Talking Pictures: Skyglow

(blissful, relaxing music)

[Gavin] My name is Gavin Heffernan,

and I'm a filmmaker with sunchaserpictures.com,

and this time-lapse was made as part of skyglowproject.com.

Which is a big initiative that my partner,

Harun, and I have launched

towards reducing light pollution,

and studying it's impacts on cities,

as well as visiting some of the most incredible,

dark sky preserves in North America.

[Harun] I fell in love with the stars when I was a kid,

growing up in rural Bosnia.

And one of the rituals, if you will,

that we used to do is get around the campfire every night

and talk about different subjects,

and stars were almost always the most important one.

[Gavin] What we found is when you're shooting this stuff

at 25 to 30 second exposures on your camera,

it's letting in so much light

that even if the city is a hundred miles in the distance,

it can blow out the stars,

and it can take away the Milky Way,

and all those things we're out there trying to capture.

[Harun] What we wanted to accomplish with this time-lapse

was to sort of ask people What if?

And to show them essentially what it could be like,

if we made some smart choices,

and made some of the adjustments necessary

to actually protect the night sky,

even over some of the most light polluted places

in the world.

We composited some of the really darkest night sky stuff

we could find from areas like Grand Canyon,

and other parts like Death Valley,

over the city shots,

and gave that effect that you see there.

[Harun] I think the moment

one starts photographing the night sky,

you are by default, an activist.

You're showing something that's so rare,

and that it exists in a pristine form

in so few places, and I think when you

put it a form of motion,

it allows people to have a kind of an experience.

You're experiencing what ancestors used to experience,

but at a much, sort of faster rate.

It grounds you, I think in so many ways.

And that's the beauty of time-lapse.

The point is to capture things that the eyes can't see.