On today’s episode we are going to slow things down. Often in this fast-paced world, with a short attention span we only see a very small snapshots what is really happening. When you turn on the television news you will see a nine second segment of the Federal Reserve Chairman‘s testimony in front of the US congressional committee. We are talking nine seconds out of a two hour hearing. There is no way that any nine second snapshot taken at random in those two hours can be an accurate representation of the full two hours.
So today I want to introduce a concept that is not new in the world of cinematography. It might be a first on a real estate podcast however. On a podcast we don’t have the benefit of visual aids. So I want you to close your eyes and imagine a beautiful scene of a mountain panorama. There’s a big blue sky. there are the snow capped peaks. There is a Valley down below.
To start with we’re looking at a single panoramic image a single snapshot in time.
Now we’re going to do an upgrade and technology and go to live motion video. Whether the video is shot at 30 frames per second, or 60 frames per second very little changes from one minute to the next. After about 20 seconds, we’re starting to get bored.
Your attention is starting to wander and you were easily distracted.
But imagine for a moment if the cinematographer left the camera in place for several months and shot one frame every 10 minutes. By animating those individual images into a time lapse sequence over a longer period of time you see the movement of the clouds. you see the change of color from Dawn through mid day, until dusk. You see the change of the seasons. You see the weather storms come through and attack the mountain peaks with great fury. A time lapse sequence gives you a completely different perspective than a still image, or a live stream video.
Find let’s photography was invented by Louis Schwartzberg. As it turns out, he did not set out to develop time lapse photography. When he was just starting out early in his career, he did not have a lot of money. He wanted to capture high quality images. By shooting a single frame every 20 minutes, he could make a four minute roll of film last a lot longer.
Little did he know he was going to invent an entirely new way of looking at the world.
If time I photography can be more effective at helping you see a flower open from a close bud to a full-blown blossom, or the morning sunrise on the beach, what else can this technique be applied to?