Like most people, I find it difficult to detect gradual changes. For example, when you don’t notice the change in people you see everyday, but you notice the changes in those you don’t see often. The same can be said for things such as the movement of the sun, clouds, tide, flowers which open and close with the sun and other such phenomenon.

One way to make these gradual changes more visible is to record snapshots over a longer period of time and then review them over a shorter period. Like drawing a line on a wall to record a child’s height over a period of years. Viewing the snapshots together in a sequence makes the change easier to see.

Photographs are one such means to record snapshots in time and I’ve been experimenting with creating videos made up of photographs of the same scene over a period of time aka time lapse photography. This is where individual photographs are played back in a sequence – as frames of a video clip – effectively compressing time and allow the viewer to more easily see gradual changes in a scene.

Here’s one of my first attempts at time lapse photography from my recent trip to the Lake District (Cumbria, UK)

To make this, I shot 999 exposures using the intervalometer function on the D700 over a period of 2.8 hours, from 06:50 to 09:36 12/09/2009. Then, I batch process the images in Lightroom and used them to create an image sequence in Quicktime. From Quicktime, I exported the sequence as a video file and imported it into iMovie where I added the titles and carried out the final export.

I feel like I’ve discovered a new room at home, since I started doing these time lapse videos. I’m only just starting to touch on the possibilities and I’ve a few more ideas to try yet. I just hope the shutter on my cameras last for the duration!

Quick tip: having a second body to use whilst your first is tied up shooting time lapse is immensely useful and helps to ensure you don’t miss other stuff that’s going on.