Seattle in Motion timelapse

Timelapse of the Day – December 27, 2012

The hyperlapse technique really took off this year with timelapse cinematographers.  Here’s another example of it in use around the Seattle area.  Love the way the light hits the clock in the open.  Be sure to read Edward’s description below.  “like a performance” is a pretty accurate way to describe shooting timelapse.

Edward writes:

This video was created from around 3600 individual photos shot in the spring, summer, and fall of 2012.

After several years and hundreds of sequences of traditional time lapse, I was looking for a way to challenge myself and grow. I started learning to capture in the motion time lapse (hyperlapse) technique, where I move the camera slightly –usually around 12 inches (~30 cm) — for hundreds of times (between every interval). This creates an artificial parallax, and it was exciting to explore this new way of thinking, seeing, moving, and capturing.

At first, I was doing hand-held captures and moving between each shot, but after a while I began using a tripod and moving that along a path, so that I could drag the shutter and get more of the motion blur effect that I like for my time lapse work.

Each motion time lapse capture session is a little like a performance, because so many things have to go perfectly or the whole sequence fails… Usually I had to set the intervalometer to about 10 or 12 seconds, and then hope I could move the tripod, level up the shot, get the center exactly replicated — before the intervalometer took the shot. Many times that didn’t work out ! After a couple of months, I could get in a rhythm with this and had more success. This is a work in progress — but I really like the way it has given me a new way of working and of exploring space when making my time lapse pieces… I look at the world differently now.

Website: timeframesvideo.com
Facebook: facebook.com/timeframesvideo
Twitter: twitter.com/timeframesvideo