Featured Photography Videos

Photographic Stop motion experiment: Bokehlicious

Posted on May 5, 2009

I’m always looking for new ways to create cool things with my photography. Last week I saw a couple of really sweet photographic stop motion video of NYC by Cdow and an experimental series of Japan by Dave Lee.

I thought it would be cool to try an experimental photographic stop motion video of Vancouver at dusk highlighting moving bokeh. So I took a late night drive from China town to Kitsilano and snapped a ton of photos using my Canon Xti with the LensBaby composer & heart-shaped aperture disk. I compiled 300 images at 10fps in Adobe After Effects and then edited it with FCP.

I was a bit disappointed with the compression once I’d uploaded it on Vimeo, but it still looks pretty cool.

Lisa Bettany is a world renowned photographer, travel writer & tech entrepreneur. When she is not capturing the beauty of the world or making iPhone apps, she enjoys flying small planes, reading books about Spitfires, hiking in the mountains and drinking tea.

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  • Aaron
    May 5, 2009 at 5:29 PM

    Pretty cool Lisa!

    How did you manage to capture the images while driving? mount a tripod, handheld? cable release to fire off shots?

    something different and interesting

  • John (Fee501st )
    May 5, 2009 at 5:31 PM

    Wow, awesome effect! Great work!

  • josh knepper
    May 5, 2009 at 5:52 PM

    That was fun!

  • Teymur Madjderey (icedsoul photography)
    May 5, 2009 at 5:53 PM

    nicely done! love the effect of the aperture disk.

  • Frank
    May 5, 2009 at 5:59 PM

    Nice footage. I thought Vimeo had a volume dial, I cant find it. The highs are a tad shrill, in my opinion.

  • Yan
    May 5, 2009 at 8:03 PM

    Looks pretty sweet to me. Great work!

  • Anne
    May 6, 2009 at 1:48 AM

    I think it looks pretty cool, especially with the bokeh effect. Wouldn’t have guessed it was stop motion using actual photos, by the way…

  • Fred Hill
    May 6, 2009 at 8:01 AM

    Very cool. I have been playing a lot with bokeh as well lately. I think someone needs to upgrade to the 5D Mark II soon…. :)

  • jasonlmoore
    May 6, 2009 at 10:17 AM

    Very cool Lisa, nice work!

  • f1crazed
    May 6, 2009 at 12:55 PM

    That’s amazing Lisa!

  • Nate
    May 6, 2009 at 7:49 PM

    Nifty, I might try one of Boston.

  • elijah
    May 6, 2009 at 11:02 PM

    pretty AND cool.

  • kyke
    May 8, 2009 at 11:09 AM

    I want to do something like this, maybe the next week i´ll do my own photowalk starting 6am & finishing at 17hrs..

    but how can put the pictures in the video?

  • Adarsh Pallian
    May 12, 2009 at 12:14 PM

    Ahhh… i love photomotions… take a look at this: http://vimeo.com/2845917

    Read how I made it here: http://www.pallian.com/2009/01/15/the-making-of-christmas-jingle/

  • kyke
    May 12, 2009 at 2:02 PM

    @Adarsh Pallian:

    Thanks Adarsh, i´ll try!

  • Dave
    May 17, 2009 at 12:12 PM

    Beautiful. I wish I still lived in Kits, or Canada for that matter.