Photography Tip—Time Lapse Photography 2

(If you are new to time lapse photography and have not read Time Lapse Photography – Introduction, then you should read that first and then come back to this one.)
Let’s get down to some nuts and bolts how-to techniques for time lapse photography.

1. Choose a subject.
Not every subject is appropriate time lapse photography. Unless you have a subject that lends itself to time lapse photography, the technique can rapidly descend into gimmickry and fad. Subjects and phenomena which change slowly can be made more dramatic by compressing the time. For example, a sky with clouds moving across it slowly. A frame taken every minute or two or even more frequently and then played back in a few seconds makes the clouds look like they’re scudding across the sky. Scenes with lots of rapid motion can also be interesting subjects for time lapse photography: a city square or a beach or swimming pool or park shot from a single point of view as people walk, run or swim in and out of and around the frame. Time lapse photography speeds up all the action. You will come up with many more ideas when you get the hang of it.

2. Plan the shoot.
Once you have chosen a subject, you need to plan the shoot. Do you want jerky or smooth motion? Fast or gradual? Long or short? All depends on the subject and how you want to portray it. The clouds moving across the sky might look better in smooth motion than jerky changes. The crowded square or park or beach might look interesting if you have people appearing here and there in the frame without much gradual change. Smooth motion can be achieved by more frequent frames and slower shutter speeds for each frame. Over how long a period do you want to shoot? If you are taking self-portraits of yourself, aging over the years, then a new photo or series of photos every year would make for an interesting time lapse photography exercise when you play back 10 years of portraits in a few seconds. That would be shot over ten years or half a lifetime. But five minutes of a tennis match played back in half a minute would give you a lot of action and it would only take those five minutes to capture, with a frame every few seconds or so. Experimenting is the key here. From your planning you will decide the best point of view, how frequently your frames will be shot and how fast a shutter speed you want.

3. Consistent exposure, white balance and ISO setting.
If you have changes in white balance, ISO setting, exposure, lighting and other factors, you can spoil the fluid effect of time lapse photography. The way to get around this is to set your camera on manual, calculate a workable exposure, ISO setting, white balance, and set these once for all the photos in the sequence. If you’re shooting over a period of months or years, make a record of these settings so you can dial them in again.

4. Tripod.
Use a tripod. If you are shooting over an extended period of time so that you have to take your camera and tripod away in between photos, then mark the spot and the height of the tripod so that you can set up again in the same spot.

5. Experiment.
At this point, your lessons in time lapse photography should move on to some experiments.
The next article on time lapse photography will go into what you need to do once you have the photos in the can.
So choose a subject or two and start shooting. Start with something you can shoot in a relatively short period of time. Keep your photos somewhere safe for now if you don’t know what to do with them yet. We’ll go into that next.

David © Phillips is a professional writer and photographer living in Seattle, WA. You can find out more about him and his work at www.dcpcom.com.
Photograph(s) in this article are © David C Phillips, All Rights Reserved.

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