What Is 'Time Lapse' Photography?

When talking to members of my family about my new project, most of them said "what's Time Lapse Photography?", I explained it as simple as this: Imagine a portrait of a vase of fresh smelly red roses, now imagine Time itself within the portrait  being sped up and eventually showing the red roses deteriorate. Now what 'Time Lapse Photography' does is that it has so many photos taken per second within that duration of time, which therefore creates a look as if it were done in a short period of time.

When researching for examples of Time Lapse Photography and 'Time Photography' itself I first looked at 'Long Exposure' photography that show time within the image. The photograph that came into mind was the image of Salvador Dali where he is painting and the environment that he is in is 'active'.

Now when we first got our briefing for this project this image came to mind straight away. As within the image it conveys a form of 'Time Lapse' due the long exposure of the water, the chair tossed in the the air, cats thrown at mid air and Salvador Dali himself jumping. So the image is taken at a point of time when all in the image is at movement, creating a sense of 'Time' and 'Realisation'.

Moving forward in time I thought of the generic sequence from 'The Matrix', where Neo is dodging the bullets, namely "Bullet Time". 'Bullet Time' from what I know was set up through multiple cameras which were taking pictures roughly milliseconds after each other. The cameras were set up in a circle, which alternated, swerving up and down.

As you can see in the 'gif' above the camera is shown starting high and then ending at a low angle, this is because of the cameras that are set up. As shown within the image below.

In this image you can see that on the green screened platforms and background, there are holes, these holes are the cameras that would be taking the images of the movement. Each of these cameras would have taken at least 25 frames per camera, reassuring that the movement is solid and fluent. Another film that can be seen doing this is latest "Total Recall". In the starting fight seen there is a sequence of where Colin Farrell is fighting off the police.

Other "Time Lapse" Videos can be shown through a flower sprouting, food moulding, the night sky moving etc. One example I found of a good way to show 'Time Lapse' photography is progression of building construction. 

Within this video it shows the basic understanding of 'Time Lapse Video', these videos are also a perfect example of Long Term capturing, as this is taken within so many months.