Portage Ice

Ice in the Portage on a "summery" evening.

Automating time-lapse photos with gphoto

Important update, December 2023: This post is quite old and hasn't been updated in more than 10 years. It might or might not be useful or accurate. I've moved to using a camera with a built-in intervalometer.

My article on installing and using gphoto introduced a great piece of software which lets you use a computer to control your camera. The purpose of this article is to show you how I used gphoto to automatically adjust the shutter speed in this time-lapse video of the sun setting behind the Portage Lake Lift Bridge.

Wavy Window

There's this urban legend that glass is actually a liquid. Then again, some people say that old glass was just fundamentally wavy. Either way, this old window looks out into the courtyard at Kloster Irsee, Germany.

Self portrait with ice

Each year in late winter, I try to take a snowshoe hike out to Hunter's Point, an arm of land which separates Copper Harbor from Lake Superior. The north (Superior) side of this rocky point has bedrock outcrops right up to the water, and Superior usually turns them into spectacular ice sculptures.

This year was no exception, and I hiked all the way to the end of Porter's Island (right off the tip of Hunter's Point), where a huge wall of Copper Harbor Conglomerate faces the fury of Lake Superior. Standing high up on this ice-covered wall, I took this photo of the mini icebergs already forming in the warming lake.

Graffiti Heart

Graffiti in an old boiler house at the Quincy Mine. This is the older graffiti, as opposed to the newer stuff which has been in the news lately.

Rust Pools

On the bat cage over an air shaft at the old Petherick Mine, Copper Falls, Michigan.

This "bat cage" is a repurposed vat of some sort, turned on its end and capped with a big cage which allows bats to escape (but makes humans stay out). It was once blue, but those days are quickly coming to an end...

Curving Road

The view from a high point along the Cliffs, looking towards the ghost town of Phoenix. No, not that one.

Blue Ice Abstract

It's been a while -- I've been out photographing, but being slow to upload!

I took my yearly trek out to Hunter's Point in Copper Harbor last weekend. One side of this point faces Lake Superior, and the rocky shore collects some beautiful ice formations. This trough was layered over massive outcrops of conglomerate and basalt. Yes, it really was that color!