The long now

Recently I created this short experimental piece based on the idea of a long exposure timelapse. I was trying to come up with a way to create the effects and style often seen in long exposure photography, but in motion. A lot of timelapse videos seem to have something rushed about them, and I wanted to create a more Zen-like feel, as it were.

My first thought was to take a number of long exposure photos, and create a time lapse out of those in the usual manner. The problem with that is that, because of the long exposure, you can only create one or two frames per minute. If you were to create a timelapse sequence out of those images, any motion would seem incredibly fast, quite the opposite of what we set out to achieve.

Then I came across a Final Cut Pro plugin named Long Exposure, created by CHV Plugins, that blends together a number of frames before and after the current frame, thus creating a long exposure effect out of regular, short exposure frames.

An added benefit is that this helps a lot to reduce any flicker because of differences in exposure of individual frames in the original footage. This usually results from the lens not opening up to the exact same aperture for every shot, even though it’s set to manual. There are workarounds to avoid this, but we won’t go into too much technical detail here.

One drawback of this way of working is that you can’t do any slider moves or any other forms of camera motion during the shoot, since that will blur everything in the shot. Only the parts of the image that don’t move will end up not being blurred. Of course you could apply some zooming or panning in post, or do some compositing to simulate camera motion. In this case I decided to keep it very simple though. I’m planning to experiment some more with this techique in the future. Stay tuned...

Edited in Final Cut Pro X, graded with Magic Bullet Looks.

Soundtrack: Bane (Architect Remix) by Hecq. Get it on iTunes (and make sure to check out his other stuff)

Lines

I've been experimenting with a more graphical, minimalist type of intentional camera movement photography lately. These are some of the first results. They were made by photographing a Litepanel MicroPro, a small LED panel that is normally used for lighting video shoots. It's composed of lots of tiny LED lights, that form very points of light, even at a relatively low power setting. Because of that, it's very easy to create high contrasts and make the background go completely black. The only difficulty is that it's very obvious if they're out of focus, because in that case you won't get nice crisp lines. Some more images after the link...

Click to read more ...

Lightscapes - a different take

I thought I'd start sharing some more behind-the-scenes and work-in-progress stuff on the blog, since that's what I usually like reading on other blogs. It's great to see the end result, but even more fun to get a glimpse of how it all comes together.

On that note, above is a still from a video project I'm currently working on. It's a different take on my Lightscapes work, where I try to create interesting effect using long exposures. The difference is that usually I do this by moving the camera around (it's not called Intentional Camera Movement photography for northing), but in this case I move the light around while the camera stands still. The reflection of the moving light source, in this case a LitePanel Micro Pro, creates an interesting sense of motion. Will share more as the project progresses. Stay tuned...

Wide angle experiments

Since I had a wide angle lens at my disposal (Canon 16-35mm f/2.8L mark II) that I had rented for another project, I thought I'd make good use of it and try some experimental shots. These were shot next to the "New Orleans" building in Rotterdam. I like how the lines on one side of the building, if framed right, give the illusion that the perspective is somehow warped in an Inception-like fashion (see top photo).

The second shot was originally framed vertically, but I thought it looked better with a horizontal crop, to reduce distracting elements in the background. Still, I think the background is way too busy and distracting. Tried to clean it up in post, but that just got too contrived, so I'm going for the "raw" look.

Tower of darkness, the sequel

Last week I decided to do a new take on my "Tower of Darkness" shot of the Maastoren office building in Rotterdam, this time from the other side. This is the side where the front entrance is located, and it features a huge glass and metal structure, which creates interesting patterns of light and shadow. Gave it a similar treatment as the earlier shot. Because of the busy lines it's less of a clean architecture shot, but more something out of a Batman movie.

A moment in time(lapse)

The above shot is one frame from a timelapse I shot last week. The idea was to test out shooting timelapse in RAW and aplying some color grading in Aperture. Normally I would shoot a timelapse in JPEG because of the excessive amount of storage required for large numbers of RAW images, but that severely limits my options in post production.

This location struck me as interesting because of the grungy old warehouse (soon to be renovated into shops and appartments) and the construction cranes behind it, working on what will become a large new highrise.

This is a typical example where a tilt-shift lens would have come in handy, to eliminate the distortion in the warehouse, and give the whole thing a more flat, geometric feel.

Void

Most of my intentional camera movement photography is rather bold and colorful. This series, that I called Void, is a bit different. Even though they might look almost like black and white photos, they were taken in full color. It just so happens that the subject was rather monochromatic. What I like about these is that they have some subtle textures that you only notice when looking up close. Click on the "read more" link to see some more.

Click to read more ...

[ STRONGER ]

A little experiment using the camera's built-in picture styles. For this video I created a very contrasty black & white picture style, instead of converting to black & white in post. As mentioned in an earlier blog post, this keeps things kind of raw and spontaneous and very much affects the way you shoot.

Another experiment was the "rasterized" effect you see in certain shots. This was created by exporting some of the footage to my iPhone, and subsequently filming those clips playing back on the iPhone screen. However, instead of just filming the screen, I filmed though a second lens (a Nikon 50 f/1.4 in this case) that was sitting on top of the iPhone. This produced an interesting kind of macro image, where the individual pixels of the iPhone are visible. Below is a image of the setup.

Click to read more ...

Unintentional abstracts

As I'm about to release my latest short experimental video, I grabbed a number of frames and saved them as stills to post on Flickr. The above image is one of them. It turned out there were a lot of interesting abstract compositions in there, which you don't notice as much when you're just watching it as a video. I posted some more framegrabs after the link.

Click to read more ...

Beyond the obvious

Sometimes it can be fun to think beyond the obvious when deciding on the look of a photo. The above image for example was taken on - believe it or not - a bright sunny day in Rotterdam. You can see the original here. While it was a nice architecture shapshot, I decided to see what else I could do with it.

Photography is often about leaving things out, and focussing on one particular thing. The original shot was quite cluttered, with lots of lines from the glass roof, the buiding, and the tree on the right hand side. So the first thing I did was crop the image to get rid of some of the distraction. A square format seemed to work well here.

Click to read more ...