Weekend Workshop 2015

Oh what fun it is to be on Timelapse Weekend Workshop! Yay! We did it again and each year is just getting bigger and better. Although we are suppose to max this weekend at 20 people we were kind of forced to accept more people to join as so many wanted to join in the past but just couldn't. Some people have actually waited 3 years for this opportunity...
Read on to find out why it's just so popular!

So, just like all the other times the convoy departed from the Petroport at 12:00 noon and everyone made their way to Nylstroom. Of course the first stop would just have to be at the most famous biltong place - Plek van die Vleisvreters Biltong Deli Yes, we pretty much cleaned out the place and thankfully they had plenty of biltong, droëwors, chilli-bites and Cabanossi's. From there on it was off to the wood-stop filling up on supplies for the upcoming braai's over the weekend.

Pitching tents and setting up camp is always priority number one on arrival for we don't want to waste any valuable shooting time at sunset. As soon as everyone is settled in, the dolly demo and shot planning starts. Joe talks us through the steps on choosing intervals, the best apertures, exposures and what not. After this talk everyone is ready to have a go at timelapse whether you have done it before or not. What a beautiful night it turned out with the moon lighting up the landscape and stars reflecting in the water...

On Saturday everyone started shooting as early as they could manage to get their eyes open. Some started in the dark and others only stumbled out the tents when they noticed there's a coffee pot brewing. If the desire to shoot a timelapse is not enough, Nolan's coffee sure will do the trick! We always keep things casual and let everyone shoot where and what they like. Some time in the morning there is casual tutoring sharing the know-how's on how to shoot timelapse, using filters, dollies, pan-tilt heads and all the rest of it. This was also where Francois came into the picture to demo his new products from Motion Wise. This will all be available to buy through TimeLapse SA. The SCYO Dolly name will change to the Oryx (still the same dolly, just now being manufactured by Motion Wise) and some other NEW products Francois has been working on over the last 2 years. This includes the Suni (pan-tilt head) and Oribi (rotator head). There is also a brand new controller called Ezi-lapse. All of this was launced on the weekend and will be avablibe for purachase from TLSA's site, under the products menu.

Once the informal talks were completed we headed down to the dam for some more shooting and a proper demonstration of what this dolly with the Suni and controller is capable of. Joe gave a nice task to Francois which involved some linear and pan movements as well as a nice slow focus pull. Everyone else also started firing away as soon as the opportunity came up. There were loads of cameras scattered all over the place. Hopefully no one ventured into someone else's shot by accident! It's bound to happen with such a large group of people though ;-)

We had some interesting and unpredictable weather again but not as extreme as some of our previous weekends. The clouds and sunsets were breathtaking as usual and of course we had some rumbling in the clouds with a few drops falling through the night. We had a great bunch of people from various walks of life all adding to the fun and adventures of these timelapse weekend workshops.

Special thanks to everyone for joining us on the 2015 weekend workshop! You all have added to the memories of this outing and the timelapse community sure is growing! We're happy that so many of you had all kinds of photography fun playing with different lighting techniques and reflections, even though it wasn't all hard core timelapse. As long as you had fun and learned something we're over the moon!

Remember about the Timelapse SA channel on Vimeo. If you don't have an account already, just create one on Vimeo and upload any of your sequences onto Vimeo. Then you can drop us a message in the Shout Box so that we can feature your timelapse.

Do check us out on Facebook and Twitter (Joe / Jonelle) and follow us on Instagram. The latter is the best place to get first hand previews of all the BTS and travel stories of our timelaspe trips such as our latest venture to the Karoo. We also share info about other workshops and a whole lot more on the various social media platforms.

With a filled up guesthouse and maxed out campsite it surely was another memorable weekend!
Perhaps next year we must do a true reunion?

Oh yeah! You probably want to know about the t-shirts too... Well, here it is!!
If you are interested in owning a TLSA t-shirt, be sure to pop us a mail with your preferred color and slogan. If the interest is big enough we might just get around printing enough to sell. So do tell everyone!!

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