I do like drifting. But the real reason I still go to these events has little to do with the cars, or the driving. To Me, camping is the good life. Out under the stars, the sounds of wind, sweeping through the trees, the lack of sirens, which never stop at home in the city. Race tracks aren’t exactly what most people think of when You say camping, but they’re a great alternative to the many popular parks, which are often booked full, or only offer a gravel parking lot full of other people and claim it’s a camp site… Usa International Raceway has, for many years, been My go to camping track. I first pitched a tent here in 2006 and have been happy to do so at least once a year since. It’s not a secluded hike in camp, nor is there a waterfall to soothe the senses. Though it is pretty sweet waking up to wailing engines and screaming tires.
Naturally, I took the time to shoot the stars on both nights this Final Bout weekend. This after all, is what I love to do most… Don’t mind the terrible video quality, tis the way of things when You get free hosting. If You watch it on Vimeo’s site, it will look a little bit better. Just don’t expect it to be great.
I would like to point out how lucky we were, or how lucky this guy was anyways. To survive without a fiery melt down. There was once a Hyundai Genesis that went up in flames and burned til it was no more than a pile of metal at this track. Though it would’ve made great pictures to see this s14 burn, I’m happy it didn’t. Please note, the flamable liquid flowing from behind the door for the gas cap!
Though My goal for the weekend was to capture as much carnage as possible, I didn’t get any. I even missed Tim slamming his car in to the back of Fish. Which looks to have ended the life of Tim’s s13 and delt a fair amount of damage to Fish’s freshly built Boss Datsun Camaro Rocket Mustang Silvia Bunny, or whatever the hell You’d call it. And so, in the absence of destruction of whole cars, here are a few more views of tires being ravaged by horsepower and tarmac. Among other things.
September 11, 2015 | Categories: Automotive Photography, Time Lapse, Videos | Tags: 325i, 350z, action, ae86, animal style, awesome, bmw, bout, breaking, burning rubber, camping, canada, canadian, canadians, car, cars, celica, chaser, clouds, cloudy, club sandwich street team, clubfr, continent, corola, corolla, cressida, cresta, drift, drift farm, drifting, essense, event, faction motorsports, fd, final, finalbout, fun, glow, grip gambler, gts, hachi, haze, high fade, holiday, jzx, kouki, labor day, lapse, lexus, light trails, lights, m3, mark iii, mazda, middle america, midwest, moon lighter, murica, nerp, night, nissan, north america, on track, picture, pictures, pit lane, pits, proceed, race track, risky devil, rural views, rx7, s13, s14, sc300, shadynasty, shawano, shots, sky, skyline, smoke, soarer, star, stars, startrails, supra, tandem, team, team breaking, team proceed, tfworks, time, timelapse, tire, tire slayers, toyota, track, trails, urban glow, usa international raceway, usair, views, weekend, wisconsin, zenki | Leave a comment
A couple of months ago, I met up with Jeff Prose and Bill Kuhn. They’re a pair of photography buffs that I met on Instagram. We had no designated places to aim our cameras and ended up wandering around Saint Paul for half the day. We met up in lower town, walked and snapped pictures a little bit. Then opted visit a few different spots, in search of pretty pictures..
August 24, 2015 | Categories: Photography | Tags: afternoon, andor, andorius, bridge, bridges, buidlings, burial mounds park, casual, cathedral, cities, city, concrete, downtown, dusk, evening, eye, glow, highbridge, hill, image, images, landmarks, light trails, lights, long exposure, longexpo, lowertown, midwest, minnesota, mn, park, paul, paul's, photo, photograph, photos, picture, pictures, picturesque, pigs, pigseye, pillar, pillars, saint paul, scenic, shoot, shot, shots, skyline, st, stone, sun, sun light, sunset, twin, twincities, under the bridge, urban, view, views, walk, walk around | Leave a comment
August 16, 2015 | Categories: Photography | Tags: andor, andorblogs, andorius, bridge, bridges, buildings, capitol, cars, city, downtown, evening, eye, freeway, glow, highway, i94, light, lighttrails, long exposure, longexpo, midwest, minnesota, motion, night, nights, photo, photographer, photos, pic, picture, pictures, pigs, pigseye, saint paul, skyline, still motion, traffic, trails, twin cities, urban, views | Leave a comment
May 5, 2015 | Categories: Photography | Tags: 2015, 35e, buildingsbridge, cars, church, city, cityviews, downtown, evening, exposure, freeway, highway, i94, in, infrastructure, interchange, junction, light, light trails, lights, lighttrails, line, long, long expo, long exposure, longexpo, longexposure, metro, middle america, midwest, minnesota, mn, night, of, photo, photograph, photographer, photos, pic, picture, pictures, pig's eye, pix, post, saint paul, shot, shots, sky, skyline, spring, st paul, traffic, trails, twin cities, twincities, urban | Leave a comment
Over the winter, I went on a bit of a sunset time-lapsing spree. I am hoping to continue this trend, but have been kind of lazy about finding nice places to shoot from. The overlook on the north end of Burial Mounds Park, here in Pig’s Eye(the original name of Saint Paul, MN) has been My go to spot thus far. It’s a seriously awesome view of My home town, but I’m left feeling the need to change up the scenery..
Well, here’s another sunset from said location, taken in late March. I was shooting a pretty good sequence, but stopped it at an awkward spot, in order to shoot the second sequence. Which turned out to be pretty magical, less the single frame with an airplane in the foreground. =\ Suppose that’s the price You pay for shooting through the landing path of a small airport. Above, is a layered image. Using StarStax to merge every 25th picture from the second time lapse. Below are the first and last shots from the day. If You hit the “HD” button on the media player and watch it on vimeo’s site, it looks slightly better…
May 4, 2015 | Categories: Photography, Time Lapse | Tags: afterglow, andor, andorius, bold, capitol, city, cloudporn, clouds, colors, downtown, edit, epic, evening, glow, hometown, image stack, lens flare, light beams, light trails, lights, long exposure, longexpo, march, minnesota, mn, night, photo, photos, picture, pictures, pig's eye, pigseye, rays, saint paul, setting, shoot, shot, shots, silhouette, sky, skyline, skyporn, sol, spring, st paul, st.p, starstax, still motion, sun, sunset, time lapse, timelapse, tl, twin cities, urban, view | Leave a comment
March 22, 2015 | Categories: Photography, Time Lapse | Tags: 2015, beautiful, bridge, bridges, canon, city, clip, cloud, clouds, colorful, colors, contrast, downtown, foreground, glow, handheld, landscape, lapse, march, metro, minnesota, mississippi river, mn, nature, photo, photography, photos, picture, pictures, power lines, pretty, river, saint paul, scenery, sequence, setting, shot, shots, silhouette, silhouetted, skies, sky, skyline, sring, st paul, st. pual, sun, sun set, sunset, sunsets, tamron, time, timelapse, tree, tripod, twin cities, twincities, urban, vid, video, vivid, winter | Leave a comment
February 8, 2015 | Categories: Photography | Tags: above, andor, andorius, below, braving the cold, bridge, cars, city, downtown, fence, freeway, glow, highway, i94, interstate, light trails, lights, long exposure, looking through, minneapolis, minnesota, mississippi river, night, night time, pattern, photo, photos, pics, picture, pictures, railing, shot, shots, skyline, street lights, traffic, trees, twin cities, urban, winter | Leave a comment
Yep, I made a video! There’s a first time for everything… The first three quarters took Me about 2 hours to patch together, from clips made after each time I shot a sequence. The song took a couple days of semi-inspired attention. The last segment of the video however, took 3 weeks to edit. Mostly because I used StarStax to make 5 versions of the sequences. Then, I had to pluck the right spots from those in small chunks, reverse the numbering order on half of them, make videos of each of those sections, then finally patch them all together and time them to the music. The result? Dancing stars! Watch through the end and see what I am on about..
As with all the vids on this blog, it is hosted for free by Vimeo. So it is of low image quality, watching it on their site does look slightly better than watching it here… So sad, because it looks awesome in 4K! Vimeo also neglected to keep the music synced with the video! :( No wonder I refuse to pay them a penny!
December 29, 2014 | Categories: Photography, Time Lapse | Tags: andor, andorius, awesome, beautiful, buildings, capitol, check it out, cities, city, clip, clips, cloud, clouds, commute, construction, country, countryside, crane, cranes, dark, downtown, eclipse, edit, edited, evening, film, forest, freeway, good, grass, highway, horizon, hosted, lake, lapse, lapsing, luna, minneapolis, minnesota, mn, moon, motion, nature, night, original, park, parking lot, pit lane, pond, race track, road, roof top, rooftop, saint paul, scenic, segment, sequence, sequences, skies, sky, skyline, star, star trails, stars, startrails, state park, state parks, street, sun, superior, the heavens, time, time lapse, timelapse, town, traffic, tree, trees, twin cities, urban, vid, video, videos, vids, wilderness | Leave a comment
December 29, 2014 | Categories: Photography | Tags: 35e, angular, architecture, art museum, bridge, building, campus, cities, city, cityscape, cityscapes, cloudy, contrast, dark, downtown, evening, fog, foggy, frank gehry, freeway, gehry, glow, haze, highway, i94, icon, iconic, image, junction, landscape, light, lights, long exposure, metal, metro, minn, minneapolis, minnesota, mist, misty, mn, mpls, museum, night, nights, northern, photo, photography, photos, picture, pictures, reflection, saint paul, scenic, skyline, skyscraper, skyscrapers, stairs, stairway, steps, structure, style, traffic, train, transit, twin cities, u of m, university, uofm, urban, view, walk, wander, washington ave, weisman | Leave a comment
December 16, 2014 | Categories: Photography | Tags: bird house, bridge, bridges, building, buildings, city, cityscape, cloudy, dam, damm, downtown, drain, fixture, floating, flowing, flows, focus, fog, foggy, grate, haze, ice, iceburg, iceburgs, iced, icey, icy, iron, island, light, lights, main, metal, minn, minneapolis, minnesota, mississippi, mist, misty, mn, mpls, nicollet, path, photograph, photographer, photographs, photography, pic, pics, picture, pictures, pole, river, saint anthony, sky, skyline, skyscraper, skyscrapers, smoke, snow, span, stack, stacks, stairs, steam, steps, stone arch, town, truss, twin cities, urban, view, walkway | Leave a comment
December 14, 2014 | Categories: Photography | Tags: 94, bridge, bridges, bright, buildings, cities, city, cityscape, downtown, downtowns, exhaust, freeway, glow, highway, i94, image, images, interstate, landscape, light, light trails, lights, lighttrails, lit, long exposure, longexposure, minn, minneapolis, minneapple, minnesota, minnesotan, mississippi, mn, mpls, night, nights, pair, photograph, photography, picture, pictures, pig's eye, pigseye, places, reflection, river, saint paul, scape, shot, shots, skyline, skyscaper, skyscrapers, st paul, st.p, stp, street, streets, traffic, trails, twin, twincities, two, urban, view, views | Leave a comment
Saint Paul, Minnesota. Downtown, as seen from the overlook, above Univeristy Ave, next to the state capitol building. This 15 second time lapse took about 30 minutes to shoot.
October 20, 2014 | Categories: Photography, Time Lapse | Tags: 2014, 24mm 1.4l ii, animated, blue, buildings, canon 6d, cities, city, cloud, clouds, downtown, evening, lapse, luna, minnesota, mn, moon, motion, moving, october, photography, pig's eye, pigseye, polarizer, river valley, saint paul, scenery, sky, skyline, skyscraper, skyscrapers, st paul, time, timelapse, trains, twin, twincities, urban | Leave a comment
Eleven years in the making. ClubFR has hosted their 50th Drift Day Midwest event. It was a kind of odd event. The roster was long and there were a lot of new faces out this time around. Possibly due to the popularity of Final Bout last month, also hosted at this track, by ClubFR. Whatever the reason, the number of drivers made for a pretty constant flow of drifting through out the day. I however stayed up the night before and did some photo shooting on the track. I have some more time lapses to put together and these could benefit from some editing, but here is a hasty slap job of what I was capturing that night. Apologies for the low quality of Vimeo’s free accounts, it looks a little better if You watch it on their site instead of mine, but not much..
These guys even had the great idea of printing up shirts, with a list of all 50 events. Well, DD43 is not there and they kind of failed, by not putting check boxes for people to mark the events they attended. Even so, it’s a great t-shirt, that I will enjoy having for years to come. I think these two will enjoy theirs as well.
On sunday morning, there was a quick drivers meeting and things got rolling. It was sunny and bright and I had forgotten to pack a polarizer, or neutral density filter. I tried My best to shoot things dark and spent a fair amount of time working My way around the track, to be on the sunny side of the action. It worked out, sometimes..
The day went along pretty well. There were a few people that got beached off track and somebody did spill a fair amount of oil on the advanced coarse, but that didn’t hold things up very much. After a couple hours of running, there was a short break and the traditional skateboard race was held. The winners actually got prizes too!
To add to the charm of this event, there were two big give-aways and a raffle. All three awarded the same prize, a season pass for the ClubFR 2015 drift season. Award number one, was fittingly given to Ben, a true ‘OG’ in the midwest drift scene. Considering he was at the first one of their events, as well as the majority of all subsequent events, it’s only fitting that free driver’s admission for a season goes his way. The second season pass handed out was the raffle. Every driver at the event that day, had their names written on paper and thrown in a hat. The winner? Jake! Who’s car is pictured at the very top of this post, among other places here. The last season pass, was not given to Billy Lemke, but instead to his wife, for putting up with all of the drifting antics and also as a wedding gift…
After those short festivities, the track went hot again and stayed that way all afternoon. There were a lot of people that were clearly very new to drifting, but there were some good drivers too. It has been a while since a drift day has drawn out such variety of skill levels. Recent years have had a sharp contrast of good/decent drivers and ameteur/beginner drivers. There was a distinct middle group that was kind of fun to watch at DD50. The bright sun eventually gave way to some clouds, I was struggling a bit to keep up with the constantly changing light all day. I did wander around and snap bunches of pictures until it was time to head back to Minnesota though.
October 15, 2014 | Categories: Automotive Photography, Random Thoughts, Time Lapse | Tags: 1jz, 240sx, 2jz, 350z, 86, advanced, ameteur, angle, award, awards, beater, bmw, burning, carolla, club sandwich, coarse, cornering, corners, corolla, coverage, cresida, cressida, dirty love, e30, eight six, fc, fd, footage, giant check, give away, grip gambler, gts, hachi, hills, hokusai, image, images, img, intermediate, is250, is300, jdm, kit, kitted, kouki, lapse, layout, lexus, lights, mazda, media, miata, model, mx-5, nissan, photo, photography, photos, pics, picture, pictures, prizes, proceed, race, raffle, rear, rims, risky devil, road, rollercoaster of love, rubber, rx7, s13, s14, sc300, shawano, shirt, shirts, shredding, sideways, sil-eighty, sileighty, silvia, skate, skateboard, skill, skyline, slammed, slide, sliding, smoke, solo, spoiler, subaru, swap, tandem, team, time, timelapse, tire, toyota, track, tracker, traffic, turn, turns, usa international raceway, usdm, v8, view, wheels, wing, wisconsin, z, zenki | Leave a comment
As many of You know, there was a total lunar eclipse this morning. I wandered out of the house at 3:30am to find a good spot to shoot it from. Not far from home, I set up My tripod, dialed in the intervalometer and captured some of the event in the sky, among other things. This shot, is the first time I’ve ever done image stacking. Needs some improvement. I know..
That should give You a rough idea of what some of this video looks like. I did a much wider time lapse, consisting of 160, 15 second exposures, which were taken every 18 seconds. I then repositioned and zoomed in, taking 400 shots, 3 seconds apart, with a closer view of the neighboring city’s skyline. As the night becomes day, one can see the massive cranes, constructing the new Vikings stadium on the left side of downtown. Which is impressive, considering they are about seven miles away. The sun came up as the moon was setting, which ended up bleaching out the shot just before Luna dropped out of view. Vimeo’s free accounts don’t give a very good image quality, but it does look a little better if You watch it on their site, instead of mine. :(
October 8, 2014 | Categories: Photography, Time Lapse | Tags: 2x multiplier, 3am, 5am, 6am, 6d, 70-200mm 2.8, animated, animation, blood, bright, canon, city, clip, crane, cranes, dark, day, daylight, dock, downtown, eclipse, full, glowing, hub, industry, lapse, lights, lines, luna, lunar, midway, midwest, minn, minneapolis, minnesota, mn, moon, moonset, morning, mpls, night, october, orbit, penumbra, photo, photographer, photos, pictures, power line, power lines, rail, scenic, set, setting, shadow, shots, sigma, sky, skyline, skyscraper, skyscrapers, stack, stacked, still, telephoto, time, timelapse, total, tower, traffic, train, trains, umbra, video, view, waning, waxing, zoom | Leave a comment
I went out to shoot some time lapse stuff with My friend Thai Phan Quang. We ended up on the walking bridge over 35W, a few bocks south of the I94 junction again. I am trying to stockpile a bunch of different time lapse series so I can eventually make a video which contains nothing but time lapsed segments. This is a single, 1500 image sequence from rush hour today. It lasts a little longer than 45 seconds. I was hoping for more cloud activity, but since there was very little, it seemed right to frame things just above the tallest buildings. The music is by My big Brother’s band: Heiruspecs. The song is ‘Snapshot’ off of their most recent album, Night Falls.
After shooting that sequence, I did some small perspective changes and adjustments. Going for a slightly different feel, by blurring the traffic a little bit. Then shot this twelve second set, consisting of 500 images. Hope You enjoy this silent, short one. Not in HD, because I don’t pay Vimeo and am limited to one, high quality upload per week.
August 12, 2014 | Categories: Photography, Random Thoughts | Tags: 17-50mm 2.8, 30fps, 35w, 480p, 720p, afternoon, andor, andorblogs, animate, animated, animation, bridge, bridges, buildings, canon, capture, capturing, cars, city, commute, congestion, day, daylight, daytime, definition, down town, downtown, evening, film, flow, franklin, freeway, gridlock, hd, heiruspecs, highway, hour, junction, lane, lanes, lapse, light, link, links, long, metro, metropolis, metropolitan, midwest, minn, minneapolis, minnesota, mn, motion, moving, mpls, pair, photo, photographic, photography, photos, quality, resolution, road, roads, rush, rush hour, scenery, sequence, set, sky scraper, skyline, skyscraper, skyscrapers, slow, snapshot, south minneapolis, stream, street, streets, summer, sunny, system, t4i, tamron, time, timelapse, town, traffic, trucks, twin cities, twincities, two, urban, vid, video, vids, view, vimeo | Leave a comment
July 5, 2014 | Categories: Photography | Tags: 17-50mm, 70-200mm, barge, barges, beetle, bench, bend, bends, bluff, bluffs, boat, brick, bugs, building, buildings, burial, camera, canon, capitol, car, city, cityscape, classic, color, daisies, distance, downtown, dragonfly, east side, f2.8, field, flower, flowers, flowing, foreground, fountain, high ground, hike, hydrant, image, images, insect, insects, invasive, japanese, landscape, lens, lenses, lime stone, limestone, lush, macro, marlin, menace, middle america, midwest, minn, minneapolis, minnesota, mississippi, mn, mounds, mpls, park, path, paved, pavement, photo, photographer, photography, photos, picture, pictures, pigseye, pink, point, portrait, purple, Rambler, recreation, red, river, saint paul, scene, scenery, scraper, scrapers, sculpture, shade, sigma, sky, skyline, skyscrapers, st paul, state, statue, stp, t4i, tamron, tc, telephoto, trail, transparent, tree, trees, tug, tug boat, twin cities, twincities, two cities, urban, vantage, view, walk, walking, wander, wild roses, wings | Leave a comment
Last night, I went out with a friend who is in to time lapse photography. Which basically means You will be sitting in one place for a couple of hours. So, I set up My tripod and proceeded to take a bunch of long exposures. These pictures captured something more than just the lights of buildings and cars passing by. The lights of the vehicles revealed the vibration of the bridge upon which we stood. That bridge being a walk-way, maybe eight feet wide, spanning the ten lanes of traffic on I-35W, just south of the I-94 junction. It was pretty windy early on, but it was the semi trucks that were causing the bulk of the motion. You can see in the cropped image below, the effect of a large vehicle passing underneath. Head lights apear as if the highway was a row of small waves, with increased hight when a large truck goes by.
Despite the constant vibration and the rain early on, I came through with some decent shots of downtown Minneapolis. They are not a crisp as I would like, but the texture added to the streaking lights is kind of nice. A neutral density filter, which I usually do these kind of shots with, was not involved. I will try that spot again sometime, but clearly a more stable position to do long exposure shots with traffic and the city skyline is more desirable. This is a great vantage point though, there aren’t many places in town with such a nice perspective.
June 7, 2014 | Categories: Photography, Random Thoughts | Tags: 35w, andor, awesome, backpack, bag, beautiful, blur, bridge, buildings, camera, canon t4i, cars, city, cityscape, cloudy, cool, down town, downtown, dusk, evening, exposure, fence, fences, fencing, foreground, freeway, glow, going by, hanging, headlights, highway, hole, holes, hue, i35, illuminated, junction, june, landscape, lanes, light, lighting, lights, long exposure, look through, looking through, metro, middle america, midwest, minn, minneapolis, minnesota, mn, mpls, night, odd, orange glow, passing, peer, phenomenon, phillips, phone, photo, photographs, photography, picture, pictures, platform, point, resonance, resonating, scape, scenery, shakey, shaking, sigma 30mm, single shot, sitting, skyline, snaking, south, stability, stand, stool, streak, streaked, streaks, subject, symetrical, symetry, tall, tamron 17-50mm, time, town, traffic, tripod, twin cities, twincities, urban, vantage, vibration, view, vribrating, waiting, walkway, wave, wavelength, wierd, wobble | Leave a comment
May 10, 2014 | Categories: Photography | Tags: 2014, above, andor, angle, art, barge, barges, blog, bridges, building, cars, city, clouds, color, colors, downtown, engine, flowing, freight, graf, graff, graffiti, grafitti, images, industry, looking, march, minn, minnesota, missippippi, mn, mounds park, photo, photograph, photographs, piece, rail, rails, river, saint paul, shots, sight, skyline, smoke stack, smokestack, spring, st paul, stationary, stp, street, streetart, tc, track, tracks, train, trains, twin cities, twincities, urban, view, yard | Leave a comment
August 31, 2013 | Categories: Photography | Tags: bluff, bridge, capitol, city, clouds, cloudy, dark, downtown, dusk, evening, lights, lit, lowertown, metro, midwest, minnesota, mississippi, mn, mounds, overcast, overlook, paul, photo, picture, pig's eye, pigseye, rain, river, saint, scud, silhouette, sky, skyline, st, storm, summer, town, twin cities, urban, water | Leave a comment
February 3, 2013 | Categories: Photography | Tags: capitol, city, down, downtown, haze, minnesota, mississippi, pig's eye, river, saint paul, scene, scraper, shot, sky, skyline, snow, town, urban, winter | Leave a comment
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