Timelapses
Dec. 12th, 2012 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
danalwynHardly anyone will be surprised to learn that I like cities.
A lot of people like cities, but they have trouble expressing what about the city they find some fascinating. They have tried to capture its essence, in photography, and patience, in music, but it is hard to capture the sum of a city without the city in its entirety.
A city moves, a city lives, it breathes. It is a moving part made of moving parts, a machine constructed from other machines. It is a clock with a million hands, each beating at its own unique beat. What is the heartbeat of a city? Is it the time it takes for a person to walk across the street? The time it takes a car to drive the length of a block? A single working day? The time it takes the retail clerk on break to smoke a cigarette? From sunrise to sunset? A season? The length a skyscraper takes to rise from pit to pinnacle? What is the city's heart? Where are the lungs? What are its eyes? We all are. We are all the city's heart, and each of us beats at the city's own beat.
One of the best mediums to show this, in my opinion, is the time lapse video. It is one of the few mediums that can, in an instant, step from one concept of time, one pulse, to another, letting the viewer instantly transcend their own frenetic life and enter the slower pace of the cogs of the city. There's been something of a renaissance of them with advances in video technology, so here are a few of my favorites.
All of them should be watched in HD:
This is Rob Whitworth's superb video of Kuala Lumpur. It absolutely must be watched on full HD:
A particularly active view of Cambodia with extraordinary light displays.
This was one of the first ones I really liked. Although much slower of pace, it retains a special place in my heart for its excellent nighttime photography:
A lot of people like cities, but they have trouble expressing what about the city they find some fascinating. They have tried to capture its essence, in photography, and patience, in music, but it is hard to capture the sum of a city without the city in its entirety.
A city moves, a city lives, it breathes. It is a moving part made of moving parts, a machine constructed from other machines. It is a clock with a million hands, each beating at its own unique beat. What is the heartbeat of a city? Is it the time it takes for a person to walk across the street? The time it takes a car to drive the length of a block? A single working day? The time it takes the retail clerk on break to smoke a cigarette? From sunrise to sunset? A season? The length a skyscraper takes to rise from pit to pinnacle? What is the city's heart? Where are the lungs? What are its eyes? We all are. We are all the city's heart, and each of us beats at the city's own beat.
One of the best mediums to show this, in my opinion, is the time lapse video. It is one of the few mediums that can, in an instant, step from one concept of time, one pulse, to another, letting the viewer instantly transcend their own frenetic life and enter the slower pace of the cogs of the city. There's been something of a renaissance of them with advances in video technology, so here are a few of my favorites.
All of them should be watched in HD:
This is Rob Whitworth's superb video of Kuala Lumpur. It absolutely must be watched on full HD:
Kuala Lumpur DAY-NIGHT from Rob Whitworth on Vimeo.
A particularly active view of Cambodia with extraordinary light displays.
This was one of the first ones I really liked. Although much slower of pace, it retains a special place in my heart for its excellent nighttime photography:
Timelapse - The City Limits from Dominic on Vimeo.
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Date: 2012-12-13 10:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-14 04:15 pm (UTC)