Visit Brennan Visuals’ Library on Nimia: Nimia.com/n/profile/BrennanVisuals.
Brennan Nance specializes in time-lapse photography, and he says predicting the future is one of many components of the process.
“You kind of go into [a project] trying to predict the future,” Nance said. “The first thing you have to work around is knowing your gear inside out, and the second thing is basically being able to predict the future, at least to some extent. But that’s half the fun too.”
Nance, who lives Santa Barbara, Calif., and got into the photography and filmmaking industry about five years ago, began his career in high-speed still photography after taking a darkroom photography class in high school.
“I was sitting there one day and I was developing negatives and I was watching as [the photos] came to life right before me,” Nance said. “It was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. That was really the first thing that really lit a spark in me and from there it was non-stop.”
Nance’s approach and work with high-speed still photography quickly translated to and inspired his time-lapse photography. He was motivated by the idea that there is so much to be seen in the world that humans can’t perceive with the naked eye given our limited perception of time. With time-lapses, Nance could illustrate what people were missing that was right in front of them everyday.
His time-lapses are mostly nature-based, and there are a multitude of variables that go into any particular shot: natural lighting, weather, and star and moon alignments, just to name a few. And because a time-lapse could be anywhere from four hours to three days, Nance tries his best to predict what the natural environment might do.
“It’s hard to know exactly what the sky is going to look like in two hours,” Nance said. “There are certain things you do. We have apps and stuff on our iPhones that tell us where the Milky Way is going to be at a certain time or where the moon is going to be or what time the sun’s going to rise. But at the other end of the spectrum, there are a lot of things that you just can’t control. You have to keep a million things in mind to get those really dynamic shots.”
Nance recently finished a personal project entitled California | Land of Many Faces, which is a collection of time-lapses filmed in California during a span of about 6 months. You can check out Nance’s featured collection and many other time-lapses at Nimia.com/n/profile/BrennanVisuals.
By: Luke Severn (Nimia Editor)
