Maldon timelapse garage sale

Maldon town-wide Garage Sale time lapse from ABC Open Central Victoria on Vimeo.

Once a year, Maldon holds a mass garage sale.

On Saturday’s gorgeous sunny day, 12 photographers from Maldon, Baringhup, Castlemaine and Bendigo attended a timelapse workshop with ABC Open.

Timelapse involves taking multiple photos over time, and then playing them back at high speed so that time appears to be sped up.

Time lapse photography can be shot over an hour or two like Smartphone timelapse over Rocky or a mountain bike race in Woodend, a whole day like A farmer’s harvest, over several days like Honk if you see me, or even over seven months like Asylum.

How to do a short time-lapse

The time we had allocated to take photographs was 10 – 15 minutes, so it was kept simple:

• Disable the auto-focus setting in your camera. If you’ve got a compact digital camera, it could be in the camera menus.
• If you can’t turn off the auto-focus on your compact digital camera, change the focus to a fixed point like ‘centre’.
• Use a tripod.
• Manually click the camera button every 3 – 5 seconds. Track time with your watch or phone.

If you’re planning to take photos over a long time, you’ll need to adjust your ISO and shutter speed, and work out how often to take a photo. Get instructions at Timelapse in the nutshell by ABC Open NSW Mid North Coast. 

A collaborative story

Time was of the essence. The photographers only had 20 minutes to find a garage sale, decide on an interesting way to frame it, set up their camera and tripod, and then start clicking!

Everyone packed up and set off to find themselves a garage sale, and returned with a range of terrific timelapse sequences of scenes around town.

The result is a collaborative video the tells the story of the Maldon town-wide garage sale from 13 different perspectives.

Photographer credits: Cathy and Bill McCallum, Peter and Julie Endress, David and Matthew Elliot, April and Melody Ayres-Griffiths, Barb Guerin, John Ellis, Richard Lee, Debbie Walkden, Pam Collins and Jane Curtis.

Audio interviews by John Jacobs.

Find out more about ABC Open and free workshops in photography, writing, sound and video at http://open.abc.net.au/

For more information contact ABC Open Central Victoria producer Jane Curtis on (03) 5440 1739 or curtis.jane@abc.net.au