Ten years ago Kien Lam (left) from San Francisco quit his job, packed his bag and grabbed his camera and then jumped on a plane to London with a one way ticket. Over the next 343 days he would visit 17 countries and take 6237 photographs. On his return to his home and family he put together this remarkable souvenir of his travels.
You will see many places here that we have featured on Kuriositas – and we are so very jealous of Kien that he saw them all one after the other. Anyway – sit back and enjoy – and if you want to see more of Kien’s amazing journey then visit his website where he elaborates in a more stately fashion about his global sojourn. The music is provided by William Lam (who is a very talented composer and who just happens to be Kien’s younger brother).
Kuriositas has a large and growing band of readers from Poland which is as great as it was unexpected. It’s always great to be adopted by citizens of another country and Poland now ranks number 5 in terms of countries from which Kuriositas gets hits. Not unsurprisingly a show of interest provokes another and there is much to be admired about the 9th largest country in Europe, not least the mix of the modern and the medieval to be discovered in a number of its cities.
This short film shows the country off in a somewhat unexpected but nonetheless delightful way. Captured using the tilt-shift effect, Joerg Daiber of Spoonfilm takes us on a short tour of Slupsk, Leba, Gdansk, Malbork, Torun, Warszawa and Wroclaw.
Moments in China is a collection of vivid sights and sounds photographer and visual artist Ryan Emond experienced while traveling around China last month. The piece flows from Hong Kong to Beijing, and visits Guilin, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. Some moments are more significant than others, but he has a personal connection with each. The video was particularly special to Emond because he did have time for personal projects over the past months.
This certainly makes up for it. I don’t think the Chinese government could have gotten a better advert for the country had they paid for it. Shot on a Nikon D700 and a 5D Mark III, I particularly enjoyed the spectacle of time lapse of the city of Shanghai slipping in to that something more comfortable known generally as the evening.
We see many images of the International Space Station but it isn’t often that we get an impression of how it moves. This remarkable film by Adonis Pulatus takes the film shot by the International Space Station Expedition 30 crew flying over practically every square mile of the globe.
Pulatus downloaded the high-resolution image sets that have been made available by the NASA Johnson Space Center and constructed this short time-lapse film in hi-res 2K project format. The result is something else. Forget CGI – this is the real thing!
As the title suggests, here are some beautiful images of a wide ranges of flowers and other foliage, all brought to life through the magic of time lapse camera techniques and extremely detailed High Definition footage.
This is highly emotive and splendidly colorful collection is brought to you from the near boundless archives of the BBC Motion Gallery. And we thank them!
The sequences of photographs were taken by Ron Garan, Satoshi Furukawa and the crew of expeditions 28 and 29 on board the International Space Station. Taken between August and October, 2011 these pictures were taken at an altitude of around 350 km.
Michael König refurbished, smoothed, retimed, denoised, deflickered, cut, the pictures to give us the montage that we can see here, making every attempt to keep the look of the material as original as possible, without adjusting the colors. What we get is something amazing – and which goes to show just how incredible our pale blue dot really is.
Most people who travel through a foreign country keep mementoes, photos or videos of their time engaging with another culture, another people. Friends and relatives are shown these memories (and are often bored silly by them in all honesty). Then the pictures go in to an album, the videos are consigned to the old hard drive and, slowly but surely they are accessed less and less.
Others, like Sander Wisman, take their various media files and mould them in to something entirely new – something which Grandma might want to sit through again and again for sure, or that they can share with the entire world. This short film gathers up all his memories of his trip to Japan and makes it in to a personal paean to the country. Topped with a great soundtrack from Future World Music (their track Dreamscapes and Wishes forms the musical accompaniment), flawless editing and great timelapse sequences, this is one of the best ‘adverts’ for visiting Japan I have ever seen!
This fascinating time lapse video show the A1(M) in the United Kingdom. There was an overnight bridge demolition between the towns of Darlington and Dishforth but the road had to be reopened in time for the morning traffic. Will the road workers make it in time?
This was filmed as part of the M1 motorway upgrade scheme when the UK Highways Agency (Yorkshire and Humber) closed the A1, North Yorkshire between Junction 60 (near Darlington) and Junction 49 (Dishforth). It all took place on Saturday 9 April and Sunday 10 April 2011
HDR may not to be to everyone’s taste but you have to admit it has been put to stunning effect in this short time lapse movie of the exceptional protestant temple in Zeliszów, Poland. The chapel was designed by Karl Langhans and built in 1796-1797.
The film was made by Patryk Kizny who is the lead filmmaker at LookyCreative. This is HDR pushed to the point of looking like animation. Personally, I love it even though I must acknowledge that it is not to everyone’s taste but an incredible technical achievement. If this has wetted your appetite then you can see the making of movie below.
If you have ever pondered the mysteries of Photoshop and reflected to yourself that one day you would sit down and learn its intricacies, then don’t watch this: it will make you sick with envy.
This is the first time that London based artist Olof Storm has captured the whole process of creating an artwork in Photoshop. You will see Harrison Ford as Decker slowly but surely appear on screen in front of you (well, perhaps quickly but surely is the best expression here).
Whether or not you are a fan of Blade Runner we are pretty sure you will like this - a lot.
On top of that the incidental music from the movie by Vangelis just adds to the overall effect. Go on admit it – as well as being in awe at Storm’s talent with the brush, blur and layering, you are just a little bit jealous too!
Can you capture an entire region of a country in a few minutes? If the answer to that is no then this is the closest I have seen anything come to it. Filmmaker Ben and friends were in central Spain for five day, a region full of history and culture.
The Goths, the Romans and the Moors all left their mark here. This is where Don Quixote fought against the windmills and where El Greco, Diego de Velazquez and Francisco de Goya had their homes.
It is an extraordinary two minutes of film and had me completely entranced – to the point where I know where my next holiday really should be. If you are wondering the music is The Dewberry Tree by John OO Fleming.
Terje Sorgjerd – a landscape photographer from Norway - spent several weeks shooting the phenomenon that is the aurora borealis. Here, it is captured in all of its glory at Kirkenes and Pas National Park bordering Russia. At 70 degree north and 30 degrees east and with temperatures around -25 Celsius Sorgjerd insists that it was all good fun. Rather him than me!
However, the results are amazing. This is quite a spectacular piece of time lapse video work and rivals anything that I have seen on various science programmes, even those produced by the hallowed British Broadcasting Corporation. It captures the aurora in all of its breathtaking beauty and – a definite plus – puts them alongside one of my favourite movies soundtracks, Now We Are Free from Gladiator.
Short, but perfect. Go full screen and take it all in.
Katowice is one of those cities that many, unless they live in Poland or the surrounding countries, have perhaps vaguely heard of but could not give much if any detail about. That’s a shame because this city, home to two million people, is really a pretty cool place. So it was with something approaching delight that I came across this amazing time-lapse footage of the city made by Velour.
It does get off to a slowish start but hang on in there – by the time you get to forty seconds you really begin to get a feel for the place. This film not only allows you to get a great impression of the city it is filmed in a kind of tilt shift manner which renders its inhabitants as small as ants.
Katowice is a center of culture, science, transportation and business in southern Poland and is located in the historical region of Silesia. It is slap bang in the middle of the largest conurbation in Poland and owes its size mostly to the development of mining and metallurgical industries in the in the nineteenth century. This time-lapse video shows the variety of architecture of the place as well as its busy, bustling nature beautifully. Enjoy!
Kuriositas is based in the UK (as you may or may not know but do now) and recently we have had the coldest December on record. What that meant was snow - and quite a lot of it. Yet every time we have a spot of inclement weather in the UK the whole country grinds to a singular and sudden halt. True, some areas were badly hit but nothing quite as bad as this.
Here is forty seconds of timelapse footage of the blizzard which has brought a large amount of the USA to a standstill. It covers a period of about twenty hours and was shot by Michael Black in his garden in New Jersey. The equipment used (if you care to know) was a Canon DLSR on tripod with remote timer taking a photo once every five minutes.
So if you are in the UK (and responsible for traffic, roads, rail or air) take a look at this - this is what real snow looks like. Goodness only knows what would happen if there was this amount of snow falling in the UK. The government would probably tell us to seal our houses and burn all the books. After all, they will have seen the best instructional film around, The Day After Tomorrrow.
As we near the end of another year it is more than easy to scratch the head and wonder where on earth did it all go? It only seems five minutes since we were preparing for the beginning of 2010. With that in mind, this excellent time lapse shows a whole year in just one hundred and twenty seconds.
Now it takes some patience, time lapse - when it is done in a studio at least you can control the environment. This is the view from a house over the course of a year and it really must have taken superhuman patience (certainly of the kind which I do not possess) to painstakingly put this together.
Hats off then to its creator, Eric Solheim. If you want to find out more about how this amazing footage was put together then head over to his website where the full story is waiting to be told.
This is a stunning piece of film. The city of Paris is gorgeous from any angle - and this short film sees it tilt shitfed and time lapsed to the extreme.
There were four cameras used on the day, however most of the footage is from two that the film makers had positioned on top of a building on the Champs Élysées
The film follows a military march - perhaps Bastille Day? It is amazing how you can see the swarm movements of the soldiers: around the three minute mark you can see waves propagate in the group because the front row suddenly stops. Extremely cool.
It was shot using Canon 5DMKII cameras, set on continuous mode. It is surely one of the best examples of the technique that I have ever seen. Bravo!
Tom Lowe is one talented guy. The Astronomy Photographer of the Year has been shooting his debut film ocer the summer which is to be calles Timescapes. The video above contains some moments from the film and it looks absolutely astounding.
Envisaged as a modern portrait of the American Southwest it was shot using Canon and Red MX cameras. If the above is anything to go by we are in for an amazing treat when the film is released.
The skill and patience it must have taken to create these shots (particularly the time lapse) is immense. Lowe has a unique vision and very much the artist's eye. He takes the every day - and potentially mundane -and injects magic in to it. He has the ability to re-awaken and re-ignite our love affair for this world and a mans imagination to actually capture it.
I have to admit - I get out quite a lot - but this is one of the most stunning pieces of time lapse movie making I have ever seen. In other words, I kid thee not. Put simply, this is amazing and the camera work is incredible - the camera pans out and along while the film lapses (probably not the technical term, but you get what I mean).
It takes to the desert vistas (with some small visits to civilsation) of California, along Highway 395 but does take the occasional sojourn in to Arizona along the way.
Some of the clips are long or hyper lapse as they are known which is a technique which is catching on in the world (yes there is one) of time lapse photography. It is the creation of Dan Eckert who is a photographer of great experience (it shows) and who says that he has have designed camera mounts for cameras that haven't been made yet.
If I wasn't able to see superb quality when I see it, I could have taken a look at the masses of comments that have been left on Mr Eckert's Vimeo page where this video has its home. So, sit back and take a journey through the wilds of California and Arizona...
Arria is the new sculpture by internationally renowned artist Andy Scott which was recently installed on the A80 near Cumbernauld in Scotland. This time lapse video, shot over twelve hours, shows the gradual installation of what many are calling The Metal Mermaid but who goes formally by the name of Arria. It looks as if the Scottish weather did its best that day, but the sun does eventually appear - which is the best weather in which to see this amazing ten meter high four armed diva, welcoming people to the locality.
Made of galvanized steel, this should ensure that Arria glints in the sun for many years to come. It is certainly a more attractive sight than Anthony Gormley's latest, Exposure, over in Holland. Love her or loathe her, at least she isn't performing a bodily function!
Hayaku means Hurry Up in Japanese but we suspect that once you take a look at this stunning time lapse film of Japan you will want to go, make yourself a cup of tea and soak this in again and again.
Created by film-maker Brad Kremer this works on so many levels but is in essence a homage to the country.
It was shot around many locations through Japan during the summer of 2009 and as well as taking in the more typical subjects of Japanese time lapse, the bustling cities and their throngs he takes us to the majestic countryside to watch the sun rise and set. See for yourself whether you agree that it captures the country in its duality of tranquility and inexorable momentum.
If you are Japanese or know the country you will spot Tokyo, Matsuyama, Imabari, Nagano, Gifu, and Ishizushisan among other places. In essence the film is a declaration of love to Japan.
This seven minutes of filmic heaven captures the essence of the many faces of Japan. The film is the beginning of a much larger project planned by Kremer, who directs, shoots and edits his films. This is a preview of what is to come, as it were. All we can say is... Wow! What a preview!
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