My project explores climate change and sustainability through time-lapse photography. I chose this theme as it is topical and continually in the media.
My current practice explores moving image; I’ve worked as a stills photographer for a number of years and wanted to push the boundaries of my personal work and try to bridge the gap between stills photography and moving image, and found time-lapse photography as a good way of doing this.
The use of time-lapse in this project has a significance to climate change, as it questions the scale of time. Many things that we hear about climate change include statements such as ‘in fifty years time, this will happen’ or ‘over the last 500 years, this has changed’, so reflecting this ethos through moving image that has been speeded up enforces the idea that the scale of time is a defining factor.
So to summarise, my project aims to get people thinking about renewable energy. I am aiming to present a simple juxtaposition between pollutants and renewable energy sources, with the pollutants represented by scenes of factory emissions and traffic in the built-up environment, and the renewable energy represented by images of wind farms and solar panels.
So, how do I make the work? Once I’ve decided upon my subject, I shoot a series with a DSLR camera, tripod and intervalometer, which is merely a timer that allows exposures to be taken at set intervals. The image below is a visual representation of how this is done. The delay at the beginning allows me to move away from the equipment before the shutter starts, avoiding any camera shake.
The series runs for 250 frames, which when processed and played back in rapid succession at 25 frames per second, results in 10 seconds of video playback. The images are recorded in RAW format, which is then processed using the aforementioned photographic editing software.
Originally, I intended to employ the technique of High Dynamic Range; a technique that increases the amount of luminance between the highlights and shadows to produce an image that is greater in detail than other conventional photographic techniques.
This image (below) demonstrates the technique, by sandwiching three bracketed images of the same subject, taken with the correct exposure, and two images that are over and underexposed by two thirds of a stop.
As I am shooting images taken in rapid succession, it is difficult to bracket the exposures because the resulting images will carry a ghosting effect, as the subjects within the frame would have moved in the time it would have taken to create the three separate exposures. To get around this, I have been creating pseudo HDR images by using the successful and recommended software Photomatix Pro.
This next example show two versions of the same image; the top one has been editing using Adobe Photoshop with no HDR technique employed, and a second image that has been processed in HDR using the Photomatix Pro software. Although there is a difference between the two, I don’t think it has made a great difference, and I actually prefer the first of the two images, as the second is maybe too clear, and doesn’t give the hazy effect the can be associated with a polluted environment.
This next image has been processed in HDR and if we look at the area of sky highlighted by the red arrows, we can see that the colours have distorted due to the technique.
These next images again show a ‘before and after HDR’ example
Again, the top image has been processed using Photoshop and the second using Photomatix Pro. The first image represents the scene as is, complete with grey skies and a polluted atmosphere, and the second image really is oversaturated and contains more detail that doesn’t really represent the polluted scene that I am trying to encapsulate.
With this in mind, I have decided to proceed with the project without the High Dynamic Range element, as the HDR doesn’t really encapsulate what it is I am trying to achieve.
So, now when I have processed the RAW files (adjusting the highlights and shadows, saturation, sharpness, noise reduction, colour) and exported them as useable jpegs, there are then imported into Adobe After Effects to create a moving image. They are played back at 25 frames per second and resized to the 16:9 widescreen format that I wish to use. I’ve had some trouble deciding the most efficient workflow to do this, and here are a couple of failed examples using the HDR technique, followed by a finished, useable clip
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3 (finished clip)
As we can see in the finished clip, everything is to the correct 16:9 ration, and although the image has been stretched to fit the 16:9 format, I don’t feel we can really see that it has been stretched. Also, I feel the colour representation of the scene is more true-to-life than the HDR tests, giving more of a ‘polluted’ feel compared to the oversaturated, overworked tests.
When I have completed all the clips I wish to use, I think I will group them into ‘families’, for example a factory series, wind series, traffic series and solar series, and then start experimenting with linear sequences.
I also intend to experiment with multi-linear film, by presenting more than one clip on the screen at the same time. Here are some illustrated experiments that I have produced relating to the 16:9 format and the division of the screen. Each shaded grey area should be considered as one of my clips.
Division example 1
Division example 2
Division example 3
Division example 4
Division example 5
Division example 6
