Right, finally time to start blogging about my time lapse. I have been working on my time lapse for about 4 months now, so I have a ton to catch up on with that too!! I few bits have already been mentioned in previous posts, such as the botanic gardens and luna park, so I won't go into that again.
I started off with shooting sunset scenes. I always find sunset shots to be the most interesting and attention grabbing. They're also my favourite kind of time lapses. I like how, along with all the other movement, it starts to get darker and how buildings start to light up. Melbourne is a very colourful city so for the night shot I wanted it to be a scenic view of the city overlooking the Yarra River for reflections.
This posts will have quite a few photos that are small. Click on them to see them full size. The map below shoes where I've taken my photos for this post.
My first try was on the Princess Bridge - the red dot on the map above. It turned out beautiful! It went from a light blue/white sky, to a medium blue/yellow sky, to a dark blue sky. The clouds were a very drastic orangey colour. The lights on the southbank and buildings in the background started to light up introducing even more colours. The only thing that didn't work was that I forgot to put my camera into manual focus. Unfortunately there was a slight camera change. Some people didn't notice it, but it too obvious for me and I know it would irritate me if I'd put it into the final piece.
Here is the scene from the time-lapse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Few5H2ddsW4
Although this is a really iconic view of Melbourne, I didn't feel like it really showed Melbourne. So I tried out some other locations.
The second time lapse I took was much further down the Yarra River at Swan Bridge - the blue dot on the map. This looks directly at the CBD and had a beautiful reflection in the river. I think the composition of this shot is beautiful. The CBD is right in the middle of the photo with its tall buildings, and the edges of the frame are much quieter meaning the focus is only on the CBD.
The time lapse was on for about 30 minutes taking a photo every 5 seconds. Although you can't see the glowing sunset from this angle, you still see it going from light to dark. I decided to stop it before it was pitch black so that I could connect another sunset time lapse after it from a different angle.
So the third place I went to was on top of Hammerhall, one of the two theatres in the Arts Precinct - the purple dot on the map. You can actually get on top of the building where you'll have a stunning panoramic view of the city. Not many people know about this area as it's a bit hidden away, so it's always empty! Anyway we started this time lapse a little too late so it was already pitch black outside! I decided to shoot it anyway to see how it looks and maybe come back another day and shoot it earlier.
The photo looks directly at the CBD from another angle. You can see the princess bridge and the cars/trams crossing it. Behind that is Federation Square and in the corner you can just see St Pauls Cathedral, which creates a nice contrast with the skyscrapers. On the day I shot this time lapse the olympics were showing on the large screen in Federation Square so that area actually changes colours from the screen. It looks really interesting in the time lapse.
I really liked how this shot turned out so instead of coming back and shooting it again earlier, I decided to shoot in a third location - the pink dot on the map. This is located just along the CBD side of the Yarra River and a little bit further down, but not quite as far as Swan Bridge. There is a little area that slightly sticks out where you have another beautiful view of the City, but this time the other side of the river. I really wanted to have a shot including the Eureka Tower as that's the tallest building in Melbourne. The pointy tower next to the Eureka tower is where the Arts Precinct is so I also wanted to include that in the shot.
I actually had a really hard time shooting this time lapse. The first try it started off beautiful, but as time went on it started to get incredibly cloudy. It wouldn't have been a huge problem, but the clouds brought light pollution, changing the colour of the photo from blue to orange. It wouldn't fit in with the rest of the shots I'd taken so I decided to go back a few days later and reshoot.
The second time I tried people were setting up for the Moomba Festival, the largest free community festival in Australia. There were bright lights behind us turning on and off and I think that messed with my camera so throughout the entire time-lapse the shots were flashing. I'm not sure if you can see it in the photo to the left - the top photo is slightly lighter than the bottom - but in the time lapse sequence it was very obvious.
Finally third time lucky! It was a completely clear night, no builders behind us and the water actually had a much better reflection. It was perfect - and thankfully it was because this was going to be my last try! Melbourne weather is pretty up and down so trying to shoot on an almost cloudless day was pretty difficult. I didn't want to waste all the cloudless evenings on the same shot that kept messing up!
That's it for the night time/sunset Yarra River shots. I've really happy with the three sequences and they fit together really nicely!
