Stepped outside yesterday evening and saw some very unusual undulating clouds. I grabbed my camera bag and tripod and rushed over to Blendon Woods Metro Park. The Goldenrod Trail meadow is full of chin-high wild flowers and has an open view to the south west where the clouds were heading. Time to time lapse.
I setup the camera in manual mode and took a couple test shots. In case it got brighter, and it did, I set the initial exposure to about -.7. Over about 40 minutes the camera took 800 shots three seconds apart. As the clouds opened up there were some great crepuscular rays. When scene brightened to the point where the exposure was +1.3, I stopped the intervalometer. It looked really bright on the view screen, but I probably could have let it go until +2.
The dead tree sticking up on the left is irksome, but I wanted to shoot as wide as possible and center the vanishing point of the cloud movement. This was shot with a Sigma 10-20mm at 10mm f/8 and 1/200 second.
The still shot is a 3EV HDR and was taken shortly after the time lapse with an 8mm Rokinon fish-eye lens.
Click HD to see and hear the best version. The music is Illuminations by Lee Rosevere from freemusicarchive.org