Capturing the Flow of Light Blog Post:  FLOW is a continuation of Armand Dijcks experiments with long exposure time lapse. It’s definitely not what most people expect when hearing the term time lapse. The short, 26 second film is built entirely out of one single time lapse shot. The goal was not only to push various techniques further, but also to figure out a post processing workflow that does justice to the high quality and resolution of the time lapse footage you can get out of a DSLR.

The basic idea was to play with reflecting surfaces of an Audi A1 headlight in combination with the long exposure time lapse technique. To take the concept a step further, Armand Dijcks came up with a way to reveal the changing light patterns on an object, without showing the static object itself. He called it LightFlow, since it reveals the shape of the object by the way the light flows around it.

These visuals were created by some extra layering, color correction, and effects in Final Cut Pro X. The look is of these shots is somewhat inspired by the “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” title sequence: dark, oozing textures accentuated by stark highlights. This created some very interesting abstract images, some of which are only visible for a single frame in the final production.

For more on how to create these types of photographic effects and future tutorials, click here and sign up at the bottom of the Armand Dijcks blog.