Have Some Fun With Time-Lapse Video
DISTILLING YOUR FAVORITE MOMENTS
Try mixing the longer days of summer with vacations, cloud filled skies, backyard barbecues, sprinklers, sand castles, and sunsets - to name a few - and you have the perfect ingredients for engaging Time-Lapse videos. Right on your iPhone.
If that doesn’t ring a bell, Time-Lapse is the opposite of Slow Motion; it compresses a video of, say, 5 minutes into just a few seconds so that everything appears speeded up. Think of commuters debarking a train. A cityscape morphing from broad daylight into a sparkly nightscape. Or a jigsaw puzzle assembling itself.
Movies often use Time-Lapse to show the passage of time. We can use it to distill an experience.
Sunsets are a great example.
How many times have we photographed a spectacular sunset only to discover that the picture doesn’t do it justice? One reason is that sunsets are remarkable for the changes as the sun sets. The sky’s color casts, cloud shapes and shadows, the angle of sunlight changing on the land. The experience is more than one picture can record. But a sequence doesn’t do it either. And who wants to watch a 15 minute video of a sunset?
But shooting a 15-minute Time-Lapse on your iPhone will compress all that into about 30 seconds. It preserves the story and it’s short enough to watch.
Time-Lapse is also just plain fun. Tucked into a slideshow it offers some visual interest and adds dimension to the story.
USING TIME-LAPSE
Taking a Time-Lapse video is easy. When you open the Camera App just swipe right (to view the left hand side of the settings) past Video, Cinematic (if you have it), and Slo-Mo to Time-Lapse. Now, when you tap the red shutter button, you will start to record. The button will turn into a red square to show you are recording. When you’re done you just tap again to stop.
There are only two things to decide.
First, how are you going to hold the iPhone steady? If you are capturing a shorter experience - rolling out cookies, launching boats, people activity in a market - you can hold it steady enough to get a good result. Something longer though, like a sunset, requires an iPhone stand, tripod, or prop to keep it still for the duration. Besides, you will likely want to watch the moment without thinking about the recording. You can just let it happen.
The other consideration is whether to record vertically or horizontally. If your video is just for social media or to share with someone, then vertical is probably the way to go. If the Time-Lapse will be added to a slideshow or other creation, then horizontal is better. Of course the subject matter will guide you too. If you are taking a Time-Lapse of morning breakfast at the cabin, you’ll want to cover the whole kitchen to get people moving in and out, prepping at the sink, setting the table, and pouring pancakes at the stove. That’s a horizontal for sure. Just think about how it will be used before you start.
One by-product of long summer Time-Lapses is that it gets the iPhone out of your hands for a bit. You put it on a stand, point toward the back yard, and let it record your barbecue for an hour or two. You can engage with your friends, set up the tables, play with kids, chit chat and hang out. It’s kind of an excuse to disengage with your iPhone while still getting an interesting video to go with the close-ups your partner took. Or not.
If you enjoy capturing the moving moments in your life but aren’t a video “person” try out Time-Lapse now and then. It’s a fun technique that literally makes the most of your time.
Have you taken some cool Time-Lapse videos? Let me know in comments.
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