From
Shreenivasan Manievannan Plus
"The Untouched” - A Time-lapse
Film" is a self-project I have been working on, for the past two years
across different National and State parks in the United States. The main vision
of the video is to showcase the untouched beauty of National/State Parks across
USA and to make awareness about conserving natural resources of our planet
including the ever dipping dark skies. The time-lapse trip started with my
travel to Crater Lake in Oregon when I first captured the majestic beauty of
night sky over the astonishing landscape of the volcanic lake.
So, as I kept
learning the art of time-lapse, i use to start traveling to remote locations to
capture specific scenes based on calculating weather conditions and
astronomical alignments to the landscape. I wanted to capture exclusive
alignments, cloud movements and reflections for which there was endless
planning that went on my mind keeping track of wind conditions, cloud cover,
storm movement, and seasonal alignment changes of astronomical elements such as
Sun, Moon, Milky Way galaxy etc.
Moreover, as the expedition progressed and I started to sense and observe the
effect of climate change though trying to capture these lovely places, i.e., Mono
Lake, Yosemite, Crater Lake, Mt. Hood, Mt. Rainier were facing substantial to
severe drought conditions and was able to sense the change of water level in
their water bodies such as rivers, water falls, and lakes as I tried to get
back to similar locations to depict diverse seasons and light conditions over
the past two years.
The weather conditions changes were
evident as well with the dropping of moisture and coastal fog cycle in the
Pacific which were quite imperative for an ecological balance for coastal
vegetation like redwoods that exists. The winter precipitation became a dream
with very little snow fall over the sierras and volcanic peaks of Pacific
Northwest.
The winter Alaskan adventure turned out
to be a memorable trip with moderate winter temperatures and rare weather
patterns thru the state. The summer became hotter with rise in temperatures
close to unimaginable levels in most part of the country I was traveling in.
Mountain glaciers were starting become a thing of the past with many of the
glaciers melting fast with the high heat and not much of winter precipitation
to maintain the level. The tidal patterns scared as the high tides got the
water closer to the shore and even caused coastal flooding during storms.
The rare extreme weather outbreaks were
pretty frequent due to the climatic changes happening throughout the country,
though it provided some amazing light for me to capture it clearly highlighted
the climate change we are going through. Henceforth, I clearly found a much robust
objective to attain for my film that I get on in the beginning to mollify my
passion for photography. I got even more enthused to travel across diverse
parts of the country to showcase the majestic beauty of the nature which we are
blessed with and make awareness to conserve them for the best of our future.
Therefore the other main issue I faced was to capture the landscape in the
night. I had to travel long distances to see the stars shine bright. Because the
light pollution seemed to be so bad even in places which were not big
metropolitan cities. The light pollution may not look as a big problem from the
outside but it has been proved that the extreme light thrown out creates health
issues to human beings.
Scientific evidence proposes that
artificial light at night has negative and fatal effects on various creatures
including amphibians, birds, mammals, insects and plants which depend on
natural day light and star light for their activities. Moreover, too much usage
of light in the night just upsurges the usage of energy there by increases the
demand and shortage for power. Hence, as per International Dark Sky Association
(IDA): We do require some light at night, but much of it is wasted by lights
that are overly bright or left on when not required.
Thus unshielded fixtures waste the most
energy. Their lights shine upward instead of down on the ground where it's
needed. In fact, IDA estimates that that up to 50 % of all outdoor light is
wasted. That adds up to $3.3 billion and the release of 21 million tons of CO2
per year! Moreover to offset all that CO2, we would have to plan 875 million
trees annually”. Hence I ventured out to capture the beauty of the night sky to
spread the word to the masses to show what the city dwellers like me have been
missing.
According to my vision of the video, I
simply wanted to show case the beauty of nature and convey that we can’t
reverse time in real to travel back in time to bring back all that we destroyed
by mistake. We need to conserve and combat the changes for the best of our
future. I’m very hopefully that you’ll like my short presentation of the
time-lapse sequences that I captured over a period of time.
The Untouched - A Time-lapse Film from
Shreenivasan Manievannan on
Vimeo.
