With reflections, you combine those two into one, creating an interesting visual layering. In a regular time lapse shot you usually have some static objects like buildings or trees, and some moving elements, such as clouds, water or stars. Instead, I decided to play with the concept of reflections. At the same time I didn’t want to just take a classical time lapse shot and slap an effect onto it. In the end, this technique really shines when using raw time lapse footage, preferably at high resolutions, and that was exactly what was next on my agenda. So instead I shot video footage on my Canon 5DmkII using the Technicolor Cinestyle profile to capture as much dunamic range in the image as possible. I had to use a lot of shortcuts in this production, as it was more of a run-and-gun style shoot, and there was no time to shoot actual time lapse sequences. I would process the same shot in different ways for different parts of the image (sky, sea, foreground objects, etc.) and layered them together. To achieve the desired look I did a lot of layering and masking. I thought it would be interesting to capture some of the action in the style of fine art black & white long exposure images. Not too long after that I was shooting some behind-the-scenes footage at a long exposure photography workshop. Objects near the camera would be heavily blurred, whereas distant objects would be more or less sharp, since their apparent movement is less. On the other hand, it could be used as an artistic effect. In retrospect I might actually have overdone it al little.Īnother thing to keep in mind is that, at these extreme settings, the effect doesn’t really work very well for slider shots, since any movement in the frame will be blurred out. In the example above, I did some pretty heavy handed color grading to bring back some dramatic contrasts. One thing you run into with this technique is that your footage looses a lot of contrast after applying the effect, since any differences between light and dark are smoothed out over a large number of frames. At that shooting interval the clouds would be racing by at warp speed, and we would loose the ethereal feel we’re after. In that case however, you would only be able to take an image every few minutes (depending on the length of your exposure. You might wonder if it’s not easier to just create a time lapse out of regular long exposure images. By opting to blend not just a couple of frames, but dozens or even hundreds of frames into a single new frame, you’re creating the same effect you would get from taking a long exposure photograph, but in motion. The filter blends multiple frames before and after the current frame into one. I quickly purchased the Time Collection filters from CHV Plugins and used the aptly named Long Exposure filter on some previously shot time lapse footage. Around the same time I had been experimenting with long exposure photography and was wondering if I could translate the ethereal look of this type of photography to moving images, which looked like it might be possible with this technique. I think Philip was using it at the time to create a bit of motion blur on a slider shot in order to make the movement look more natural, but I immediately felt that using this effect with some more extreme settings could give me what I was looking for. Then I came across a video that Philip Bloom had posted, where he was using a plugin for Final Cut Pro that evened out the exposure differences between several frames by merging them together, thus reducing flicker. This rapid alteration of sunlight and shadow caused a flickering effect of it’s own. As I was shooting cityscapes, clouds would move across the sky and one moment cast a dark shadow over a building, while two frames later, the building was in full sunlight. But apart from that, there was something else going on. To a certain extent, you can prevent this by choosing a long enough shutter speed, and getting rid of aperture flicker, preferably when shooting, or otherwise in post production. They had that typical nervous, jittery time lapse feel to them that you see in so many of these shots. A New Take on Time-lapse By Armand DijcksĮarly 2012 I had been experimenting with time lapse for a while, but somehow wasn’t really satisfied with the shots I was getting. In this article, Armand walks us through his journey developing his unique look and also shows us how he achieves these shots. One such person that has taken the technique to a new level is Armand Dijcks who creates an ethereal look through long exposure techniques and compositing. Not only can it be used to remove flicker when shooting and when applied in post, it also can create a very cool effect. Since I started shooting time-lapses, I’ve been fascinated with the effects of long exposure.
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