ABOVE: Shooting the same scene in timelapse to speed up movement in the sky and in slow motion to smooth the flow of the stream, I have combined both into one piece of video.
I love capturing the motion in nature. Time-lapse is great for capturing speeding up changing skies, capturing the beautiful and amazing changes of colour and tone and the movement of clouds across an immovable landscape. Moving water looks incredible when it is slowed down. You can get so lost in the detail of its flow.
So how about putting timelapse and slo-mo together. This video captures the view at sunrise from the southern end of the great Lake Wakatipu, looking north past the ridge of the Devil’s Staircase. In the foreground, the Kingston stream flows into the lake.
I set up my iPhone XS on a tripod so that it took in both the lake and the bigger view. Using the amazing Filmic Pro app I set the parameters for the timelapse at 4K, 1 frame per second, 24 frames per second playback. At three intervals during the sunrise, I stopped the timelapse and switched to filming at 4K, 60 frames per second to capture the water in slightly slow motion. At each interval, the stream reflected the colour in the sky.
Back home, editing using Blackmagic Design’s, DaVinci Resolve, I was able to mask the videos of the stream so they play in the foreground while the sunrise timelapse continues in the back. The stream differently coloured stream shots were dissolved into each other slowly to match the slowing changing colour of the light in the sky.
IT MAY BE A WHILE BEFORE WE CAN SHARE THE BEAUTY AND MAGNIFICENCE OF THE QUEENSTOWN LAKES AND CENTRAL OTAGO WITH YOU IN PERSON, BUT WE WILL CONTINUE TO BRING IT TO YOU ONLINE. KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR US ON FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM AND LOOK FOR OUR NEW VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE.
Da Vinci Resolve has become my go-to application for editing video. It’s the pro-grade program that many studios use to make high-end movies. It seems to me much more intuitive and powerful than Adobe’s Premier Pro. One of Resolve’s greatest strengths is that it is a complete suite giving it the capacity to create visual and motion effects as well as full control over sound and audio.
Resolve is really five applications in one, with professional timeline editing, colour grading, animation and visual effects, sound editing and fine-grained control over output al in one stand-alone program. The creative possibilities are endless. and the most incredible thing about this application is that it’s free. Blackmagic Design manufactures high-end video capture and editing equipment. They offer this software free to introduce people to their ecosystem. There is a paid version with extra features, but for no financial outlay, you can have something at least equivalent, if not more powerful than Final Cut Pro, or Premiere Pro.
Stuck at home in this period of lock-down, there is time to explore, learn and create. Why not try something like this yourself. If you are looking for some landscape photography inspiration, or just enjoy the awesomeness of New Zealand’s South Island, you check out the places we go, on my website -
https://www.remarkableimagery.co.nz/collections/destinations
