Zen and the Art of Time-Lapse Sunsets

Part of making time-lapse movies of West Texas sunsets is the very Eastern practice of Zen.

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Wednesday, June 4, 2025

Quote of the Day:

“Sometimes I arrive just when God's ready to have somone click the shutter.”
― Ansel Adams

Photography has always been my favorite art form. I have always been drawn to the beauty of a photographic image. Also, it was an art form I might be able to do. I had no talent for painting, or sculpting, or ceramics, or any of the plastic arts. I shied away from trying to learn them because I believed I did not have the necessary mind-eye-hand coordination to succeed.

But photography seemed attainable: point, shoot, get film developed and prints made. The process became simpler with the arrival of digital photography: point, shoot, review, delete, repeat as necessary. Early on, qualities like composition, color, lighting, movement, and so forth were unknown to, or at least unappreciated by, me. Over time, I began to pay attention to them.

From the first, I was drawn to landscape photography. I was in awe of sweeping vistas, endless skies, and rugged mountains climbing to the heavens. I loved to be out in all that grace and beauty and majesty, and I loved the idea that I could capture it in such a way that someone might glimpse eternity in an image of mine.

My appreciation deepened when I fell in love with Ansel Adams and his astonishing body of work celebrating the American West. I read where he would take thousands of photographs of the same place, varying perspectives, angles, times of day, and seasons of the year until he grasped the soul of what he was looking at. From that process came iconic masterpieces instantly recognizable to almost everyone, such as Moon and Half Dome, photographed in Yosemite National Park.

(Ansel Adams, Moon and Half Dome, 1950)

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As is often the case, his photos which moved me most were often of places that were themselves magical to me. After I first visited the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico, I fell in love with his Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico:

(Ansel Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941)

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As I began to spend more time in the Trans-Pecos in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I fell in love with its grand spaces and majestic features. But the subject that most suggested itself to my modest talents was the amazing sunsets.

I began to experiment with time-lapse movies of West Texas sunsets. I figured that 30-secomd movies were my best bet – anything much longer would lose viewers’ attention on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. I tied various apps on my iPhone before settling on one I liked.

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Most days when I am in Marathon, I start scanning the western sky about an hour before sunset, watching the clouds and what they are doing. Sometimes there isn’t a cloud in the sky, which makes for a lovely but boring sunset. Sometimes there is a western wall of clouds behind which the sun disappears, not to be seen again until morning.

But occasionally there are promising indicators of a visually stunning sunset: clouds scudding rapidly across the sky, or gathering in the west with enough breaks and layers to hope the sun will weave through them on its way to night.

If that’s the case, I head to a spot on the Post Road south of town, set up a tripod, and program the time-lapse software on my iPhone. And then, 20 or so minutes before the sun is to actually set, I press the button. And wait.

And wait. Depending on my settings, the time-lapse I am creating will take from an hour to an hour and a half. The software then compresses the images into a 30-second movie.

Sometimes the movie is a dud. The sun disappears behind some clouds at the horizon, never to reappear as darkness covers the earth. Sometimes is sets, but the clouds miss their cues to join in the explosion of loveliness.

But every now and then, sun, sky, clouds and camera combine to create a lovely little piece of art. For instance, in November of 2020 I filmed an ordinary sunset: Helios swooping down through the clouds, the sky turning gold and orange as the sun lit the underside of the clouds. But, watching it afterward, the most interesting thing to me was the jet contrails streaking across the picture.

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One evening in August of 2019, a regular sunset turned magical with the appearance of a “violet crown,” they sky morphing from blue to violet in a few minutes, and then back:

Here’s another “violet crown,” from June of 2020:

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My favorite evenings are the ones where the setting sun lights up the undersides of the clouds, creating a brilliant of red, orange and gold across the sky. I filmed this on March 21, 2023, the first day of spring.

Here is another spectacular example of the sunset under-lighting the clouds, from January 3, 2022:

Every night is, in its own way, magical. Sometimes something really extraordinary happens, as when this haboob crashed the party on May 24, 2022:

The point is, you never know what is going to happen when you press the shutter. In that regard, I have come to view my hobby as something of a Zen practice. I scout the sky, set up my equipment, program the camera, push the button — all without knowing what the finished product might be. But, for an hour or more, I sit in silence under the enormous West Texas sky and invite the Universe to give me a gift I can share with others.

Of course, it goes without saying that there is no such thing as a bad sunset. There is only tonight’s and then, God willing, tomorrow night’s, and the night’s after.

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It would be the acme of arrogance for me to suggest there is anything special in my “art.” I do not have sophisticated equipment. I do not bring editing skills or, God forbid, technical artistry to my efforts. So, I feel compelled to salute the true photographic artists of the Trans-Pecos, especially my friend Mark Cunningham, who graciously allows me to feature some of his stunning nightscapes on these pages.