UPDATE: Check out my new showreel
After being my new home since 2013, I left Sydney, Australia for London about three years ago.
Right after that move I was still spending a lot of time overseas, doing commercial timelapse & hyperlapse work for big brands and exciting destinations.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the world shut down.
And so did the majority of my work.
And my income.
For over two years.
If I didn't have my e-books about timelapse and passive income, and later on my timelapse & hyperlapse video course I probably wouldn't have made it through this period as a self-employed artist/creator.
Not that there's anything wrong with being affected by the largest global disruption my generation had ever seen, it just didn't fit the plan I had in my head.
Which was to get my foot in the door with a ton of creative agencies, firms, producers, directors, and more in and around the UK.
To show off my skills acquired over a decade of being a professional “Time Warper”.
To expand my professional network like I had done in Australia since 2013.
Clearly, the world had different plans.
Facing multiple, extended lockdowns I started capturing more and more of the London skyline from our so-called Cloud Palace balcony.
Paired with the odd outing on the streets, after a while I managed to acquire a fair amount of stunning footage of this great old city.
And so we arrive at today, where I share with quite a bit of pride, what I've managed to capture over the last three years.
I hope you like what I've made.
As I talk about at the end of the video, I would like to ask for your help.
If you know someone in London, the UK, or anywhere else, who would like my work, please consider showing them this video.
Bonus points if they are in the creative industries, of course 🙂
I'd like to thank you for being here, for watching what I've made, and for reading what I wrote.
I get asked a lot of questions about how I do what I do, so I'll be listing some of the technical aspects of this timelapse film below.
In the meantime, if you'd like to learn the basics of timelapse photography, check out my free e-book.
Links on this page may be affiliate links.
Camera gear used
The majority of the sequences were shot on the Lumix S1, S5, and Canon R6 full-frame mirrorless cameras. Some of the sequences were captured on my older Canon 6DMkII and 1DXMkII.
Lenses range from 16-35, 24-70, 70-200, and some of the niche shots were captured on a Nikon P1000 superzoom camera, as well as the Lumix FZ82 bridge camera.
For tripods, I often use Manfrotto Super Clamps with a mini ball-head attached to mount the cameras on our balcony railing. When out on the street I'm using my 190Go! carbon fiber legs.
The few motion control shots you see are recorded with the Moza Slypod Pro and Syrp Genie One.
Filters have been provided by PolarPro ranging from circular polarisers to 10-stop NDs.
You can find out more about which memory cards, batteries, and other accessories I use on my gear page here.
Timelapse shooting techniques used
High-quality timelapse photography has become much more accessible over the years.
When I started one of the pinnacles of timelapse shooting was the so-called Holy Grail timelapse shot, where you capture the changing light conditions of a sunrise or sunset.
For these kinds of shots, you need to constantly monitor and adjust your camera's exposure settings, after which you need to post-process these sequences and exposure changes in highly specialized timelapse software called LRTimelapse.
Over time though, technology and software have allowed us to enjoy a more relaxed style of shooting.
Thanks to the Lumix systems built-in Exposure Leveling (and to some extent Canon's development of their new R-series full-frame mirrorless cameras) our lives as timelapse photographers have become quite a bit more simple.
The Holy Grail isn't what it once used to be, and now these sequences are shot without any involvement of the timelapse photographer whatsoever.
Besides using Exposure Leveling I mainly shoot in the camera's Manual mode using an external timelapse remote or intervalometer to capture long series of RAW photographs.
These photographs then get batch-edited in the following pieces of software.
Timelapse software used
The timelapse process from capture to finish goes as follows:
- Shoot and capture RAW files onto a memory card
- Offload said memory card to a SSD
- Import and organize the contents of said SSD using Lightroom Classic and the Timelapse + STUDIO plugin
- Colour grade the RAW files with my Timelapse Presets
- Ramp certain settings and deflicker where needed with LRTimelapse
- Set up a batch export queue in After Effects to export to ProRes 422 HQ master files.
There are many more techniques used in this timelapse showreel such as time-slice videos, hyperlapse shots, creative masking and editing and so much more.
All these things are covered and explained in detail in my magnum opus, The Ultimate Timelapse Course.
With over 80 exclusive videos, you can learn everything there is to learn about not just the things you've seen in my video, but also how to plan and shoot astrophotography timelapses, how to predict great sunrises and sunsets, how to remove birds, planes and other elements from your sequences, and so much more.
If you'd like to learn more about creating world-class timelapse shots, you can use coupon code “20OFF” at checkout to get 20% off your lifetime access to this wonderful course.
Once again, thank you for being here.
If you have any questions or comments please leave them under the video and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
Matthew
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