Flow

500px took a good look at what makes for a compelling presentation for images and came up with “flow”. Just like Facebook’s timeline, it’s based on the idea that a stream of information doesn’t necessarily look very compelling when presented in a straightforward grid or list. Instead, they use a dynamic layout that shows images in different sizes and aspect ratios. In this format, you get a nice presentation of your own images mixed with the ones you liked. But it doens’t stop there, which brings us to the next topic...

Curation

Online photo sharing is great, but there’s always the question of how to find photographers and images you really like among the millions of mediocre uploads. There has to be some mechanism to filter the good stuff from the rest. And not just the good stuff in general, but the stuff that’s good according to your personal taste.

A few blog posts ago I wrote about the work of photographer Joel Tjintjelaar. This is a short impression that I shot of Joel at work, creating some long exposure images in Rotterdam. Since he is mostly known for his long exposure black & white photography, I wanted to create that same look & feel and capture some more long exposure video shots, similar to what I did in my previous video.

Unlike those previous shots however, I didn't shoot a RAW timelapse, but simply recorded some long video shots to make the process quicker. That, in combination with the fact that there wasn't too much contrast in the clouds, made the effect less dramatic in most of the shots, but a couple turned out somewhat usable.

You can find out more about Joel Tjintjelaar and his work on bwvision.com

The opening titles of David Fincher's film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo are one of the most impressive pieces of CGI/motion design I've seen in a while. Onur Senturk created these amazing visuals in cooperation with Blur Studio. They took vignettes from different parts of the film and transformed them into a mesmerizing, dark, oozing piece of visual art. If you're curious about the ideas and process behind it, you can read more here, or - if you're more technically inclined - here.

The Shape of Light IV by Joel Tjintjelaar (used with permission)

What makes a great image? Composition, lighting, timing, post-processing? All of those are important, but they won’t get you very far without vision. Vision sounds like a very vague concept, but I like to describe it as the ability to see what a shot or a scene could become when approached in a certain way. However, you can have lots of vision and still not produce any great images if you don’t take action and actually create the shot you envisioned.

A good example is the above image by Joel Tjintjelaar. It shows a building in the center of Rotterdam. I have walked past this building many times, and so have probably millions of other people. But they didn’t take the time to look at it, didn’t have a vision or didn’t take action. That’s one of the interesting things about photography: it’s always possible to find new and interesting shots in places that you would think have been photographed to death.

But where does inspiration come in? To me personally, inspiration isn’t something that just happens. Often I set out with a certain goal or rough idea, and along the way some other subject or angle catches my eye. Inspiration is something that fuels your imagination and gives you the drive to keep going. But you have to get going in the first place. The more you explore, the more inspiration.

By the way, also make sure to check out Joel’s website bwvision.com for more amazing long exposure photography (and some interesting tutorials), and his Google+ profile.

Recently I created this short experimental piece based on the idea of a long exposure timelapse. I was trying to come up with a way to create the effects and style often seen in long exposure photography, but in motion. A lot of timelapse videos seem to have something rushed about them, and I wanted to create a more Zen-like feel, as it were.

My first thought was to take a number of long exposure photos, and create a time lapse out of those in the usual manner. The problem with that is that, because of the long exposure, you can only create one or two frames per minute. If you were to create a timelapse sequence out of those images, any motion would seem incredibly fast, quite the opposite of what we set out to achieve.

Then I came across a Final Cut Pro plugin named Long Exposure, created by CHV Plugins, that blends together a number of frames before and after the current frame, thus creating a long exposure effect out of regular, short exposure frames.

An added benefit is that this helps a lot to reduce any flicker because of differences in exposure of individual frames in the original footage. This usually results from the lens not opening up to the exact same aperture for every shot, even though it’s set to manual. There are workarounds to avoid this, but we won’t go into too much technical detail here.

One drawback of this way of working is that you can’t do any slider moves or any other forms of camera motion during the shoot, since that will blur everything in the shot. Only the parts of the image that don’t move will end up not being blurred. Of course you could apply some zooming or panning in post, or do some compositing to simulate camera motion. In this case I decided to keep it very simple though. I’m planning to experiment some more with this techique in the future. Stay tuned...

Edited in Final Cut Pro X, graded with Magic Bullet Looks.

Soundtrack: Bane (Architect Remix) by Hecq. Get it on iTunes (and make sure to check out his other stuff)

If you are looking for a cool wallpaper for your desktop, iPad or iPhone, head over to makaikemaui.com, where Shane Robinson offers a number of his amazing intentional camera movement images as free downloads. It was actually Shane's work that inspired me to start experimenting with ICM photography. The above image, titled "Cruising #3", is one of my personal favorites.

I've been experimenting with a more graphical, minimalist type of intentional camera movement photography lately. These are some of the first results. They were made by photographing a Litepanel MicroPro, a small LED panel that is normally used for lighting video shoots. It's composed of lots of tiny LED lights, that form very points of light, even at a relatively low power setting. Because of that, it's very easy to create high contrasts and make the background go completely black. The only difficulty is that it's very obvious if they're out of focus, because in that case you won't get nice crisp lines. Some more images after the link...

It's always interesting to see what happens when two creative minds collaborate. Motion & sound designer Woob and time lapse photographer Samuel Cockedey took the genre of the time lapse film to a whole new level. The edgy soundtrack, creative processing of the footage and the timing all work together to create something very unusual and intrigueing. When it comes to music I often find a remix of a track more interesting than the original, beceause there's this extra layer of depth that comes from the creative input of the remixer. The same thing goes for this video as well. Great work guys, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of this kind of collaboration on Vimeo.

If you're attending the Masters in Motion conference in Austin you might spot some of my lightscapes images on the screen. The conference brings together directors/DPs like Vincent Laforet, Philip Bloom and Tom Guilmette, who will share their knowlegde and let aspiring filmmakers get their hands on cool toys like the Phantom Flex and Red Epic.

I've already posted some hints and teasers here before and today I finally finished my short film inspired by the Audi A1. I decided once again to go for a contrasty black & white look, with some red accents. The film burn effect that you see in some shots was actually created by overlaying some intentional camera movement photos of the rear light of the car. I thought it would be more interesting to experiment a little instead of using some ready-made effect.

The soundtrack is "Meanwhile Back in the Jungle" by Massiv in Mensch (available on iTunes).