Liesel Kershoff first became interested in time-lapse about three years ago. And since she is a landscape photographer, thought to give it a go as it will fit perfectly into her field of expertise.

Google Training.

Since she’s always liked to learn at her own pace, Liesel decided to go to Google for training. “I devoured time-lapse tutorials and articles.” The key to her success is that after learning a procedure, she’d go out to shoot. “You can’t make a mistake by learning from your mistakes.”

After a lot of practice, she decided to try a few time-lapse clips on a shoot she did in the Grootvadersbosch Nature Reserve. When she arrived back home, compiled her first short time-lapse film and was completely hooked after that!

Why do time-lapse?

I was wondering why she transitioned from landscape photography to time-lapse photography. She said that with the latter, you can tell a more in-depth story. “There is visual poetry and when you add music, you stimulate 2 senses – sight and hearing. Everything just flows and I feel like a true artist creating something totally new and unique.” On the technical side, this new form of expressing herself stimulates her to keep exploring new technology and techniques.

The most difficult part of time-lapse.

Liesel says that for her, the most difficult part of creating a time-lapse video is the processing. It is a timely procedure, which can easily take up to 8 hours. “A lot can go wrong and by the time you realize a mistake somewhere in the middle, you’ve already invested so much time.”

For the processing, she uses both Adobe Lightroom and LRTimelapse and keeps it tot the bare minimum for two reasons. One being that LRTimelapse is super sensitive to big changes and pulling the slider past 30% can generate flicker in the final video. The second is that the more processed a clip is, the less likely it will sell. Clients want to be in control of their own creative processing.

A list of Liesel’s time-lapse gear:

Top time-lapse tips from Liesel

  1. Time-lapse is all about movement, which is not visible to the naked eye. So ask yourself what you wish to show the viewer and compose your image to maximize the effect of that movement.
  2. Remember that the image will be cropped at the top and bottom to fit into the dimensions of a video, (16:9) so leave space when composing.
  3. Keep the shutter speed as slow as possible. Video prefers some movement as it helps avoid flicker and makes the video smooth. Use an ND filter to drag the shutter.

Time-lapse dreams

If Liesel had the choice of shooting any time-lapse video it will be documenting the Overberg and its beautiful changing seasons for a whole year. I think that’s a pretty grand goal to have!

Time-lapse is growing and will soon be right there in the ranking with genres such as Landscape, Portrait and Studio photography.