Anurag Jetly: The how and what of time-lapse photography

CitySpidey spoke with with renowned time-lapse photographer and content producer Anurag Jetly, who captures time and patience in his frames to share what his eyes behold. Jetly has worked with major lifestyle television channels as a documentary filmmaker, network producer and creative director. He has also worked with National Geographic channel on programs like ‘Mission Army’ and ‘Trapped’ in Ladakh.

The LIVE session started with a standard question: “What is time-lapse photography and what’s the science behind such shots?”

“Time-lapse photography is simply the technique of capturing the element of time,” Jetly answered. Differentiating time-lapse photography from still photography and videography, Jetly said that still photographers freeze the moment of time, videographers shoot the world in real time, and time-lapse photographers capture the element of time. 

Explaining the elements of time, he simplified the 5 elements that a time-lapse photographer captures: sun, moon, stars, clouds and the shadows. 

Jetly highlighted that time-lapsing is the technique to capture one or more of these 5 elements. He said, “While time-lapsing we look at the sky more than we look at the earth.”

He talked about how time-lapse is different from fast forwarding a video and said that time-lapsing captures the minute details. Jetly said that originally time-lapsing means to click stills after a particular interval of say 2-3 seconds.

Explaining the concept of time-lapse photography, Jetly said that if he happens to take 1 picture every two seconds and continues taking shots for an hour he gets 1,800 still frames which are then processed into a video and the resultant is a time-lapse shot. He said, “Time-lapse captures time in stilled frames.”

When asked about his journey as a photographer and his relationship with mountains, he replied by sharing an interesting instance. “I bunked college and went to the Himalayas from Mumbai just for fun in 1999, and fell in love with the mountains.”

“Since then I have been going to the mountains as often as I can and photography came to me naturally which gradually developed into the knack of time-lapse photography,” he added. 

Jetly said that still pictures didn’t do justice to what he had seen and experienced while he travelled. “So to make people feel what I have seen I started my venture in time-lapsing.”

Jetly shared his experience said that a time-lapse photographer has to face harsh weather conditions. He said that the photographers have to take care of their camera more than themselves. They need to carry enough memory cards to take ample shots to create a time-lapse video.

Viewers asked interesting questions like what equipment should be used to make a time-lapse video, the best place to learn time-lapse photography, role of editing for making video for time-lapse photography and more during the LIVE session. 

The photographer shared a six-minute short film that he created while he travelled in north India, and said that it took him 50 days to take those shots. 

Watch the full video to see how he made the video and know the answers to the above questions.