The Mountain

by TSO Photography

This was filmed between 4th and 11th April 2011. I had the pleasure of visiting El Teide.
Spain´s highest mountain @(3718m) is one of the best places in the world to photograph the stars and is also the location of Teide Observatories, considered to be one of the world´s best observatories.

The goal was to capture the beautiful Milky Way galaxy along with one of the most amazing mountains I know El Teide. I have to say this was one of the most exhausting trips I have done. There was a lot of hiking at high altitudes and probably less than 10 hours of sleep in total for the whole week. Having been here 10-11 times before I had a long list of must-see locations I wanted to capture for this movie, but I am still not 100% used to carrying around so much gear required for time-lapse movies.

A large sandstorm hit the Sahara Desert on the 9th April and at approx 3am in the night the sandstorm hit me, making it nearly impossible to see the sky with my own eyes.

Interestingly enough my camera was set for a 5 hour sequence of the milky way during this time and I was sure my whole scene was ruined. To my surprise, my camera had managed to capture the sandstorm which was backlit by Grand Canary Island making it look like golden clouds. The Milky Way was shining through the clouds, making the stars sparkle in an interesting way. So if you ever wondered how the Milky Way would look through a Sahara sandstorm, look at 00:32.

 Wow.

-ec.wolf

Adulthood

Today is my 18th birthday, and since this is the age of "adulthood" in our culture, it means a lot of new things in a person's life, and as such, it has brought up quite a few thoughts as well.

Firstly, I don't feel like an adult. I don't feel any different from the 17-year-old person I was yesterday. When I was younger, I would look at adults and think "That person knows how the world works. That is a person who has obtained adult-knowledge, and is certified to do adult things." I honestly believed that, somehow, people knew all of the things that they needed to know to function in society at this point in their lives, but in all honesty, my dad still helps me do my taxes, and I can't even tell you what the word "mortgage" means. Suddenly, I'm an adult. It didn't come with an epiphany, it didn't come after I passed a test, it didn't seem special at all. I simply woke up this morning and thought "Oh, it's my birthday. I guess it's legal to smoke and watch porn now."

Secondly, I'm scared as hell of growing up. My greatest passion in life is adventure, and in a small town like the one I live in, that means trespassing into places you aren't allowed with a group of friends and having fun. If the police were to catch me doing that yesterday, it would have been "just a bunch of damn kids messing around," but today, it's "catching a man trespassing on private property." I'm losing all of the innocence I've taken for granted my entire life, and it's impossible to ever get it back. Everyone that I've grown up with and gone to school with are going to separate universities and moving away--everyone is growing and everything is changing. I'm reaching the peak of my youth, and soon I'm going to be 20, then 30, then 40, then I've lost all of my hair and not long after that I'm dead. My feet have already been placed upon that path.

How do you slow things down?

-ec.wolf