Watching the Clouds Flow

I've always been fascinated with videography, but growing up I never had access to a video camera. It's partly for this reason that I made several stop-motion animations during my teen years when I got my first DSLR. The video below is another such stop-motion animation. I took the images for it almost two years ago now, back in February 2010, but was stymied because my new, Windows 7-computer (which is only 5 days older than these photos) didn't come with Windows Movie Maker, the only software I've ever been able to find that allows one to assemble stop-motion movies. I kind of forgot about it for, well, almost two years now, until I came across the link for Window Movie Maker last month and downloaded it. It's still the same old clunky piece of software it was before (although it now comes with Microsoft's horrid new ribbon interface), but it sufficed to get a semi-passable video together.

Anyway, I've rambled enough, so I'll just say that is a movie about the inversion layer on Mauna Kea, showing how the clouds come down after sunset. The camera is facing more or less west, and I took an image about every 15 seconds. You can watch as twilight deepens into dusk and the clouds from up above flow down the mountain to lower elevations.

And it's somewhat ironic, I guess, that just as I get the ability to make stop motion movies again, I also get a new phone with a bona-fide video camera built in. Of course, I can hardly wait to see how I'll be able to use that!