There are many things photography can do. Other than capturing the moments, they tell stories too.
Thailand-based Saengthit Kamlangchai has just taken photography to a whole new level- turning it into a time-lapse film.
Before we go deeper on what time-lapse films are, watch this video by Saengthit, a beautiful film on the city of Bangkok:
In an interview with Bangkok Post, Saengthit shared that time lapse involves taking a still picture of the same scene every few seconds for a period of time. Then you combine these pictures together into a film. Usually, 30 pictures are combined into 1 second of the film. Keep in mind that these 30 pictures are taken over a period of time. For example, if you take a picture every 2 seconds, you get 30 pictures in 1 minute. These 30 pictures are then combined into 1 second of a film, which means 1 second in the film is equivalent to 1 minute of real time.
“This is the reason why you can see the amazing transition of moving clouds and sunset in a few seconds of a Time Lapse film, something which our naked eyes can’t perceive in real life,” Saengthit added.
Saengthit is a 28-year-old graduate of Assumption University of Thailand and has also studied in Singapore. He told Bangkok Post that he was initially drawn to time-lapse photography after watching a film by Shane Black called Adventure Is Calling. He eventually found it to be “one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in life.” After watching another time-lapse film by Andreas Fernbrant entitled Helsingborg- The City By The Sea, he decided to do one for Bangkok as well.
“I did my own editing by using the software Adobe After Effect and Adobe Lightroom. It doesn’t take long to edit a scene once you get used to it (not more than 10 minutes for a single scene). The part which takes lots of time is the rendering process, where you combine all the edited photos into the movie clip. Note that I’m using a Windows 7 machine; the process should improve a lot after I get a Macbook.”
Saengthit says you do not need to be a professional to do this.
“Everyone with a camera should be able to do this. Even a camera phone can do it although the quality may not be as good as a professional camera. However, if you want to produce a quality Time Lapse scene, both the tripod and Intervalometer are recommended or else your scene will be shaky and the time interval will not be smooth.”
Following his feature of Bangkok, Saengthit is working on his next time-lapse film which will be set in Chiang Mai. Similar to his film on Bangkok, he will be shooting some of the highlights of Chiang Mai.
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