Phase one of the plan: Break the news to my mother that I wasn't going to be able to make her traditional Christmas Eve dinner. That actually went over easily enough (probably should have known that was not a good sign). I did want to at least stop by, and spend a little bit of time with the family. Unfortunately, that made me late getting up to Snowbird. The plan was to hike a little ways up the mountain across the road, so I can have a wide view of Snowbird, as well as parts of the road. Unfortunately, once I started climbing, I soon found out that there was no where easily accessible to set up my equipment, without having a lot of branches obscuring my view. So I tucked my tail between my legs, and accepted defeat. I hiked back down the mountainside, and set up right in front of my car on the side of the road. That was kind of nice, because I could sit in the car while the camera was shooting, but it wasn't the shot I had envisioned. As I was getting the camera set up, I noticed some red flares heading down the cat track, which posed 2 problems: #1 I was not set up yet. Not only did I not get there an hour early, I was late. #2 It was at the other entrance to Snowbird waaay down the mountain. I had gone too far. I hurried and finished setting up, and started shooting. I soon realized one other issue with missing Christmas Eve for Snowbird's Torch Parade. There is really only one requirement to participate in the torch parade, which is that you have to feel comfortable enough with the technique of "snow plowing". To the best of my knowledge, you can't snow plow with a snow board. So torch parade participants are mainly skiers. Well, if you are a skier, and you want to ski with other skiers, you go to Alta. So... the torch parade at Snowbird was... well, lets just say it was a let down. It seemed to last for about 5, or maybe 10 minutes. The fireworks for some reason, were just as disappointing. They seemed to launch of about 10 or 15 fireworks, which barely made it over the top of the lodge. I did tough it out, and shot the snow machines, groomers, and the traffic for another 2 hours. Unfortunately, there was another miscalculation... I figured at that time of night, there would be more traffic going down the canyon than up the canyon, so I would get more red tail lights than white headlights. Well, I got a lot of bright lights from vehicles coming up the canyon, which I thought were rather distracting. I decided not to put that video with the one of Alta's torch parade, mainly for that reason. They just didn't seem to match.
Fast forward to New Years Eve. My wonderful wife was willing to let me go and spend the first half of the holiday evening freezing my tail off. And that is just what I did, it was sooo much colder this night than it was on Christmas Eve. Daren decided to come with me, and try some time lapse of his own. We actually got up there about the time I wanted, and since I've done this before at Alta, I know where it would be, so I set up where I wanted. I decided not to shoot from across the road this time, since the lights were so distracting. I got the shot framed up so I got plenty of sky, the entire cat track, as well as the lift at the bottom. I started shooting as people were arriving, and standing in line to ride up the lift. I was playing around a bit with the exposure, trying to keep the sky bright. In hind site, I should have just let it fade to a dark blue, instead of constantly adjusting it until it was in fact dark. It would have looked a little more natural for it to fade into dark as the sun sets. Lesson learned.
Alta did not disappoint with their torch parade. The skier only ski resort had plenty of volunteers to participate in the parade. The parade lasted almost 1 hour (vs. Snowbird's which lasted 11 minutes). The fireworks, on the other hand were a little bit on the shallow side. I remember much more fireworks in the past. At least it gave me time to put together a decent length video.
We also had a nice lesson in the diversity of people. The group parked behind us offered us some hot chocolate at least 3 or 4 times. They came up and chatted with us, and were very friendly. The group in front of us was parked in a way the took up at least 2 spots. One guy tried to parallel park in front of him, and all he did was honk. When the guy realized he wouldn't fit, and the other guy wasn't about to move, he pulled out, turned around and made a comment to the guy about taking up 2 spots. The guy just said "I was here first". A little while later, another couple tried to fit, and weren't going to be deterred by some honking (until that honking was from the car alarm after he backed up into him). Now the first guy was willing to get out of his car, but only to yell and curse. They ended up calling the cops, and filling out a report... and the guy finally backed up a couple of inches, just enough to give the other guy enough room to pull out, without hitting his car again. So back to my original decision not to set up across the street, because I thought the lights would be distracting... since the cop parked right in the middle of the street, with his brights on and his red and blues flashing.... good decision on my part.
OK, back to the video. We shot from about 5:00 until about 8:30. When I started putting the photos together, I realized that I needed to slow it down quite a bit. At the 10 fps I usually do it, the action went too fast. So I slowed it down enough that it went from about a 50 second video (at 10fps) to about a 2 minute video, and it seems to be a little easier to watch. On that note, the first part of the video was taken as people are lining up, and heading up the lift. Unfortunately, I was using my 11-16mm lens, so there was really no zoom, and it was pretty far away, and the people were tiny. So with this last edit, I zoomed in on the people, and slowly zoomed out as the video progressed. I thought it made the first part of the video a little more interesting. So here is the next step in my personal education.
