The Beginner’s Guide to Time-Lapse Photography

Looking for a way to practice your photography skills anywhere, anytime? Time-lapse photography is a technique you can work on just about anywhere your camera is. You don’t have to go out into the desert and camp out overnight to capture the Milky Way in motion and shooting stars. You can capture interesting cloud patterns from your bedroom window as they move across the sky or document yourself assembling a LEGO masterpiece.

This technique is a way to create videos that visually demonstrate the passage of time, in a digestible time frame. For example, watching a flower grow would require a commitment of hours, if not days, at its natural pace. If you speed it up, not only are you able to enjoy the entire process from beginning to end, you’re also able to study it in a different way.

This guide will explain time-lapse photography on a basic level to help you get started. We’ll cover what time-lapse is (and what it isn’t) and move on to some important equipment and methods that will help you get quality results.

Some Time-Lapse Facts You May Not Know

This technique has been around longer than most people realize, and it’s closely tied to the early days of video creation. Ever seen that famous sequence of a horse running? That’s compliments of Eadweard Muybridge…