How to Create Day to Night Time-lapse Footage

Time-lapse photography isn’t anything new, but it is a process that takes a lot of time to produce a cinematography effect showing subtle motion speed up to make it pronounced. Many motion films and television shows use it to show when a storm is forming, day shifts into night and vice versa, or even showing a busy street or freeway over time. Not only is it used there, many photographers produce their own clips for various projects. So how do you shoot and process a day to night time-lapse?

Capturing the sky from a beautiful sunset into the dark night skies as it follows the Milky Way Galaxy isn’t such an easy task to do. Landscape and astrophotographer Matthew Saville on NatureTTL covers his complete process on how he shoots the time-lapse from setup to combining all the frames into a smooth clip. There’s going to be a few things you will need like a tripod, or at least it is suggested to use one.

Gear that was used


Now that you understand how to shoot a complicated sequence where exposure and other settings are changing, you should be able to go out there with this knowledge and capture any time-lapse you wish. For those of you who have experience shooting time-lapses, what are some of your favorite tips? What programs do you use?

A little bonus for you all, NatureTTL is giving away a $200 tripod head to celebrate the launch of their channel, click here for more info.

Alex Ventura's picture

Staff writer Alex Ventura is a professional photographer based out of the Houston area that specializes in automotive and glamour with the occasional adventures into other genres. He regularly covers automotive related events for Houston Streets & Spekture with some publications in the United States.

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2 Comments

Thank you Matthew...Astrophotographer has never been my strong suit, lots of info to digest.

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