A time-lapse is a unique way of capturing a long term event and condense days, months or even years of footage down to a short and compelling video.  I’m sure you’ve seen videos of food or plants decaying down to a mush or the morphing of a landscape through the seasons, the same technique can be used to capture almost anything and is perfect for capturing the construction of a building project. 

The beauty with time-lapse photography is periods of inaction can be removed, on weekends, at night or during holidays such as Christmas, they can all be extracted and the final compilation will be a smooth flow of non stop action.

Traditional cameras can be used to create time-lapses, their larger sensors produce amazing detailed results, but the physical setup would also create unnecessary challenges, needing external power supplies, waterproofing and complex mounting rigs and huge amounts of data storage.  The gain in quality would be overkill for a project such as this where the end result will be used for social media and viewed on smartphones and laptops, the compression and media player would negate all the benefits of using a high end capture system. 

Instead, I opted to use compact 4K time-lapse units, these are all in one box cameras with great quality sensors in a robust waterproof housing with battery longevity of several months.  The compact size and durable IP rating make them ideal to mount to any surface with the peace of mind they can remain maintenance free for long periods of time.

The project I had to cover was the construction of facilities in an empty warehouse, the estimated time was anticipated to be 2-3 months although in reality it took nearly 6 months to complete.

One of the main challenges is knowing where to install the cameras and anticipate the action that will take place over a given period of time. Gaining an insight into the overall construction project is invaluable to reveal the potential vantage points, and in collaboration with the project manager and the proposed timetable we planned where to install the cameras during the different phases of development, potentially avoiding anything that could obscure or dislodge them during the different times of recording.

Even with the upmost care and planning, it is inevitable there will be hiccups along the way, but with preparation it’s possible to pre-empt problems and mitigate them as much as possible. The dynamics of any construction means that timelines are fluid and the order of installation are constantly changing, and with many contractors on site it’s always possible the cameras could be unwittingly removed, covered, knocked or become permanently inaccessible.  Therefore the use of 2 cameras for each point of interest gave a varied viewpoint but also acted as backups to one another.

Although the time-lapse cameras were capable of non stop recording for several months, I committed to a refresh schedule of 1 month, to change batteries and memory cards, giving me the assurance there were no unforeseen errors with the recording facilities.  The opportunity of being onsite once a month also gave the opportunity to capture some detail footage using the drone to fly between the skeleton framework and gain unique viewpoints before all the panels were attached. The regular visits are also invaluable as the dynamic nature of the build meant schedules were changing and I could adapt the photography to coincide with the changes.

On completion of the build, I created interiors stills photographs of the final installation and further video footage showing the finished installation, which could then be married with the time-lapse photography.  The advantage of accumulating a library of media showing various aspects of the build is that it can be compiled and used in different ways. Once the build project is handed over to the client, the facilities are unlikely to be accessible again so aesthetic imagery serves as a good show point for future business development.

If you have a project coming up that could take advantage of time-lapse photography and video, get in touch to discuss the possible options.