Watching Mother Nature in timelapse videos always fascinates me… And talented photographers all over the world are here to entertain.
So I’ve compiled those timelapse videos from 2015 that for some reason caught my attention. The order is not important here, I equally praise every creator in this article.
It’s fairly obvious that timelapse photography is evolving fast. Most of the artists are adding new dimensions by moving the camera itself during shooting (hyperlapse), or taking advantages of powerful animation softwares like Adobe After Effects.
Zooming in and out, connecting the movements, compositing of distinguishedly shot sequences, the possibilities are endless.
However, I sometimes miss the calmness of the “old, stationery” approach…
My personal note on the videos:
Many times I catch myself fast-forwarding into a timelapse movie, because I’m impatient. While other times I’m staring at them in a meditation-like state of mind. This is when I get totally relaxed.
So I suggest you watch these amazing movies in such a mood. And of course, in full screen mode and speakers turned on.
1. ISS Symphony – Dmitry Pisanko, NASA
We’ve seen numerous timelapse movies from the International Space Station, but the movie by Dmitry Pesanko stands out, because of its creative fitting to the music, and the unique images used.
Naturally, he did not shoot the images, he used the ones that are publicly available from NASA:
[fve]https://vimeo.com/131006122[/fve]
2. Dubai Flow Motion – Rob Whitworth
Rob Whitworth is the No. 1 timelapse-hyperlapse photographer in the world right now. He introduced his unique technique called “flow-motion” which landed him several high-end sponsored projects (like this one from Turkish Airlines).
This year he put together an epic image-movie for Dubai.
Can you guess how much work went into this?
Rob describes that it took 2 weeks only to get the storyboard! And of course they had to get many permissions, especially for the shot following the luggage out of the airplane.
Click here for behind the scenes pictures
3. Hallstatt Hyperzoom – Geoff Tompkinson
This video landed on my list due to its unparalelled technique. The creator Geoff Tompkinson named this “hyperzoom”.
Unfortunately he has never described how he exactly does it, but I’m very sure he’s using zoom lenses to optically zoom into the images. He does this from different spots, planning the zooming carefully, so he can interconnect the sequences. He’s matching the frames in After Effects (like Andrew Kramer does it here).
He says it is “a complex pre-planned four-dimensional After Effects jigsaw puzzle”.
4. Taste of Austria – Thomas Pöcksteiner // Peter Jablonowski
Talking about Austria, neighbour of Hungary…
A bit like the flow-motion from Rob Whitworth, but still different.
This video is a just a bit fast to my taste, but the harmony of the sound and images are world-class. I hope these guys get sponsored from the austrian government! 🙂
5. Safari South Africa – Tyler Fairbank
I’m not always a big fan of hyperlapse, but in the African Savannah, I love it. Elephant, giraffes on a hyperlapse, how cool is that?
Tyler Fairbanks created this film on a trip in South Africa.
6. Matterhorn – Tyler Fairbank
The author is the same, this time he went into Austria.
This is more of a classical, relaxing video timelapse video, with waving clouds and spectacular mountains.
7. Eastern Skies – Mike Zorger
This one is a “classical” starry night and Milky Way timelapse. The exactly the kind of I like…
Mike Zorger went out to seek dark skies on the East Coast, and seemingly he found them quite well.
Such a harmony shines through this piece that no wonder why it was awarded as Official Winner of the Los Angeles International Film Festival in the Travel and Time-lapse category:
8. Once in a Blue Moon – Luke Taylor
This is the odd one out here: not a timelapse but a real time “simple” footage. Few minutes of calmness in the world of speed.
Luke Taylor recorded how the Full Moon rises over New South Wales, Australia.
You may note, that the Moon goes from right to left here, as opposed to what we from the northern hemisphere are used to (left to right). This is because in the southern hemisphere, celestial objects seemingly move in the opposite way.
Luke used a Canon 7D, with a 600mm f/4 giant telephoto lens, and even extending that with a 1.4x extender. Thi is equal to the view of 1344mm if you take the cropped sensor of the Canon 7D into the equation.
9. Into the Atmosphere – Michael Shainblum
The flowing clouds and the wonderfully shot Milky Way caught me in his video caught. Many photographers tend to overprocess the starry sky, but Michael did an excellent job here to make it realistic.
The scene is the “Mecca” of timelapse photography, the american South West:
[fve]https://vimeo.com/81616727[/fve]
I left the shocking ones to the end…
Volcano Calbuco in Chile erupted this year. We haven’t heard much of it, but at that region it caused quite much trouble.
What beauty lies in this powerful force?
Can’t really say much about this… This is my favourite stormy timelapse video from 2015.
12. 10K timelapse demo – Joe Capra
This video demonstrates the possibilities in zooming into the hi-res still photos of modern cameras.
As the longer side of a Full-HD video is 1920 pixels, a still picture from a 21 megapixel camera is 5472 pixels wide. So there’s an inherent “space” to zoom 2,5 fold into a movie only digitally.
Joe Capra used a PhaseOne IQ180 large format body, which creates 10328 x 7760 pixel wide images. This means, you can zoom 5fold into the image without any optical zooming!
The zooming effect in this video is not that heart-lifting: the ghetto of Rio de Janeiro is what we look at.
Which one is your favourite? Let me know in the comments.
