Manipulating time. More than just freezing a moment that moves you into a photograph. To capture the blooming of a flower, to grasp the evening sun slipping past the horizon, to perceive the movement of the Milky Way over snow-capped mountains, to capture the movement of clouds in a breathtaking sweep of time that the human eye is incapable of. This week’s Toecabulary introduces a technique that makes all this possible – time-lapse photography.

Time-lapse photography results in a video. You take several photographs at intervals and stitch them all together while post-processing them to play in rapid succession.

The frame rate is always higher when the time-lapse video is played than the frequency at which the frames are captured, which gives a sense of time lapsing or moving fast, thus allowing a lot of action to be shown in a very short time stretch.

In the above video, 280 frames (images) were taken to stitch this 11-second video. You can see the rapid movement of clouds over the Himalayan mountains in Ladakh which our naked eye otherwise cannot perceive in real time. You can also observe clearly how the nightfall upon the landscape is beautifully captured in a matter of seconds.

With even mobile phone cameras equipped with the time-lapse mode, you can now create exciting time-lapse videos and feel the magic of playing with time.

Interested in improving your skills?

Imparting photography knowledge that eventually increases our attention and love for various details of life on this planet is at the heart of everything we do at Toehold. If you are a photography enthusiast and are interested in learning photography methodically from our ace photographers, explore our Photography Workshops and other related courses at Toehold Academy, or if you want to harness your skills and get mentored by our team of extraordinary photographers on the field, in real-time on our Photography Tours to destinations across India and abroad, explore our Photography Travel offerings.

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