Explore stunning time-lapse video examples from Jardene Photography’s YouTube channel, showcasing the beauty of Alberta’s landscapes through expert time-lapse photography techniques built from photographed raw images rather than continuous footage.
Black Nugget Lake Milky Way. This time-lapse captures the mesmerizing movement of stars moving across the night sky over Black Nugget Lake. Using long exposure time-lapse techniques, the footage reveals the Milky Way’s stunning arc with motion blur that emphasizes celestial movement invisible to the human eye.
Kananaskis Milky Way. Filmed with a high-quality camera and motion control systems, this video highlights the starry night sky above Kananaskis. The sequence uses long exposure to record the light of distant stars, creating ethereal scenes that beautifully contrast with the dark landscape.
Moraine Lake Time-lapse A daytime time-lapse showing the changing light and cloud movement over Moraine Lake. The video uses short exposure time-lapse to capture crisp images of the lake and surrounding mountains, with an interval carefully adjusted to illustrate the scene’s natural motion without motion blur, as short exposure work uses faster shutter speeds for clarity.
Moraine Lake Sunrise. This video showcases a breathtaking sunrise at Moraine Lake, filmed with dynamic exposure time adjustments to compensate for the rapidly changing light. The footage smoothly transitions from pre-dawn darkness to the sun rising over the horizon, demonstrating advanced timelapse techniques for day-to-night scenes, often mentioned as the Holy Grail technique.
Moraine Lake Milky Way. Another captivating night sky timelapse, this video captures stars moving over Moraine Lake. The long exposure time-lapse technique ensures the stars’ light trails are vivid, while the camera’s frame rate and exposure time are optimized for clear, noise-free images.
Moraine Lake Sunrise 2A second sunrise time-lapse at Moraine Lake, this video emphasizes the interplay of light and clouds. The use of motion control rigs allows subtle camera movements, adding depth and a cinematic feel to the footage, but stable footage is essential because unwanted movement can leave the result looking shaky and affected by vibration.
Lake Louise Blue Hour. Filmed during the blue hour, this time-lapse captures the soft, cool light just after sunset at Lake Louise. The video employs long exposure to enhance the ambient light and capture the gentle movement of clouds and reflections on the water.
Two Jack Lake Sunrise. This time-lapse features the gradual illumination of Two Jack Lake. The footage uses a sequence of photos taken at precise intervals, and a typical video is played at 30 fps, so a 10-second sequence would require 300 images to create smooth motion that reveals the day’s awakening.
Astotin Lake Sunset A sunset time-lapse at Astotin Lake, where the changing colours of the sky and water are captured with careful exposure time adjustments. The video highlights the technique of blending daytime and nighttime exposures to create seamless transitions.
Castle Mountain Sunrise. This time-lapse shows the sun rising behind Castle Mountain, filmed with both short and long exposure time-lapse to balance sharpness and motion blur, with the opposite approach used depending on the look desired; in daylight, long exposure work often uses a neutral density filter for slower shutter speeds and natural motion blur. The footage captures the clouds’ movement and the mountain’s silhouette in stunning detail.
Ghost Lake Aurora Show: Featuring the northern lights dancing over Ghost Lake, this video uses long exposure time-lapse to record the aurora’s vibrant colours and fluid motion. The camera’s settings are optimized to handle low-light conditions and capture the sky’s dynamic light patterns.
Yellowknife River Bridge Aurora Show: A time-lapse of the aurora borealis over Yellowknife’s River Bridge, this footage combines advanced motion control systems with long exposure to produce smooth, captivating shots of the night sky’s light show.
These time-lapse video examples from Jardene Photography demonstrate the best way to create compelling nature footage by combining expert knowledge of exposure time, frame rate, and camera capabilities. Whether capturing the slow movement of clouds, the stars moving across the sky, or the vibrant colours of a sunrise, these videos highlight the power of time-lapse photography to reveal the hidden life and motion in natural scenes.
For those interested in creating their own time-lapse videos, Jardene Photography’s YouTube channel offers a rich collection to explore and learn from, showcasing how to use motion control systems, adjust exposure time, and employ both short and long exposure time-lapse techniques to produce awesome footage. Creators should understand what their camera or smartphone device is capable of, including any built-in time-lapse feature and stabilization, and Apple introduced this on the iPhone in 2014. Long-term projects often rely on weatherized outdoor camera systems, dedicated hardware, and advanced software, sometimes with computer-assisted control, while some moves can still be adjusted manually and the rest automated. These examples also illustrate how software like Adobe Premiere can be used to edit and enhance time-lapse sequences for professional results.
Discover the history and technique behind each scene, from city streets to remote lakes, and see how adjusting the interval and exposure time can affect motion blur and speed, while understanding light, composition, and how to frame the subject helps deliver stronger results; HDR can also keep bright lights and dark shadows properly exposed, creating mesmerizing visual stories that are much lower rate than real time but projected at a standard frame rate for smooth playback.
Across city streets, hyperlapse is a related technique in which the camera moves across significant distances instead of staying in one place. It can achieve a sweeping walk-through effect through urban scenes, and image stabilization helps smooth the sequence.
Explore Jardene Photography’s YouTube channel for more inspiring timelapse videos that capture the essence of Alberta’s natural beauty and the artistry of time lapse photography, alongside examples such as an 8-second power station clip in Barcelona, an 18-second red dahlia opening, a 1-minute Moscow night traffic scene, a Montauk, NY Milky Way sequence from July 15, 2020, and a downtown Los Angeles hyperlapse with heavy traffic.
