USA – MatP's view of the world

2019-01-172019-01-21

HDR sunset at Horseshoe Bend

The Horseshoe Bend is an incredible place to see a sunset. When you arrive at the right time, a front row “seat” may still be available. Though nowadays literally crowds are streaming to the canyon rim to see the Horseshoe Bend. But be aware of the steep drop right next to you! The 300m straight down are nothing for the faint at heart. And you sure wont want to drop anything as it would just be lost forever.

Now if you are careful and ensure that spectators wont ruin your shots, you may set up the camera quite close to the edge. I took my turn and created a HDR sequence (5 photos per frame) of the sun descending behind the horizon:

2017-10-052018-05-03

Road Trip USA 2017 – timelapse

I condensed in this video the first 18 days on the road to a 5 minute movie. A lot of countryside besides the roads may be seen, but the video gives just a hint of all the beauty lying beyond, when you get out of the car an make a few paces. So, get out of the car and enjoy the places you would otherwise rush by 😉

The following map (generated in google maps with a few marker points along the route; the full path would exceed the maximum allowed waypoints) shows the coarse path we went:

About the video:
– 4K action cam attached to the upper right corner of the windscreen with a suction cup mount
– camera captured a still image every 3 seconds
– covering 19 days (18 on the road)
– almost 80 hours driving
– more than 3500 miles covered in the video
– 94500 images in 257GB data

2017-09-222018-05-03

Monument Valley from night to day

In the night of 2017-08-14 I created a timelapse with the milky way travelling above Monument Valley. Clouds and the crescent moon did interfere the beautiful sight of the millions of stars above one of the most impressive sights in the US. On the other hand, an amazing sunrise compensated for the second half of the night 🙂

2017-09-152018-02-27

Roadtrip USA 2017

Holidays… Usually I like to go on holidays with minimum amount of planning (ahead). Though this time, planning started more than 6 months prior to departure. The reason for the long planning phase was the total solar eclipse of 2017 (also cited as “The Great American Eclipse”). Choosing the right place and combining the eclipse day with sight seeing, adventure, photography opportunities, etc. took quite some time.

The final tour plan consisted of 4 major themes:

Route 66 (from LA to New Mexico)
National Parks (escpecially Yellowstone)
Solar Eclipse in Wind River park
Recreation in Florida

Including Florida, we made a tour of impressive 5000 miles, 6 National Parks in 10 states. (If you are interrested in our tour detailes, drop me a message)

Here is a small set of photos, representing the wonderful places we’ve been to. (For the solar eclipse photos, see the previous post)

2017-08-212018-02-27

Total solar eclipse 2017 from Riverton, Wyoming

All the effort to travel around the world for just a few images… Well, it was really a challenge to carry the 60+kg equippment to Riverton, Wyoming. It was even more challenging to try to last-minute fix an error in my computer controlled camera trigger system. And last but not least, 2 cameras stopped capturing during totality… It would have been a total disappointment, if…

… if my best camera / lens combination I had set up wouldn’t have done the following 🙂
See for yourself, why I am absolutely happy: