This is a quick little video I threw together of the couple of flights that I actually set up my camera on over the last few months. It’s typically such a pain to set a camera up on my glider, in addition to the stress of usually when I do want to set one up it’s because I’m doing something a bit over the line like a speed run or aerobatics, so then I don’t want to throw another factor into that mix. So for these couple of clips I’ve taken over the last few months I’ve had many more similar flights to these that I didn’t capture.

I’ve started to spin my glider, get a little more over the top on wingovers, and am really enjoying early morning speed runs very close to the treetops (watch my shadow in the video).

The video was made using my gorillapod on my keel with my Canon 7D, and another mount that I set up using a fisheye on my Canon HF100, see a picture of that mount on my other blog. I’m not too keen on fisheyes because they distort the image so much it makes trees that I’m inches away from look like they’re many feet away, so it’s hard to get a grasp on what is really happening when you watch things through a fisheye.

I will be moving soon so this may be my last hang gliding-related video for a while, hope you enjoy.

I just rotated this image from the video so you can see what it looks like if the horizon is oriented properly to my position.

This is a very short promotional piece for hang gliding I wanted to do. It’s just something very simple that I thought might stir some interest in people.

I used old footage from when I was making my Nikon Festival Contest video and color corrected in an interesting way to me using Magic Bullet Looks. All the footage used came out of my Canon HF100 too.

I also posted this to my new Youtube account LucasRidley. I thought it would be easier for people to remember than my other account, alta8bird. So I thought I better make the switch before I get any more subscribers. It’s really something I’ve been putting off because I’m afraid none of my current subscribers will make the switch.

The name alta8bird came from my first AOL account a long, long time ago and when I signed up for Youtube in 2007, I thought, eh, what’s this thing, Youtube? I’ll just use that random name I had back in the day . . . even though I really didn’t like it, it’s not memorable, and I don’t think I’m doing myself any favors by keeping it if I’m planning on posting more videos to youtube, plus everything else I have, like this website, vimeo, twitter, etc. is in my own name too.

So you can click HERE to subscribe to my new Youtube account, I hope to post a video weekly, but we’ll see . . .

Thanks for watching!

It’s finally up! My entry in the Nikon Festival contest, where the brief was to describe your day in only 140 seconds! I decided to go the route of a little story telling with a nostalgic memory from summer camp years back.

I hope that idea engages the audience more so than just telling a story and that people will watch it, try that little hand thing and be connected to the video in a unique way. The original 1080p HD version looks so much better than what you see here, which is 504×284.

December 22nd is when they announce who is up for the grand prize of $100k that celebrity judges pick, or for the $25k audience prize that is chosen through public votes. Can’t wait to hear about which one I’m in so I can start getting the vote out if I’m in the audience award! (I’ll need you, the reader, to help me out with that!) For now, just watch and enjoy and tune in again to see if you need to vote (check out my twitter, this blog, or send me a contact form if you want to be added to my personal mailing list where I shamelessly beg for votes).

Here’s the direct link to my video: http://www.nikonfestival.com/blog/2009/12/14/step-into-air/

This was a very fun film to make, especially the day we filmed above (and between the clouds). There is so much great footage I wish I had more time with this video. It was painful not to be able to use all this great footage, even non-flying footage stuff that I got. But to be able to get across a story that was coherent I had to cut a lot! It was a good exercise though and, as always, I learned a lot. The other footage I got will probably crop up in some other videos I make down the road too.

Eric and Scott getting ready for the shooting where we were above the clouds. Scott was the cameraman and sat in front of the tug.

For those shots we got towed up to like 6,500′ and I got released. Then Pablo went back down to grab Eric D., who I was in radio contact. It was so cold that day, my hands were freezing up there! But it was so beautiful. The images Scott that day were incredible, but nothing is like the real thing, being up there, with the sun setting . . . What a great excuse to go fly – Thanks Nikon!

There are already some great entries in the contest, but there aren’t a ton of them, maybe 700 right now. I’m guessing they’ll be max about 1,400 entries or so by tomorrow night, which is the deadline for submitting. There are several other hang glider pilots who are entering this contest too, so hang gliding is no longer my special weapon in these contests. The more exposure for our sport the better though.

I shot all of this with the Canon 7D and the Canon HF100, but Nikon says: “Although you’re not required to use a specific camera, your video will be judged on image quality, originality and the ability to capture a day through your lens in 140 seconds.” I hope they stick to that, otherwise I’m out of luck with using my Canon gear.

A big thanks to everyone involved. As always, my beautiful wife is so encouraging about all this and helps out so much, Scott S. for all the great filming work and taking the time to do this, Eric D. for flying with me and working hard to get the shots, Eric G. and Pablo for some great tug flying, Matt with his help on the music, Eric W. for his debut in my films as the camp counselor, and the younger me, thanks everyone!

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Also in the mix is an entry I was working on concurrently for a contest on Tongal.com for the microfinance organization called Kiva.org. In this one I explain how Kiva works, and there is one cool little effect I did with pictures that I like. You’ll be able to view it on Dec. 16th at Tongal.

This is a still shot from my entry into the Tongal.com Kiva contest.

I think after this holiday I will begin some courses over at fxphd.com to build up my skills a bit too. So now that all these contests are done, I just have to sit back and see if I won any of them – and, of course, shamelessly beg for votes for you all!

These are the contests I’m in right now that have yet to be decided: Kiva.org, Nikon, iChapters, Mountain Dew, and the LG Film Fest (I already know I lost the pistachio one). Since winning the HP contest, I’ve entered in 7 contest, two of which I’ve lost and the other 5 yet to be decided.

Thanks for watching!

The pictures below are taken from yesterday’s footage for an upcoming video I’m doing for the Nikon Festival, and I couldn’t be more excited about the footage and film I’m making. I just hope I can put it together correctly. For the shots from the tug I used the Canon HF100 instead of the Canon 7D because it has a greater zoom and it would be easier for Scott to handle up there, especially with gloves (see pic of the camera with the gorillapod to help balance it).

Flying above clouds is like another world. You can’t describe it really, it feels like you’re in outer space, very surreal. The experience I had yesterday just epitomizes the sport for me, what is so beautiful about it and the perspective it gives you. I had a huge grin on my face while I was flying that is still on my face – incredible! I love hang gliding! The USHPA has a new website up too, so if you’re interested in the sport it’s aimed at you, check it out: http://www.ushpa.org/

I have a ton of footage to go through so I have to get back to work! The video should be done by the 15th so stay tuned here to see it and vote for me if you like it so that I could win the Audience Award! Thanks!
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Me, sandwiched inbetween cloud layers.

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Sunset behind me, still above the lower layer of clouds.

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Thought these lines were pretty.

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Eric (above me) and I cruising through the valley.

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Eric doing a wingover, me in the background.

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Coming in for a landing.

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Eric nailed his landing, right on the cone (and Xmas tree sticking out of the cone).

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I bent the gorillapod this way to counterbalance the camera, since its screw in point is so far forward and it provided a good pistol-style grip to help stabilize shots - Scott did a great job with it, as you can see above!

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This is from the Canon 7D this morning from it snowing last night, the dogs loved it.

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Taken with the 7D

Well, I’ve been working pretty hard, or should I say obsessively, on this new website. At first, I didn’t think I could handle the challenge. I came close to throwing in the towel and go crawling back to the easy-to-use Blogger. But, WordPress seems to be worth the effort and it is definately more powerful, but there is a bit of a learning curve. A big thanks goes to Lucas Howell for helping me work through some code/design issues!

I will be keeping the blogger website since it has all my old posts, and the one disadvantage of going to a premium theme in wordpress is that there’s no easy way to import all my old blogger posts. If I just used a run-of-the-mill wordpress theme then it wouldn’t be a problem, but the reason I switched to wordpress was that I could get a slick design, but that slick design is not compatible with importing Blogger archives.

What I really like is how I can display ‘featured content’ on the slider on the home page and organize things into categories. Want to just quickly get to videos? You can click the ‘Videos’ button at the top or side, or go to the home page and flip through the slider at the top. On blogger, you would have to find a video by scrolling through every single post before you got to it, so this is much better.

To the right you will see these three icons:

You can subscribe with an RSS feed reader like Google Reader (orange button), you can subscribe by getting emails of each post (green button), and/or you can follow me on Twitter (blue button).

These are the three different ways you can stay updated with my posts on this blog. That way you don’t have to constantly check my blog for when it is updated, you’ll be told when it is, so you only visit when you know there are new posts or content. This is much easier than bookmarking this website and having to check every so often to see if there’s anything new. By subscribing you’ll be told when there’s something new, so no wasted time checking!

Chattanooga - on North Shore of walking bridge looking towards the city and Lookout Mountain behind it.

I caught a little time lapse photography yesterday near Coolidge Park as an excuse to play with my Canon 7d . I used a remote timer to set the intervals of the shutter release at about once every 3 seconds.

I put the ISO down to 100 and the aperature as high as I could get it, maybe 32, then the shutter as slow as I could make it, maybe 1/30. I did the former two so I could get the shutter to be as slow as possible. Everything I had read said to try and ‘drag the shutter.’ Luckily, it was overcast yesterday and that helped, otherwise I think I would have needed a neutral density filter that I didn’t have.

Below you can see the Joby Gorillapod at work. I went for a speed run yesterday at Henson’s Gap after the board meeting, and put my camcorder (Canon HF100) out on the sprog with the gorillapod, but I also counter-weighted it on the other wing.

It didn’t affect my flying characteristics, but when I flared it favored and leaned toward that wingtip the camera was on. The trouble of putting it on the sprog is that there is a little play in it, the sprog rotates lengthwise, so the camera was getting shaken alot, looking up and down with each little bump.

It was great fun though – I flew really close to the treetops and was in ground effect on landing for quite a while. There was so much shaking I don’t know if any of the footage will be useful. We’ll see.

This was the outer sprog, and I counter weighted it with some ankle weight on the other wing, this image doesn't show the tie down I had as well.