Every day, I try to use my Sony RX100 to photograph the Vardø harbor. The camera is a perfect size to always carry on me, so I thought using it to create a timelapse would be a perfect use! There have been days it’s been too rainy, or I accidentally left it at home – but I’ve managed to get most days so far. I’ve even gotten multiple on some days as the weather up here can change so quickly, and just hours apart can look radically different!
When I go back home, I plan to take all of my daily photos and create an animated timelapse of my time here in Norway. I tried a test animation that I’ve been waiting to make for a while, first in Photoshop, to see how well it works. Back in April, I did the Polar Plunge in the Arctic Ocean in 32°F (0° C) air temperatures, jumped off the docks, and managed to capture it.
Originally I was going to overlay the shot all onto one photo to show different points in the jump, but my initial test came out poor. I had the idea the other day to give it another go, but this time as an animated GIF similar to what I want to do with my daily photos eventually. I found a nice, simple tutorial online from Ice Flow Studios from 2013 that still worked like a charm, and I got the following result. This was also when I first saw the burns on my back from staying on a heating pad too long, it’s been months, and it’s still somewhat there today!
You may notice some things wiggle around between frames a little, but it’s not too bad considering that this was without a tripod and someone just willing to help grab the moment. This method gives me new ideas for testing my original idea. I can use the same techniques and then blend the layers and tweak them as needed. Maybe I’ll give it a shot again and do some searching online later as I’m not sure how to deal with the water moving or if I even can!
With the Polar Plunge one done, I noticed that Photoshop needs a good amount of space with this method as it was chewing through the 30GB I have available on the Microsoft Surface that I have with me. Editing photos was never a use case for my Surface, so I’ll likely have to wait until I’m home before any major time-lapses. Thankfully, the images from my RX100 are so much smaller than the α7, which was used for the Polar Plunge, so maybe it won’t be an issue if I try a larger test later.
