the sky on that trip, and it was hot. Very hot. Pfft. And who are those sad people who live in Bishop or Lone Pine…on PURPOSE?