In 2005, Eirik Solheim shot a still picture of his back yard in Norway every day for an entire year. He aligned the pictures together and created a beautiful time lapse. Since his 2005 version, he’s managed to do a higher resolution movie in 2008 and finally, during all of last year, he put together time lapse that uses video clips.
Eirik chose the amazing Canon 5D Mark II for this experiment and I think it turned out even better than his still image versions, because he used the HD video function of the 5D Mark II.
Eirik explains the 2009 project:
This time I recorded 30 second video clips each time. My idea was that it would be possible to dissolve between the videos to get the same kind of time lapse effect, but this time with motion all the way. Snow falling, wind blowing etc.
2009 is over and I have now put all the clips I recorded through the year into a couple of videos. I recorded clips with a 15mm fisheye, a 24mm wide angle and a 50mm lens. I’ve made three different versions.
If Eirik shot thirty-second scenes once a week for a year, he likely ended up with 8GB of video per version, for a total of 24GB of footage. He then had to align and process each clip to correct for the fisheye distortion and edited it all together, with some smooth transitions between each scene. Some serious work.
The results really show off the sounds and the sights from the four seasons in Norway. His efforts took a lot of work and they’re well worth the recognition he’s getting. And as if this wasn’t enough, Eirik also provides a tutorial, complete with video on how to do your own time lapse movie on his award winning blog. Give him a digg if you enjoy it.