Today I was really bored, so I went out to shoot with Wei Han just to follow him around. He's really interested in portraits and all that and he's been working on that a fair bit with his new 15 - 85 f/3.5 - 5.6 EFS lens on a Canon, so do check out his work if you're free =p
Anyway, after a really long while of walking around, I suddenly got inspired to take photos of everything that appeared in threes along Orchard Road, some spotted with the help of Wei Han. I even danced for 30 seconds with the Ben & Jerry's mascot just to get a small tub of free icecream YUMMY =D
Back to the topic! We all know that awesome stuff comes in threes (or I'd like you to believe so for the purposes of this post heehee), so without further ado:
And just for laughs, I present to you the final piece in 3some
Three Tree
Haha alright hope you enjoyed it! Some of the pictures may be framed rather tightly because they were all shot on the 50mm prime, but I'm still learning how to move around to make the most of this nifty lens. Till then!
This was done with Windows Movie Maker with each photo at 0.125 seconds and speed doubled, so take it as 16fps. 439 photos on the bridge and 128 at the junction, taken at 10 second intervals. That makes it a total of 567 photos taken over 5670 seconds, which makes it approximately 94.5 minutes.
This is actually an extremely short period of time for a timelapse, hence explaining the lack of footage even at a measly 16fps. I think I'd need at least 24fps like Ross Ching's so that it doesn't look that choppy; right now it looks more like stop-motion animation.
As you can see it is still very very raw both because I haven't yet learnt how to use superior video-editing software, and also because there is significant tripod shake with the lack of a remote cord. My tripod was a freebie and hence isn't very stable as well, the legs gradually give way very very slowly hence resulting in a bit of shifting also.
I was a bit ambitious in trying to do a timelapse of the sunset, didn't manage to capture the red hues of the sky since it was very cloudy, the sun was behind me and most of it was blocked off by clouds/buildings anyway, so the sunset is pretty dull. I did everything on manual mode including focus so that the images stay consistent (or they are supposed to anyway), and the exposure was metered from the start of the exposure, i.e. in bright daylight. Hence, the end part after the sunset was very underexposed. It created a sort of fading away effect but I wasn't too satisfied.
Perhaps next time if I were to expose for both before and after a sunset I'd have to overexpose by quite a bit at the start of the sequence.
I make stupid mistakes like not really thinking about the composition/checking that my tripod was entirely level/even checking the focus properly because I was too eager to get started AND rush home for dinner. I even bumped into the tripod accidentally in the middle of the exposures for the sequence of the road junction, so I'd have to work on that.
Otherwise, it's still a pretty interesting effect that I really wanted to see and the good news is that there is still lots of room for improvement! =D
I am totally excited about this new project to do time-lapse photography, it sounds pretty interesting and is a good break from trying to take the hectic day-to-day life which I haven't even mastered yet. Street photography requires lots of courage to ask permission and interact with complete strangers, something which I am not too good at yet.
Fortunately, everybody is getting a DSLR nowadays, and as people see it more and more they should get less camera shy (yea right, but haha I'm just hoping this will happen) so there are more opportunities for natural shots everywhere.
So yes! Time-lapse photography, maybe something I can do on my travels by myself at night or just something to do on weekends.
Things I am thinking I will need:
Remote - Still not too sure whether the MC36 for Nikon actually works with the D3100, and if the MCDC2 doesn't have a timer I will have to try to find a third-party one...
ND-filter - Not too sure about this too, as well as which stop to get even if I am getting one. Ross Ching used a ND10 filter which is probably a bit overkill for me, but yes I will KIV this.
I already have a tripod and a camera so maybe I just need to put in some effort, get the remote and go somewhere and camp for an entire day. Hope to get something out maybe by the end of this year :D
Here's Ross Ching's Making of Eclectic 2.0 which is really quite a good inspiration/place to start!
Haha apologies for not updating often, inspiration has been missing me more than Torres has been missing the goal, or maybe I'm just not looking hard enough D=
