The new controller has opened up some interesting opportunities. Today I did some interesting work by putting a tripod head on an 11′ light stand, and then standing on the roof of the Hobart Building and taking various straightforward and somewhat crazy shots.

The straightforward stuff was to do close up shots of the moulding around the top of the penthouse, which is about 12′ or so above the walking surface of the roof (and a good 250 feet above Market Street below). Here’s what I got:

This is on the west face of the building, so it’s seen wind about every day for 93 years. Now, if you’ve been reading carefully, you’ll notice that this is the west face, and there’s highlights on it? There’s a building right across the street that reflects sunlight back onto the west face of a lot of the buildings.

This one is right in the same area, but gives you a better idea of where this all is. For a better idea of where I was standing, here’s the panorama I shot:

Okay, that was all easy and safe– then comes the extreme stuff– this whole series was inspired by an article about Peter B Kaplan I read. I’m certainly not as talented as he is, but here’s my first attempts:

Not as foggy as some 4ths, but it gave a rather unique look to the fireworks this year. Managed to get some awesome shots of it. These I’m releasing as both 12×18 prints and 20×30 prints (they’re that good). You can pick them up over on my etsy shop.

I’m happy to announce that I’ve begun selling prints on Etsy.  Only a few are up right now, but more will be coming over the next few weeks.  If there’s something you’ve seen on the blog that you want a print of, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.  Click here for the store.

Alameda 4th of July Parade Time Lapse from Ben Peoples on Vimeo.

Playing with my new timer controller prototype, I shot a time lapse video with my DSLR of the Alameda 4th of July Parade. Rather than shoot RAW or even full res, these were shot at 1500×1000 and then cropped and scaled to the 1280×720 size. Stitched together into the movie in iMovie, I was then able to export it as a reasonably small video for internet use. It’s also available at full quality around 500MB if you’re interested, and of course I have all the stills if someone wants those.

Happy Fourth Everyone!