City Timelapses: Finding Portland

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Finding Portland was produced, shot, and edited in 51 days during March and April at the invitation of TEDx Portland, where the video was unveiled to a sell out crowd of 650 and met with a standing ovation. Filmed in Portland and the Columbia Gorge, the time-lapse piece offers a new perspective to the City of Roses. From a Portland Timbers season opening soccer game, to the top of the Fremont Bridge, to an aerial shot of Oneonta Gorge, Finding Portland tells the story of a city and its many faces:

Comprised of 308, 829 photographs taken from over 50 unique locations, it took an average of 3.8 hours to make each second of this film. The intent of the project was to place cameras in unique locations across the city, achieve significant ranges of dynamic camera motion, and pursue cutting edge time-lapse techniques.

Beautifully made....

Behind the scenes video and photos can be found at
uncagethesoul.com/news/finding-portland-timelapse

The Beat of Shibuya

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Shibuya in Tokyo is second only to Akihabara as one of our of favourite places to truly observe the urban phenomena. The movie was captured by  darwinfish105 soon after the recent earthquake with a note from the author that despite the then fears of radioactive contamination the heartbeat of the city continued:

Lens : TS-E24mm f/3.5LLens : Canon EF50mm F1.8 IIMusic : Those 3 Lovely Seconds (Original Mix) by Awakenas jamendo.com/​en/​track/​617099

High on London: Tilt-Shift City

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The clip below  was filmed and produced start to finish in 12 hours by Matt Gosden and Rob Rackstraw. Hats off to Matt and Rob as its fantastic:





The sequence was captured using an Olympus E-PL1.

London Interior Timelapse Sequences

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Grzegorz Rogala has used a  Sigma 8mm fisheye and a Nikon D90 DSLR to capture some stunning timelapse sequences around London, notably within internal spaces rather than the normal external scenes:



London Time-Lapse Video from Grzegorz Rogala on Vimeo.


Interior timelapse sequences are always tricky, mainly as tripod use is often prohibited and specific licenses for photography are required. As such, setting up with a DLSR with a fisheye lens can often attract attention. We really like this, especially the Natural History Museum sequence, it also turns out that Grzegorz works down our local pub, but that's by the by....

London Cycle Hire Timelapse

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Oliver O’Brien, a Research Associate here at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis has updated his excellent London Cycle Hire map to include a historic view of the last 48 hours.



As Ollie states over on his Suprageography blog, the distinctive weekday commuting patterns are easy to spot, with the morning rush into the centre, followed by the evening rush back out to the edges and the station terminals. Distribution vehicles movements can be inferred, particularly during the wee small hours when there is little other activity.

You can run the animation direct via the Cycle Hire Dock Visualisation Map.

Also check out A Day in the Life of the London cycle Hire Scheme by James Cheshire.

MegaCities: A Puccini Timelapse

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The film below is a celebration of some of the world's great cities edited to Giacomo Puccini's "Nessen Dorma." Footage was collected by film maker Craig McCourry during his past year exploring the megacities:

As Craig states - there is a certain freedom of roaming a metropolis in search of imagery, striking up causal conversations with strangers, never really knowing how the day will end. During his travels, Craig would keep a lookout for some of the best coffee shops at each location to rest his tired feet and soak into a newspaper. Along the way, you do capture some magnificent views and a pocketful of memories.

Take a look at http://mccourry.com/ for more info.

Simply Clouds and Shooting Planes: A London Sky Timelapse

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For the timelapse below we mounted our Go Pro HD Hero on an outside window and pointed it towards the sky. On a late summer London day you can see the planes shoot across the sky, the clouds form and the sun set.

The movie consists of 10,863 images captured one every 5 seconds (it is best viewed in 720p, fullscreen):


Music: Brent Freeman Blair, I Must Fly, over on MP3 Unsigned.

The Go Pro HD was secured using a suction cup to an outside window and powered throughout using a simple iphone charger, the complete sequence filled a 16gb card over 12 hours. The timelapse was constructed using After Effects CS5.

Toronto: A Day in the Life Timelapse Movie

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The timelapse by Robert Fisher entitled 'A day in the life of Toronto' consists of 18 hours of real time compressed to just over 3 minutes.

The movie documents the typical goings on of daily life in Toronto, from the business rush of King & Bay to tourists along the waterfront and at CN Tower to shopping in Chinatown to a human statue street performer to simply waiting for the TTC. The city of Toronto, its people and places are the lead performers:




Toronto:  A Day in the Life from Robert Fisher on Vimeo.

The movie consists of over 6500 still images with three HDR segments - sunrise, sunset and last 5 seconds in Dundas Sq before the end credits. Take a look at Roberts excellent blog for tips and tricks on HDR and photography in general.

China's 60th Anniversary National Day - Timelapse and Slow Motion

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The timelapse movie below is simply stunning, detailing China's 60th Anniversary National Day in a way that is both beautiful and yet slightly chilling (the tanks) at the same time:

China's 60th Anniversary national day - timelapse and slow motion - 7D and 5DmkII from Dan Chung on Vimeo.
The movie was created by Dan Chung of The Guardian using a 7D at 720p/60 for the slow motion sequences and Canon Eos5DmkII / Nikon D700 for the timelapses. The final sequence was edited in Final Cut Pro.

Dan is one of the best in the business, something we are proud of as we went to college with him while he was starting out taking photographs, for more details on how the movie was shot, head over to dslrnewsshooter.com

24 Hours in London: A Timelapse

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Ed Ratcliffe is a rather good 16 year old film maker, his most recent film '24 Hours in London' captures the pulse of the city with some superb timelapses:


24 Hours in London: A Timelapse Film from Ed Ratcliffe on Vimeo.
Ed is behind 'Slender Films' you can keep up to date on his work via his Vimeo page.

15 Days in Liberty City: Time-Lapse

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The time-lapse below by The RockstarHQ covers 15 days in Grand Theft Autos Liberty City:



We really like the concept of taking a time-lapse inside of the game engine, it gives it a unique sense of life and presence.

Sketches of Boston Traffic: Tilt-Shift Timelapse

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Sundays are somehow made for posts on the use of tilt-shift and timelapse photography in cities. The clip below by Patrick Johnson captures traffic in Boston:

Sketches of Boston Traffic - #7 from Patrick Johnson on Vimeo.

The clip is number 7 in a series of sketches on Boston traffic by Patrick, you can view 1-6 over on his Vimeo page.

Tokyo Timelapse City Groove

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Ok where were we - its been a busy week sorting out projects and getting the right people on board as we move talesofthings forward and surveymapper towards beta (next week), as such we have somehow failed to write the normal number of posts. Sorry about that, various links are now in place and we are back.

As such, a post over on UrbanTick caught our eye - produced by Stefan Werc using a Canon 7D this is a great timelapse of Tokyo:



Get up and go from Stefan Werc on Vimeo.
Music: Broadcast 2000 "get up and go" broadcast2000.co.uk


Talking of UrbanTick - take a look at their New City Landscape - Tweetography post for some great maps of Twitter Mountains in Cities. We will have more of those soon...

Timelapse: You Can See Chicago From Here

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We like this timelapse as its professionally captured yet the photographer, Brett Foxwell, notes it was filmed entirely with a DSLR camera mounted upon various home-made motion control gadgets.



Sometime you need those homemade gadgets to get the look you desire, music by Brian Beilke and JM Franc.

Image Stacking: 8400 Images - Day and Night in the City

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Using our recent tutorial on image stacking it is possible to stack images from both day and night to create a single image of the city skyline over time. The photograph below consists of 8400 images taken using a Go Pro HD with one image every 5 seconds. The streak of light to the left is the moon during the night time sequence, while the right hand light is the daytime sun. The small lights are aircraft during the evening:

You can view a higher resolution version on our Flickr Stream, we will have more on the Go Pro HD next week, including a tutorial to create 24 hour+ timelapses.

Fotografic Memories: Memories, Music and Timelapse

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Photographer Salman Ashrafi notes that in today's world, depending on what we do, we rarely find the time to just sit and observe everything that goes on around us. His movies, known as 'Fotografic Memories' represent Salmans' work to make up for this loss of time and we really like his technique of combining frames with timelapse and music as the first example below of Toronto demonstrates:

Downtown Toronto from Fotografic Memory on Vimeo.

The technique and concept can be adapted to any situation - below is the 'memory' of a bus ride in London comprised of 738 photographs:

BUS RIDE from Fotografic Memory on Vimeo.

Finally, Building and Clouds - Dubai:

BUILDINGS + CLOUDS from Fotografic Memory on Vimeo.

For more memories and information see fotograficmemory.com, it is well worth taking the time to explore the other work and clips on the site.

Miniature Tokyo City Timelapse

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The movie below combines timelapse techniques with tilt/shift and a focus on the city of Tokyo - we like it a lot:



We must get out and do a London version...

Digital City / City 2.0 Video

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We don't have much information on this one but its really nice. Sometimes thats the best way, finding neat clips that only have a few views (32 in this case) and giving them a showcase. We have added a 'retweet' button to the top right of our posts as a test, the movie below deserves a wider viewing:

City 2.0 from INSOC on Vimeo.

The clip seems to of been created by http://insoc.co.uk/

City Timelapse: Dubai

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Another in a series of shorter posts due to an annoyingly high work load - that said we have some exciting 'urban twitter' maps coming soon with work currently going on behind the scenes.

Which brings us to the post - the timelapse clip below was filmed in Dubai over 5 days and nights, shot using a Canon 7D, 2x5DmkII and a Panasonic GF1:

Sky from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

See philipbloom.co.uk for more info.

New York City Timelapse - with camBLOCK

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New York has arguably one of the best skylines for timelapse, in fact perhaps only Hong Kong pips it to the post of the best skyline in the world (?). Steven M. Bumgardner spent a couple of weeks in Manhattan with Canon 5DMII and variety of lenses:

A New York City TimeLapse from Steven M. Bumgardner on Vimeo.

Its really nicely done, the motion control shots were captured using a camBLOCK in a pan and tilt set-up...