We asked the filmmaker, Gavin Heffernan, about his experience creating the video. He shared his passion for parks and photography with us, and sent a few tips for other nature lovers thinking of creating their own time-lapse movies.

NPCA: What inspired you to film in desert national parks?

Gavin: My team and I work in Los Angeles as filmmakers. California’s close proximity to so many parks and wildlife areas gives us an abundance of riches when it comes to filming locations, both for day and night settings.

When shooting the night sky, we’re looking to get as far away from any light pollution as possible. One of our favorite spots is Joshua Tree, which is only about three hours’ drive from us, yet home to jaw-dropping skyscapes and landscapes. The Eureka Dunes in Death Valley are even further away from illuminated civilization, so the results can be even more stunning!

NPCA: Did you encounter anything unexpected or funny in making these videos? 

Gavin: We were surprised by reactions to a “UFO” visible between 1:30 and 1:35 in the video! We added a small note about a very slow circling aircraft in the video description, and the internet exploded with theories from around the globe on what it was.

The aircraft appears to be maneuvering quickly and erratically because of the long-exposure time-lapse. This is misleading. The object is actually moving very, very slowly—one second of video equals about 10 minutes of shooting! Theories about the object have included aliens, experimental aircraft, weather balloons, flying DeLoreans, luck dragons, and more. Several UFO conspiracy sites have picked up the video and made guesses of their own. For more on the subject, here’s a brief Skype interview I did with RightThisMinute.Com.

NPCA: Was creating a time-lapse video the initial goal, or did it evolve to that point? 

Gavin: That was the goal. My team and I had recently completed a popular trilogy of day/night time-lapses called “Joshua Tree Journey,” and we were eager to branch out to more locations. Though we had never been there, the Eureka Dunes in Death Valley had always held a mythical place in our hearts, and with the coming Geminid meteor shower, we knew we had to strike. Even though the temperatures were supposed to drop very low that night, we bought some cold-weather gear and went for it!

NPCA: Do you have tips for creating time-lapse videos? 

I learned a lot from the great community at Vimeo, where incredibly talented users are eager to share their works and techniques. I recommend browsing their excellent time-lapse clips and tutorials, then going out and doing some tests yourself.

Gavin Heffernan’s five quick tips for shooting starscapes and star trails.

1. Aim for nights with the smallest possible moon. At long exposures, the moon is extremely bright and can drown out a dark, starry sky. You can also experiment with different moon phases, as the effect of the moonlight moving over the dark terrain can also be pretty cool. With “Dreamlapse,” we got a perfect setup, as the Geminid peak came at a time when the moon was almost non-existent.
2. Set up your cameras far away from campsites and avoid stray lights. At long exposures (set between 20-30 seconds with a high ISO–I was shooting at 3200), even a tiny light source can interfere with the starscape (and even break the star trails). However, like most of these “rules,” you can break it to achieve artistic effects. For “Dreamlapse” we used a small lantern to illuminate the foreground sand, to replicate the feeling of fire and highlight the mixed color temperatures.
3. Don’t touch the camera in the middle of a shoot! Sometimes even the slightest touch to the lens can shift the frame and ruin the entire effect–or make a nightmare in the editing room. We shoot with two cameras, which keeps us busy enough to avoid the temptation and allows us to get “total coverage.”
4. There are two ways to accomplish star trails. One is to simply take one picture with a very long exposure (like, 60 minutes). However, we use a technique that blends regular star shots (at 25-second exposures) using specialized software known as StarStaX. In either scenario, you need to avoid clouds at all costs! To get the “circle” effect, aim the camera for the North Star, and let the globe’s spin do the work for you! Once in a good position, I recommend shooting until the entire battery is done. On the Canon 5D we use, this is about 3.5 hours.
5. Don’t panic if things look grim! Even if the skies cloud over or conditions worsen, the camera may be seeing something you’re not. It’s seeing the world with a set of superhuman eyes, so let the shot play out–you may be surprised. Some of the best shots in Terje Sorgjerd’s famous “The Mountain” time-lapse came in the middle of a sandstorm, with what Sorgjerd thought was zero visibility! In our Joshua Tree Storm video, we had a similar storm roll over and dampen our hopes, but we kept shooting and ended up getting amazing stuff that we never would have imagined. So stick with it and crack a beer. You’re in for the long haul, and you never know what you’re gonna get. Maybe even a UFO!

See more of Gavin’s work in Sunchaser’s “Joshua Tree Journey” series:

• Part One: http://vimeo.com/15437000
• Part Two: http://vimeo.com/37587197
• Part Three (Storm): http://vimeo.com/53822527

Follow Gavin on Twitter: @GavinHeffernan.
Check out Sunchaser Pictures on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SunchaserPicturesPage

But for freelance Alaskan photographer Patrick Endres, days of preparation may go into a single click of the shutter like this one—including hours and hours of trekking through wilderness with a heavy pack of gear, analyzing the light patterns, studying local wildlife, perching high and low for the best angles, and experimenting with different lenses, speeds, and focal points. Fortunately, when you pair Alaska’s vast landscapes and abundant wildlife with patience and skill, the result is a steady stream of spectacular shots like this one, which Endres documents at http://www.alaskaphotographyblog.com.

Alaska is home to 54 million acres of national park land—two thirds of the acreage of the entire national park system, with more bears and moose and staggering mountain ranges and northern lights than you’ll find anywhere else in the States. If you want to head north with your camera, check out Endres’s excellent tips on capturing wildlife photos—complete with a peek into his gear bag. They’re a great complement to our own Scott Kirkwood’s photo tips, but specialized for the Land of the Midnight Sun. (And if you’re never gonna take photos in Alaska, click anyway to see the unbelievably cute short-eared owl about a third of the way down the page. No, really. Just go take a look.)

Of course, there’s always a wrong way to do it, too. For an alternate approach, check out this photographer who captured images of a bear wrecking his rented photography gear in Yellowstone!

-Jennifer Errick, Editor, Online Communications

Bringing your camera on a park trip? Before you pack your bags, read these tips from the editors of National Parks Magazine, who offer ways to add interest and variety to your photographs. Thousands of people capture the same iconic landscapes and monuments over and over again in their travel pictures—here’s how to make your shots stand out.

1. Take more photos around sunrise or sunset. Nearly all of the landscape and wildlife photos you see in magazines are taken at these hours, when the light is more subtle, the colors more saturated, and wildlife tend to be more active. You should certainly carry your camera everywhere, but the 30 minutes before and after sunrise and sunset are called “the golden hour” for a good reason.

2. Find a central focal point. Whether it’s an animal, a single tree, a fence line, a curve in the road, a mountain pass, or a red bus in Glacier, find something to draw the reader’s eye immediately (see the Washington Monument photo above). Adding the human element will also make the landscape more interesting, e.g., a hiker in the distance, or a silhouette on a mountain’s summit.

3. Follow the “rule of thirds.” The most common way to take a photo is to put your subject smack-dab in the middle of the frame. But it’s pretty boring. Try to mentally picture a grid in your viewfinder, and divide the screen into thirds vertically and horizontally, then place your subject in one of those four intersections to the left and right of center. It adds drama to an image, and reels in viewers by throwing off their expectations.

4. Before pushing the button, check every part of the frame. If there’s a tent pole in the bottom right corner or a random tree twig on the left, it will distract viewers, ruining the impact. Everything in the image should be there because you want it to be there. Zoom in or out, move a step to the left, climb up a hill, or put the camera a little lower to produce a “clean” image.

5. Change your viewpoint. Shoot from the ground rather than at eye level. Climb to a point where there are no other photographers, rather than shooting from the main tourist platform where everyone else is standing. Use a tripod and play with longer shutter speeds to generate different effects. Just try to do something that hasn’t been done before, and have fun experimenting—you can always hit the “delete” button later.

6. Play with depth of field. You’ll notice some photographs are sharp throughout, but others blur out portions of the background so that the foreground stands out, e.g., portraits or wildlife photos, where you want the subject to really “pop.” More expensive cameras facilitate this with interchangeable lenses with bigger apertures, but you can even use your point-and-shoot camera to the same effect by stepping back from your subject and zooming way in.

7. Subscribe to photography magazines like Popular Photography and Outdoor Photographer. It’s like getting a photography class delivered to your mailbox every month, for $10 a year.

8. Subscribe to magazines that are packed with great photos, to see what the pros are doing. Landscapes and wildlife are featured prominently in Audubon, National Geographic, National Geographic Traveler, National Parks, The Nature Conservancy, Outside, and Sunset. Magazine subscriptions are so inexpensive, it’s affordable to get four or five of the best ones every month.

9. Take a class. Find continuing-education courses offered through high schools or community centers. Talk to the local photography store and ask if they teach classes or know of any resources.

10. Go online. Join a photo community like Flickr, Shutterfly, or ZenFolio. Post your images and get feedback from other photographers. Visit stock sites like GettyImages.com and AuroraPhotos.com to see what the pros are doing. Google some of the best nature photographers for inspiration, like Ian Shive (who even has his own iPhone app), Matthew Turley, Marc and David Muench, Joel Sartore, Thomas Mangelsen, Justin Bailie, and George H.H. Huey.

11. Shoot in one locale again and again, whether it’s a place close to home or one or two parks you visit often. The more you go to one location, the more you’ll understand the best lighting situations and the places where wildlife gather, and you’ll experience more seasonal variations, allowing you to capture weather extremes like rain, clouds, thunderstorms, and snow.

12. Are you an experienced photographer with a serious digital SLR? Invest in a split neutral-density (ND) filter, which is darker at the top and clear at the bottom—basically ‘sunglasses’ for your camera. Most landscape shots feature a light sky and a dark foreground, but cameras can only expose for one or the other, which often turns the sky white rather than blue. A filter will correct this, showing the sky as it really is. (You could also take multiple images and use Photoshop to combine the images or turn the sky blue, but this takes more time, and won’t produce the best images.)

13. Do something different. National parks are SO widely photographed and have been for so many years that 99 percent of the photos you’re about to take have already been taken. Rather than limit yourself to landscapes, take some close-ups. Capture the smaller moments that others overlook. Tell a story. Show the human connection to the landscape by including people in the images, but also boats or kayaks docked at a lakeshore, postcards tacked to the wall, dirty hiking boots sitting by a door…

14. Keep shooting. The best pros have been at this for at least five to ten years, some as long as 30 or 40 years. Reading books, subscribing to magazines, and taking classes is an enormous help, but the best thing to do is get out there and shoot some more.

These tips were adapted from NPCA’s Park-Pak, a travel information kit we offer as part of our member benefits.