2025-09-22 Matsumoto “Crow Castle”, sunrise, Japan
The “Crow Castle”
Matsumoto Castle, also known as the “Crow Castle” due to its black exterior, is one of 12 castles that still have their original main keep. Pictures of this castle had always fascinated me, and so, this trip I spent 4 days making timescapes of the sunrise and sunset from various view points. This is the first timescape of the series.
Timescape Details
Date & Time:
2025-09-07 04:37:00 to 06:14:18 (tz +0900) astronomical twilight to daytime 🇯🇵
Nbr of Images taken: 757
Interval:
6 sec
Images used:
644 images starting at 05:10:00 blue hour, were used for the timescape. All images were used for a timelapse video.
Composition method:
All photos from blue hour, the first and 2nd part of golden hour and the daytime were stacked with lighten and average modes in Affinity to get started. 1024 pixel wide strips were used for blending. Blue hour is in the lower left corner. The first half of golden hour was blended with a 36.9° angle from the top left corner to the bottom middle. The second part of golden hour blended to the right half of the image and the daytime to the lower right corner at a -36.9° angle.
A picture of the swan (and its reflection was inserted), same for 2 images of white heron birds, and 6 images of black crows. As the birds started to come just around sunrise, shutter speeds were still quite long and they are a bit fuzzy as they moved quite fast. With the swan I was lucky that it stayed still for a bit and I got a few good images to select from.
For the accompanying timelapse all pictures were used. See my instagram post
EXIF: Canon EOS R5mark2, lens RF 24-105mm f4 L IS USM @ 24mm, f11, iso 400, s 30s to 1/640 (Aperture priority mode)
Instagram: Link↗︎
hashtags: #sunrise #urbanscape #Japan
An alternative timescape was made with just the first part of blue hour. During blue hour first high clouds moved in one direction and in the second half lower clouds moved perpendicular in another direction. As the high clouds have such a striking appearance as ‘rays’ illuminated by the rising sun.
Timescape construction details
