One curious photographer decided to apply a timelapse photo technique normally used for sky photography to dense urban landscapes. The result is a fantastic visual spectacle.
In recent comments to the website PetaPixel, Gavin Heffernan explains how he spent several weeks in the fall exploring multiple Japanese cities and regions while creating over 35,000 photos for his massive timelapse video experiment.
The places he passed through included Kyoto, Kobe, Fukuoka, Nara, Osaka and Fushimi among others.
During his trek, Heffernan used a technique commonly applied to star trail images in composing his timelapse video and still shots.
This involved street light painting or “street stacking” via long exposure shots that were stacked together with the help of a software program called “StarstaX”.
This software is normally used for stitching together star trail images from multiple photos, but in this case, it worked visual wonders for urban lights.
According to Heffernan’s comments to PetaPixel, “The street stacking idea was inspired by me shooting a lot of dark sky long exposure photography in isolated locations and using stacking programs to animate star trails,”
The photographer has previously already created a whole video and photo project about the dangers of light pollution from today’s massive modern urban landscapes and this is partly what led him to this new photographic experiment.
As he explains,
“I loved the surreal painterly effect of using the star trajectories as lines of color and light, so I wanted to explore a similar technique to try and capture the indescribable feeling of the overwhelming sensory overload that comes from walking the streets of Japan at night.”
According to Heffernan, the work wasn’t without its technical challenges (aside from the practical difficulties of exploring several crowded Japanese urban areas),
“Trying to find the balance between blinding neon lights overhead and traditional exposure for people on the ground can be very difficult but I just try to aim for the middle and accept that if it’s over a bit, it still captures the sensation of what it actually feels like to be there,”
The overall difficulty here was one of “extreme exposure range” according to Heffernan.
He also of course mentions the sheer work of trekking hours per day to create his project, stating that it was hard to avoid fatigue after “trekking 20,000 feet a day for three weeks to find the best shots”
For his gear, the photographer and videographer used a Canon 6D camera with the following lenses: Canon 24mm f/1.4, a Rikonon 12mm f/2.8, and a Canon EF 24-105mm.
He also adds that a compact, light tripod was extremely helpful too and for all his photographic wandering, he kept the weight low with an ultralight SIRUI Carbon Fiber Travel Tripod.
Editing the vast trove of captured photos into a timelapse took roughly two weeks according to Heffernan and he pulled it all off with help from Lightroom Classic, Quicktime Pro, Final Cut Pro X and the already-mentioned StarstaX.
You can find the video on YouTube, under the title “Dreamlapse Japan 3” along with previous versions of the same project involving other Japanese cities. Heffernan’s choice of music for these video compositions is pretty cool too.
Heffernan’s YouTube channel is also worth exploring for the other videos it features.
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