We recently joined the rest of my extended family (mom, brother, his wife, their two kids and our nephew from my wife’s side of the family) for our annual-ish beach Texas beach trip. Usually, we go to Galveston, as it’s fairly-accessible from the DFW area (5-ish hour drive) and we’re familiar with it, knowing the best places to stay, things to see and restaurants to eat at. 

This time, however, we decided to go further south, to the Corpus Christi area, and stay in Port Aransas. The onus for this change of scenery was to benefit my mother, as she grew up in Corpus and hadn’t been back in probably 30 years or so and wanted to see how things had changed. 

For me, however, it was the perfect chance to try out my new PlatyPod. 

The PlatyPod is a flat plate with legs that you can adjust in height and a screw mount for a tripod ball head that acts like a go-anywhere and not-take-up-a-lot-of-space tripod that can be wedged into the ground with its spiked feet or set on a car hood or roof with its soft rubber feet. There are also slots where you can thread straps for attaching to poles or trees or whatever.

As I was out early one morning shooting stills of the sunrise on the Port Aransas beach, I decided to use the PlatyPod and my iPhone tripod mount to capture a time-lapse of the sunrise. Using the spiked feet, I planted the PlatyPod into the sand, attached the iPhone, switched the camera to time-lapse mode and set back to let it record.

The results are awesome, as you can see below. The PlatyPod held the iPhone rock-solid and the low perspective gives the video, in my opinion, that “little bit extra”.