Timelapse in New York

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It’s only been a few days since I got back from my trip to New York, and I already miss it a ton. My mind is still operating in New-York mode – 55F is considered nice weather; food doesn’t taste the same; life here in California is too slow; work…

Well, I guess work will always be work…

What I did differently during this trip was to dedicate most of the time to shoot time-lapse. It’s kind of funny how this wasn’t my first time there, but I’d never thought of doing time-lapse in my previous visits. One thing I noticed: New York hates tripod, whether it’s indoor or outdoor. What boggles my mind is that people don’t seem to care about walking into your frame; they have no problem doing so. The good thing is since I was shooting time-lapse, the more people in my frame, the more interesting it’ll look in video. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

I shot almost 11,000 pictures while I was in the city. I knew it was going to be a long process to create the video from those still shots, but I didn’t think it’d take me roughly 14 18 hours. I used LRTimelapse software to process each segment, as they suffered from flickering quite a bit. I didn’t think about the trick to half-unmount the lens to make sure the aperture was always open until I saw the previews. I guess things could’ve been worse had I shot it in RAW. I shot in JPEGs, and each segment took about an hour in post. Phew.

The panning effect was done in post. I wish I had a Dynamic Perception. I need to get one of those.

Shooting time-lapse is so much fun. I really look forward to shooting a lot more in the near future.

Make sure to watch the video below in HD mode and with your speakers on.

Music: “The Watchers” by Nigel John Stanford.

Special thanks to my brother and his fiance for providing me with all the great food, fun, shelter, and locations to shoot.

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