There’s a great spot in the woods near my in-laws’ home where the forest opens up into this peaceful dome of tall trees. It’s a great place to sit and think, or practice your singing with no disapproving looks.

I shot this in HD 1080i with a Sony Z1Ua, on a Manfrotto 501 fluid-head tripod. I tried to make the pan as smooth as possible. It wouldn’t point straight up (my initial thought), but I actually like the result. There’s a nice solar lens flare about two-thirds of the way through (in the full version).

I did the compositing in After Effects (as I’ve done for most of the natural imagery in this series). I used its Time Warp (optical flow retiming) filter to slow things down. Lens Blur creates a more natural defocusing that mimics how light actually travels through a lens; I also created a radial gradient map for it, so the upper center of the image would be more sharp than the rest. The result is more aesthetic (and practical, for lyrics over the middle) than scientific.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.

I’ve only posted a portion here. The full version is 800x600 resolution and loops seamlessly. If you’d like to use it for a worship event, contact me. 

Posted in Worship Media