‘Photographer Josh Owens salutes New York by turning stills into motion’: A Daily Q&A
Early in January, Josh Owens posted a three-and-half minute short called “NYC - Mindrelic Timelapse” to the Web. The video went viral overnight, and has now racked up roughly 705,000 views on Vimeo and about 76,000 on YouTube. It’s not hard to see why — using an age-old method of stitching together thousands of still images to replicate the 24 frames-per-second rate at which a strip of film runs, Owens has captured the streets of New York in a way that traditional film and video cannot (even though, ironically, it has become a film). In Owens’ work, the hard and beautiful skeleton of New York remains while impermanent people and cars become trails of light. This short will make you want to move to New York, buy a really good camera, or both. The Daily conducted an e-mail interview with Owens, who was shooting at on location in icy Rochester, N.Y.
What’s your background?
I am 27, and grew up in Rochester, N.Y. I started out with the basics in my high school darkroom, shooting black-and-white film with early 1960s Pentax 35mm cameras. Shooting a few rolls of film and not seeing your results until they’re in the darkroom, slowly coming to life, has always been a huge rush for me. Digital cameras came along and I jumped on that train, but the instant gratification of seeing the image right after you take it seemed to take the fun out of photography for me — until I discovered time-lapse.
How long have you been working with time-lapse methods?
I started experimenting with time-lapse about four years ago and quickly became obsessed with it.
It dominates my creative mind these days. I spent a week in eastern California last October, and plan on returning this June to shoot another short film. Right now I’m working on a project in Rochester, N.Y., a short film about the movement of ice on the local rivers, ponds and Lake Ontario.
How long did the New York City time-lapse take to create, from top to bottom?
I spent the entire month of November shooting in and around Manhattan, and then spent three or four days editing.
How did you do panning and stop-motion at the same time, like the scene in which the camera is on the boardwalk and pans toward the water?
This was done using a rig made by Dynamic Perception: The camera slowly moves down a rail, giving the time-lapse sequence a fluid visual movement.
How many photographs are involved?
This was shot all on Canon 5D Mark II DSLR cameras. The camera snaps a picture at a given interval, and then the stills are edited together at 24 frames per second. The New York City video is made from about 4,000 still frames.
What’s your day job?
For the last few years I have been working nights in the transportation department of a local university, which allows me to shoot during the day. Time-lapse and other photo gigs have been picking up lately, and will soon be my main source of income.
By Bill Bradley
(Source: thedaily.com)
Credit: The Daily (www.thedaily.com)
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