How to Create a Time Lapse from Start to Finish

As you prepare for your next outdoor field trip, are you thinking about all the creative ways you can capture a landscape image? There are some you probably haven’t thought of. In this premium video, nature photographer David Johnston takes you through the process of creating a time lapse.

Creating a time lapse helps you add that extra dimension of motion to your images. To create a time lapse, all you need is a steady tripod with a ball head and a cable release. To demonstrate, David adjusts his camera to settle on a low horizon level, the majority of the frame filled with moving clouds. He sets his shutter speed at half of a second and adjusts his cable release to expose 300 images. His goal is to capture clouds passing across the sky.

Now the editing begins. In his studio, David takes you through the next steps for how to create a time lapse. He imports all 300 images of the sky into Lightroom. He makes editing adjustments to the first image, then scrolls down to the very last image in the sequence and clicks on sync settings. Now all the edits he made to the first image will take effect on all 300 images. Next, he shows you how to export all the edited images into a folder.

To continue creating your time lapse, open Photoshop, bring up your folder, select image sequence, then select 24 frames per second for video. With a few more editing steps, you will have learned how to create a smooth time lapse showing clouds in motion.