Dance with the clouds | Spiti Valley Timelapse

One of my first and foremost task I had chalked out in my diary before visiting Spiti valley was to learn and tryout Timelapse using DSLR. Though I had all the necessary equipments since a year now, its just found its light during the Spiti valley trip where i utilized it to the max. Creating timelapse video not only requires lot of mathematical planning and patience but also strong heartedness especially when you are back home after a shoot and later on realising that there was that one small mistake that you did which spoiled the whole sequence of images. One of the lessons that i learnt with a huge pinch of salt was that one should never forget to push the lens back to manual focus and never leave it in autofocus whilst shooting timelapse sequence.

I had initially planned for timelapse sequences involving market place in manali, camping setups, night timelapse etc. But weather, circumstances and most importantly patience required after a long day of shoot made sure i changed the plan in the very third day and boiled down to just clouds and mountains timelapse which i eventually planned to name it “Dance with the clouds” with the help of my friend’s suggestion.

For gear freaks the sequences you find here are shot with Canon 5D, Canon 50 F1.8, Canon 17-40 F4 L, Canon 70-200 F4 L IS along with a Satechi intervalometer.

For all those who are new to Timelapse, we are planning to come up with a dedicated writeup and tips and techniques for planning, shooting, processing timelapse in coming weeks which will help you discover the whole new world of seeing with DSLRs.

But for people who dont have DSLR but have a Canon P&S Camera, the cheat code is that, your camera comes with a inbuilt timelapse video mode (with limited option of 1s or 2s delay) hidden deep inside the movie mode of your camera.

Hope that you enjoyed the movie and am really looking forward to comments and critique on the effort as this apparently is my first ever TL full fledged video presentation. If you need to know anything more on the TL, feel free to drop me a comment or a mail – I will be more than willing to help you out with it with what ever little I know.