Stop Motion

I've been interested in photography for years, probably really since we got our first digital camera which was so much lighter and easier for me to work than anything we had before. My latest digital compact really helped spark my interest and prompted me to invest in a DSLR because I couldn't do everything I wanted with it.

I'm still getting to grips with the DSLR but I've found the best way to do this is just to play with it, along with looking at pictures I like and experimenting with settings to get the same effect. It's probably not the best way to learn because I'm not picking up on the correct terms, but it's working well for me.

One thing I've always wanted to try, but assumed I'm not creative enough to do, is try stop motion photograph. I'm sure I did try it at one point but discovered that you couldn't always get the camera to the same posiition without a tripod, so things would jump around too much.

Well, since Mr Click gave me a very funky tripod I realised that this was something I could actually try again. I do have two other tripods; a little GorillaPod one and a short one I inherited from my Grampy. My new Hakuba tripod is really adjustable and so I was able to experiment with the sort of thing I've wanted to do for so long.

I've seen stop motion videos with books before, so it seemed like the logical thing to try with my attempt, after all, I've got my bookcase right there in the living room. I took about fifty photos, moving one book each time, then edited them all together using Serif MoviePlus.

And here's the result:



If I did this again, I'd probably try to resist the temptation to watch a film while I'm doing it. The dust jackets of the books on the lower shelf are reflecting the light from the TV so they change from shot to shot. I'll also probably make sure I've got music to go along with it in the future, this was just a quick attempt to see if it could be done and so I just added the photos, next time I'll include music.

One tip I did pick up in the process was that if you don't have a remote, if you set the camera to go on a delay, you don't have to worry about the movement of pressing the button blurring the photo; two seconds was enough for the photos on my little video.

If you've had a go at this, I'd love to see what you've come up with.