At college today I discussed my idea’s for “Work, rest and play” narrative to my work as mentioned in my post from 5th May. He liked the idea, but after some discussion we decided it would be good to make it about me. Try time lapsing myself at work, sleeping – rest, and playing cricket, or maybe a jigsaw or playing x-box.
I felt that this would be do-able, I didn’t need to worry about leaving my camera anywhere, just a bit of extra work before I did something and just carry on with life.
As my previous posts show I’ve been doing a lot of Time lapse photography, not so much hyper lapse, due to it being so time consuming.
Lecturers have been pushing me in the direction of spaces filling with crowds and or emptying. But i’m not really ‘feeling’ it, plus, again, it’s the time issue, trying to find 4-8 hours to either leave my camera in a secure location or sit with it has just not been do-able.
The majority of what i’ve been shooting has been what i’ve been doing at the time. i.e. mowing the lawn, or when someone came round to fix the fence. I’d not really found a story or a narrative to link clips together.
I had a chat with my wife and she came up with the concept of “work, rest and play”. I could have the fence being fixed, then the dogs sleeping and then finish with either the fairground or a time-lapse of one of my league cricket matches.
After my initial trip to Abbey Park Fair was fairly successful I decided to try again, but on a Saturday night when it might be a bit busier. Unfortunately for me is wasn’t overly busy and it was a really bright clear evening and as the fair closes at 9pm I was struggling to get any good painting with light type shots.
Although I did get a really good shot of the merry-go-round. This is my favourite from the evening.
I’m going to also hold my hands up and say that I made a real beginners mistake. I shot everything on light bulb white balance rather than daylight. So I’ve had to do a lot of correction and a lot of colours look washed out. The icons look so similar on the back of my camera.
Anyway, confession over. Here is what I shot:
The lawn needed mowing, it takes a while and I’m always looking for things to time-lapse for inspiration. Unfortunately the battery ran out part way through, but you get the idea. My apologies for the pink shirt, it’s stag do shirt that has become my decorating shirt!
After seeing this video of a time-lapse merry-go-round and then seeing flyers up for Billy Bates Fair at Abbey Park (Leicester). I decided to go along and take a few shots for time lapse. I did phone during the day to make sure that I would be ok to go along in the evening. They said it was fine, just be careful of photographing children.
I was aiming to get a sort of painting with light long exposure effect, but also capture the movement of the rides.
When I turned up at about 7:30 I was a bit disappointed at it wasn’t very busy and the rides weren’t running very frequently. Plus I was a bit self conscious, so to start with I took a few sequences from outside the fair and then moved my way in a bit later on.
I took several sequences that i’m pretty happy with. The last ride is probably my favourite. I got the effect that I wanted. It’s a shame that the fair wasn’t busier so I could have got multiple rides of the same ride in the same sequence. I.E. Stop-Go-Stop-Go etc.
Lindsay, from the photography course, is a building contractor. We needed a fence replacing and he did us a good price. So with me doing lots of time lapse it was only right that I set my camera up to capture the new fence being erected. Unfortunately the camera got knocked a couple of times so there are a couple of changes in position. But overall it looks pretty good. Suppose it’s maybe a bit of a stretch to put it under the heading of Exhibition project, but it could lead to a sequence of other building of fabrication type video’s.
As i’ve mentioned in previous posts. Our final project is going towards an exhibition. Between the group we have decided on the name Aspect 9 (There is 9 of us left on the course). Our lecturer suggested that we did an indigo go video as a way to raise money to fund the exhibition. The idea being that we put something together, email the link to friends and family and they pledge money to help us. We can assign gifts, such as A3 prints to larger ammounts. This week at college we were filming various photography exercises. Such as studio, location, HDR and darkroom. I was filmed doing some Hyperlapse work. Below is what I produced, it’s really short, but I really like it. There is a possibility to maybe get people to stand in related locations and me spin around them to give a 360deg view.
I also took the opportunity to ‘hyper lapse’ my drive home from college. Really like this as well. The blur on the street lights gives a brilliant sense of speed.
After my first attempt went fairly well outside LCFC I decided to contact the Holiday Inn Express again about borrowing their conference room. They kindly agreed. So I set my camera up at about 5:30pm for a 7:45 kick off. I was very careful to set the focus to be on manual so I didn’t get the zooming affect from last time.
Due to battery life I was only able to shoot the crowd going into the ground.
I quite like this version, the only thing i’d change is to start it slightly earlier so that the area was totally clear. But I was struggling to get away from work any earlier that 5 that day.
After coming away from college slightly downbeat last week i’ve come back from college really upbeat and looking forward to doing more hyperlapse photography. This is essentially time-lapse, but the photographer moves the camera after every frame. Usually focussing on the same point each time.
Alex, the lecturer had forwarded an email onto me which took me to this page: Making hyper lapse video’s with a Canon EOS 5D III
I was amazed, this is just the progression I want to add an extra dimension to my time-lapse work. As well as the video’s on the above link I found this really helpful tutorial video: http://petapixel.com/2013/09/23/hyperlapse-tutorial-creating-moving-timelapse-start-finish/
After a chat with the lecturer he suggested that I use the rest of the session time to try hyper lapse out. He suggested the pedestrian bridge over the busy road next to st. Margarets Bus station. This turned out to be an excellent suggestion.
Audio was also something that I discussed with the lecturer. To try and find music that suits the tempo of the video. It all adds to the viewers experience. As I am planning on showing my work on a TV we thought that headphones would be a good idea, because we are likely to have music on anyway.
I set my camera up on a tripod and picked a point to focus on. I then moved down the bride 2 railings at a time, measuring against the trailing tripod leg. My first video was only 50 frames, just to see how I got on:
I was really pleased, ok it’s pretty jerky, but not bad for a first attempt.
I then decided to point the camera the other way, towards the bus station and go back across the bridge.
Here is my second attempt:
I took about 188 frames and am really pleased with the result. I think this video is smoother, although in the tutorial the presenter mentions stabilisation. I think this is something that iMovie can do, so I maybe need to take a look, as well as hone my shooting technique.
Really pleased with how this session went, it’s given me a lift and i’m looking forward to shooting more.
My wife and I have just had a weekend away after being given free tickets to see Saracens vs Harlequins at Wembley. Which at the time of writing was the largest attendance ever to a game of club rugby union. Just in case I took my camera.
We stayed in the Quality Hotel Wembley a hotel really close to the ground which happened to overlook one of the event car parks. It was actually my wife that suggested I should set my camera up to time-lapse it filling up with sports fans. Without a tripod I had to make do and set it up on the windowsill on top of the upturned waste paper bin. The only issue being that I knew i’d have to swap batteries at some point, which meant moving the camera. There is a clear movement fairly early on, but it’s only an initial video and i’ve learned from it. Here is a frame from what I shot.
This on my 16-85 lens, with a cheap 0.45 magnification add on to make the focal length about 7mm. There is some vignetting which is actually the plastic rim of the add on lens, but this isn’t too much of problem because it needs cropping to 16:9 ratio anyway. I took this wide shot to get as much car park as possible. Unfortunately it didn’t get very full and as you will see from the final video, it’s cropped right into the top right corner:
Quite pleased with it. I like the shadows and the novelty of the cars filling up in rows. The big lot of crowd coming out at the end is sort of the effect i’ve been after. The sky is also pretty amazing.
Starmead Photography 