Occupy Oakland Skyline

I had a softball game this evening.  We lost.  When driving along 880 on the way to the game, though, I noticed all of the aircraft flying over downtown Oakland covering the Occupy Oakland protesters.  After the game and a little pizza with the team, I decided to check out the view from the other side of Lake Merritt.

I drove along the lakefront for a little bit before noticing an enticing outcropping with a good view of downtown and the lake.  I parked and walked out to the spot.  There was one other photographer there, along with a small group of people.  I walked a little to the east just to see if there was a better view, but the outcropping had a great view of the skyline.  There was a bright light on the other side of the lake that was obstructed, so it provided the best shot.  The small group of people noticed my desire to photograph the skyline, though, and said they were leaving...so I had plenty of space to set up shop.

It was a little after 9:30pm when I showed up, and aircraft were already buzzing around.  I had the tripod up and was setting up the camera when I heard loud booms and flashes of light from downtown Oakland and the Occupy Oakland protests.  I asked the other photographer if he had heard the booms, and he said it was probably tear gas.  (The news later said that the police used tear gas and concussion grenades.)

I hurried to get the camera running and tried just a handful of shots before turning on the intervalometer.  I tried a 2.5 second shutter, but was afraid I was going to lose a lot of light on any of the aircraft moving significantly faster than the others.  There was one craft kinda doing circles, while most of the others were hovering.  The hovering craft is my preference, as their flight in timelapse looks sorta like a fluttering bug.  Instead, I switched to ISO800 and a 0.5 sec shutter speed.  I wish I had gone to a longer shutter speed, as the circling craft wouldn't have looked so jerky as it does in the video.

I compiled the video when I got home, but since I have been having trouble maintaining resolution using iMovie when adding titles, intros and the such, I simply threw this up on YouTube for now.  YouTube loses resolution as well, so it's something I still need to work on.

Thanks go out to William (the other photographer) for sticking around with me another 25 minutes for safety.  Check out some of his work in the link.