Pixiq

One of the problems with timelapse is that you have to start shooting at the beginning of something happening -- you can use your best guess as to how it will play out, but without an ability to predict the future (which I lack), you cannot know what will happen. Hence, some timelapses work, some don't.

I loved the clouds over Casco Bay near Freeport, Maine, and started shooting some still photos. But then I realized they were moving rapidly and could be really interesting. I shot them at one frame every two seconds for about 10 minutes. You need 30 shots per second, so one frame every two seconds for 10 minutes gives 10 seconds. I wish I could have started this earlier, but I still like it, especially with the reflection.

I used Lightroom for some adjustments, to quickly crop all of the images to a 16x9 (HD proportions) and to export the images at 1080 HD resolution (what you see here is downsized to make it play better via the web). I used QuickTime 7 Pro to put them together (go to Open Image Sequence in the File menu). You cannot use the most recent version of QuickTime for this. I found that the original had the clouds moving too fast, so I went back to Lightroom and added a Virtual Copy for all of the images, essentially doubling the shots and slowing the resultant timelapse to half the speed of the original.

I now have an app at Apple's App Store for iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches. It is on landscape photography and is called The Magic of Landscape Photography. It is meant to be a quick reference for better landscape photography and a field supplement to my book, The Magic of Digital Landscape Photography.