Technical Tuesday | Time-Lapse at the National Black Arts Festival in Centennial Olympic Park

We are still recovering from this weekend’s Indian wedding at the Fifth Avenue Event Hall in Buford. If you’ve cruised over to our Facebook Fan Page you will see a few sneak preview images that we will feature in an upcoming blog post here. As we decompress from this three day wedding it’s time to look ahead to some other projects and reflect back on weekend’s past. Coming up this Friday is an expedition with the Southeastern Photographic Society to do another night shoot, so it’s a perfect opportunity to look back at the SPS event I went to last weekend at Centennial Olympic Park.

We all gathered at Centennial Park and headed over to shoot some night images during the full moon. With us living within walking distance to the park I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to shoot some time lapse, another favorite subject of mine besides wedding photography of course! I set up the camera on a tripod, attached my Tilt-Shift TS-E 24mm f/3.5L lens and started shooting away, capturing the SPS members photographing the park and the crowds that gathered for the National Black Arts Festival which was happening at the park at the same time.

I got some great night footage but decided I needed more to tell the story of the Festival so on Sunday I went back to Centennial Park with Betty and Miles to film some more time lapse. Here is the resulting video:

Time-Lapse footage from the National Black Arts Festival at Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta, GA.

Shot with the Canon EOS 5D Mark II and Canon EOS 7D provided by Camera Concierge http://www.CameraConcierge.com

Lenses: Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II, Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L, Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L

Filmed by Zachary Long of FengLong Photography http://www.FengLongPhoto.com/

Music: “Art Now” by Alex (feat. Snowflake) (Instrumental) http://ccmixter.org/files/AlexBeroza/30344 is licensed under a Creative Commons license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Please contact Zac for any licensing requests for individual clips in this video.

I had a blast filming this because video and especially time-lapse causes you to think differently from regular photography. With photography you are capturing a moment in time, but with video (both time-lapse and normal) you are capturing a moment in time at 30 frames per second. You need to show movement and tell the story visually through that movement. This of course has benefits over normal photography to show the passage of time, the movement of the wind, and express the feelings and emotions that you saw when you were there.

All footage shot in Downtown Chicago on January 18th & 19th, 2011. Edited on January 23rd for the Gizmodo Video Challenge into a 0:45 clip. http://gizmodo.com/5733575/introducing-the-video-challenge

Equipment used: Canon EOS 5D Mark II, EF16-35mm f/2.8L and EF50mm f/1.2L. Induro tripod and $20 eBay intervalometer 🙂

Music is “Not too quiet” by zikweb
http://ccmixter.org/files/zikweb/17624 is licensed under a Creative Commons license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

If you scroll back to the blog you will see my previous post about Time-Lapse and I promise I will be updating my guide to time lapse soon! For now, here is the equipment I used to get the NBAF Centennial Park time lapse:

Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon EOS 7D
Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L
Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II
Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L
Induro CT-214 Carbon Fiber Tripod
Benro A-2691 Travel Angel Tripod

The cameras were chosen because that’s what I have with me, as for the lenses… I like getting a nice wide shot for time-lapse because normally you are shooting landscapes and showing grand event such as the movement of crowds or clouds (hey that rhymes!), so a lens like the 16-35mm is perfect for this task. I can go ultra wide at the 16mm range or get medium-wide at 35mm. I chose the 24mm Tilt-Shift lens for the same reasons as a wide angle lens but also for the tilt+shift effect, which is the blurring you see in the video. This is a new lens for me and something I am still practicing with and learning how to control. Lastly, I had the 50mm lens with me to get a big of a longer shot, you’ll see it used for the cloud passing the pillar and the group of people going through the baskets, everything else was with a wide angle lens.

I really love time lapse, and this is just a bit more practice before my August trip over to California to shoot time lapse nonstop for four days. I’m super excited for the chance to work on some photographic side projects as a break from weddings before ramping back up with more weddings before and after the trip. The weekend before we’re shooting another Indian wedding and then after a short break we’ve got a number of weddings in September. Fun times!

Thanks for reading this technical and a little geeky post, more weddings to come!

—–
Zachary Long is a wedding photographer and time-lapse junkie based in Atlanta, GA. Zac and Betty’s wedding portfolio can be seen on http://www.FengLongPhoto.com/ and you may view Zac’s time lapse and personal projects on http://www.ZacharyLong.com/. Please use the contact form to inquire about wedding availability and licensing time-lapse clips.