Every so often Fstoppers will post a video on Timelapse Photography. Well, it's that time again because this particular one is worth your while. David de Los Santos is a computer engineering student who enjoys making incredible timelapses of flowers blooming. His latest timelpase is a sequel to another one that was filmed in 2014 called Flowers opening timelapse. The original video received a Vimeo Staff Pick and was featured on National Geographic's website. Both videos are scored by composer Roger Subirana with peaceful and uplifting music.
After releasing his first video, Santos wrote that he used a Fufijilm Finepix HS30EXR, a black backdrop, and 2 light bulbs to film the timelapse. Depending on the growth of the flower, he took photos in an interval of 1-10 minutes. All the photographs were taken in jpeg to conserve space and edited in Lightroom for basic retouching. Santos encountered many problems, such as the flower going out of frame, out of focus photographs, bumping the camera, bugs, and having flowers not open. There is no way I would have patience for a project like this. I couldn't imagine how frustrating it would be to take photos for several days just to find out the flower doesn't open.
I'm impressed with how simple his setup was. I was envisioning it being filmed in a studio, with professional lighting and a flagship DSLR camera. This timelapse goes to show you don't need thousands of dollars of equipment to create a beautiful piece of work. I'm also impressed that he is still in college and not off working somewhere for National Geographic or Discovery Channel. Kudos to David.
