nature photography | At Home with Tech

June 29, 2025

From Static to Cinematic: How I Added More Motion to my Sunrise Videos

A sunrise timelapse video can be amazing. But unless you’re running your timelapse for a couple hours, the sun doesn’t move enough to make a big impact in your shot. (Plus, after 30 minutes, it’s not really a sunrise anymore.) So, our star is only half of the equation to generate a beautiful timelapse.

Clouds are the other half. They’re often moving a bit faster, and when sped up by a timelapse, their motion is far more dramatic. Plus, clouds can help provide the deep, reflective coloring distinctive of any great sunrise.

Sure, clouds are technically the supporting players for this opening act, but they can steal the show when they’re in sync with their star.

Conversely, without properly positioned clouds in your shot, a sunrise timelapse can look… boring.

In Search of the Perfect Timelapse of a Summer Sunrise
For the past few years, I’ve been vacationing in southern Maine by the stunning mud flats in Cape Porpoise. And I’ve woken up at the crack of dawn each morning with the hope of capturing a ‘perfect’ sunrise timelapse.

I use my little DJI Osmo Pocket 3 gimbal camera, which is a great tool for timelapses. You just set it up on a tripod, program the timelapse sequence, and then it does all the work. It can even add a little panning motion.

But the odds of success each morning have not been in my favor.

Stormy Sky
Surprisingly, a stormy cloud mass can make for an interesting sunrise timelapse. But then it’s more about the cloud dance. The sunrise becomes a background player, if you can still see it. This happened during my Sunday timelapse this year.

Blobby Sky
Conversely, too many clouds obscuring Sunday’s sunrise eventually created this milky sky blob.

Barren Sky
My Monday timelapse captured a mostly barren sky and a tiny ball of fire. I felt the few wispy clouds just weren’t enough to fill my digital canvas.

Perfect Sky
As I’ve described, the perfect recipe for a spectacular sunrise timelapse is a good balance of clouds moving about (but not in front of) the rising sun. That finally happened on Thursday.

Anyone will always be at the mercy of the weather. So, if I’m able to capture one great cloud-fused sunrise during a vacation, I feel lucky.

Camera Drone in the Sky
Timelapses add motion through time acceleration. But as I’ve mentioned you need a few clouds to accelerate. If you could add motion to your shot without having to rely on clouds, that could be a better way to get the job done.

Last time, I wrote about my new camera drone, the DJI Flip. And yes, I took with me this year on our vacation to test out.

I discovered that a drone beach shot rushing towards the sunrise can be a game changer. It’s not a timelapse, but the drone’s motion through the landscape instantly creates a cinematic video.

No, the clouds don’t move (if there are any), but it doesn’t matter. The dynamic motion zipping across the mud flats blows away any cloud. My camera drone has instantly taken my multi-year sunrise video project to a whole new level. Look at the visual energy it created for my Friday sunrise.

I’m just a novice camera drone operator, but I couldn’t be happier with this clip.

Next time, I’ll share my journey to this successful shot. And believe me, it wasn’t all sunshine.

A Week of Beautiful Sunrises
You may say that every sunrise is perfect. And you’d be right.

The fact that I got to witness multiple beautiful sunrises on vacation should be my headline.

But I’ve also chosen to spend that time practicing my creative.

I know you can never truly capture nature’s perfection. But a sunrise certainly gives you something amazing to point your camera at.

April 6, 2025

Raindrops Shouldn’t Make You Miss Spring’s First Colors

If you don’t mind getting caught in a rain shower, now’s the perfect time to snap some photos of early-spring flowers. Here’s what I saw.

Spring is always a magical time as nature’s colorful energies reemerge. But early spring in New England can be a cold and rainy period. This year in Connecticut is no different.

You can tell that the real spring surge is still at least a week away. But there are plenty signs that the big bloom is already underway. Early spring flowers have their date with destiny. As far as they’re concerned, it’s show time! Lots of rain? No problem.

But that’s not an enticing set up for a photographer to take the camara out for a walk in the neighborhood. That said, you’d be surprised with what you might see. Just don’t forget to wear your raincoat.

That’s exactly what I did, and here’s what I spotted shining through the dreary weather…

Get Close… Really Close
I like to position my camera up close to the spring colors.
(It’s never about zooming in on a flower. You’ve got to really press your lens in.)

Look for Daffodils
They’re among the first flowers to show up and always great to practice on.
To be fair, the sun did peak out to illuminate this moment.

Find the Raindrops
If the opportunity presents itself, I always enjoy composing my shots to include a raindrop or two.

Use your Narrow Depth of Field
I used my old Panasonic Lumix LX-10 in manual focus mode to help me narrow the focus and play with some blur. That’s fun, but also challenging, because flowers don’t exist on a flat plain. So, you need to choose your focus point carefully.

Join the Celebration
There’s nothing wrong with waiting a bit longer until spring is in full force to snap your photos. But I feel these moments of emergence are particularly special and shouldn’t be missed.

It’s been a long winter. Now’s the time to soak in some early color.

August 25, 2024

Consider Adding in Blur when Editing your Photos

Where once you could only find your background blur when you snapped a photo, now you have the luxury to create and position it later when you edit the image. I did that with this photo I took in New Orleans.

Unwanted blur in my photography was always my kryptonite. Getting a clean freeze of any motion drove my creative process. Finding background blur (what the pros call ‘bokeh’) was always a ‘nice to have’ upgrade.

But when Apple added ‘portrait photo’ mode to its iPhone cameras, that commoditized bokeh to the point where anyone could easily create background blur. It’s a nifty software trick that generates a narrower focus point on just the subject in your photo’s foreground.

And this type of software muscle can help you control the focus point in your photos even further. In fact, it gives you an amazing amount of creative control after you’ve snapped your photos.

It’s also a tool for me to fix or hide a problem in plain sight within a photo. Here are a few examples.

Blur Out the Background

My family and I were taking a walk at Calf Pasture Beach in Norwalk recently, and we passed by this tandem bicycle. Something about it appealed to me. So, I pulled out my iPhone and got the shot. It wasn’t in portrait mode. So, my iPhone couldn’t quickly blur out all the people in the background. But it was easy to do that in post using Adobe Lightroom.

Blur Out the Foreground

I didn’t like the person swimming in the foreground of this shot, because I want the viewer to focus on all the people fishing on the jetty. So, I simply adjusted the focus towards the background.

Blur Out an Unwanted Element in the Middle

I snapped this shot while on vacation near Orient, NY. I found the two turkeys crossing the road right in front of a car. (Silly turkeys!) I love the moment, but I didn’t like the license plate detail being so prominent. Sure, there are ways to mask it, but the plate would never look totally natural. Here, I avoided the problem entirely by simply narrowing the photo’s focus point and blurring the entire car.

Direct your Viewer’s Attention

If you’re not just trying to fix a problem, you can be free to get creative and add in some blur to help define what’s most important in the shot.

I liked adding blur to the background of this shot to help you focus more on this tiny rowboat heading out into the enormous ocean.

How to Adjust the Focus Point in your Photos
I add in my photo blur using Adobe Lightroom’s appropriately named ‘Lens Blur’ feature. I prefer using the ‘Cat Eye’ Bokeh setting. Then, you simply use the ‘Focus Range’ slider to adjust. (Note: You don’t have to be working with a ‘portrait’ photo.)

You can also adjust the focus point of an iPhone’s portrait photo. In the Photos app, go into edit mode. Then, simply tap on the subject you want to focus on. (Note: You don’t get the same kind of control as Adobe Lightroom offers.)

Use Blur to Give your Photos more Clarity
Don’t fear the blur. Use it!

Whether you want to add more creative flair to your photography or minimize an annoying element, generating some targeted blur can be just the solution you need.

Category: nature photography

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: