Barcelona Flow-Motion: A Fast-Moving Timelapse Film

Photography Tips  •  Time-lapse Photography

Time Lapse Network has called him the Master of Time Lapse. Rob Whitworth has a knack for turning traditional timelapse photography into innovative and compelling works of art in the form of short films that tell relatable, evoking stories. “Barcelona GO!” is one of those stories:

Whitworth combines his unique hyperlapse technique with the voices and sounds of Barcelona to create this amazingly smooth video—a result that can be best described as flow-motion.

Commissioned by the Catalan Tourism Board, he had privileged access to some of Barcelona’s most famous and historic sites, including Sagrada Familia, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Gran Teatre del Liceu, and Museu D’Historia de Barcelona.

And the whole video only took Whitworth 363 hours to complete! While he had fun roaming around the historic and vibrant city taking photos (26,014 to be exact (78 hours)), the planning, travel (75 hours), location scouting (31 hours) and post production (179 hours) process really put him to work.

Obviously a hard worker striving to take timelapse to the next level, Whitworth has made quite the name for himself with his unique hyper-lapse techniques, workflow process, and dedication.

A Breakdown of Whitworth’s Workflow

• He shoots RAW then organizes files using Lightroom or LRTimelapse. He also does a lot of work in After Effects.
• For final assemblies, when setting to music, etc., he uses either Premier or FCP7.
• The key thing, Whitworth says, is trying new things and being experimental!

Equipment Used to Shoot Barcelona GO!

• Nikon D800
• Nikon D7100
• Nikon D3200
• Nikon 10.5mm f/2.8G ED AF DX Fisheye lens
• Nikon 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5G ED AF-S DX lens
• Nikon 16-35mm f/4G AF-S VR Zoom Nikkor lens
• Nikon 28mm AF f/2.8D lens
• Nikon 50mm f/1.4G AF-S lens
• Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED AF-S VR II lens
• Promote Control

For the amateur timelapse makers out there who were inspired by this video, Whitworth believes it is possible to make it big as professional timelapse photographers.

He launched his first video, Traffic in Frenetic HCMC in December 2011. With only a handful of friends on Facebook and absolutely no following on Vimeo, Whitworth’s video still managed to explode across the web. Within three days, 700,000 people had watched it and it was appearing all over the world’s media.

“Ten years ago the professional timelapse market was very small as the costs were huge. It’s great that now with $500USD of equipment you can shoot 4k cinema quality footage. Technology has vastly improved image quality in photography over the last 10 years. It’s all pretty exciting. Imagine what we will be able to achieve in the future.”