Time Lapse Photography

Time-lapse photography is a technique whereby the frequency at which frames are captured is much lower than that used to view the sequence.  When played at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing.

I was inspired by a co-worker's time-lapse photography to give it a try on my own.  If you'd like to see the video clip that really inspired me, you can view it here.  I already had everything I needed, except the remote timer (intervalometer), but I was able purchase one online.  Once it was delivered it was time to give it a whirl.  Below you'll see my third and fourth attempts at time-lapse photography.  The first two aren't even worth viewing.  The interval timing was off and the photographs were too overexposed, but these two didn't turn out half bad.  

This first video combines 1,079 still photos into a relatively short 36 second clip.  The camera was turned to Manual mode and after I'd adjusted for the proper exposure I set the remote timer to take a photograph every 10 seconds for approximately 3 hours.  I imported the photos into GoPro Studio, a video editing program, rendered them together, and finally exported the finished copy as a video file.  See for yourself...

For the above video I set-up my camera in the meadow outside of camp.  The mountain in the frame is Black Rock Mountain.

This second video combines 977 still photos into a 33 second segment.  This time I set my camera to Aperture Priority so it would automatically adjust the shutter speed for the changing light conditions.  The remote timer was set to take one picture every 8 seconds over the course of about 2 hours.  After editing the photographs together I was rewarded with the following...

For this clip I set-up the camera on the far side of the meadow just before sunset.  The small mountain on the left is Sleeping Mole and the bigger mountain in the centre is Black Rock.

As I mentioned before this was my first foray into time-lapse photography, but I have really enjoyed it so far.  I'm hoping to experiment a little more with sunrise/sunset and hopefully photograph a few overnight scenes as well.  Stay tuned for more to come!