Beautiful Time Lapse Video of Commuting in Edmonton’s Suburbs

With beautiful time lapses and scenery, Journal photographer Ryan Jackson has captured the different ways we commute from Edmonton’s suburbs. Learn how Canadian’s commute and follow our three commuting challengers to work in a fun way.

I spent about a week and a half on this project to wrap-up Elise Stolte’s living on the edge series about Edmonton’s new growing suburbs. I followed three commuters who get to work in different ways. Since they leave for work at 6:00 AM I had to get up at 4:00 AM each day so I could commute down to the south-end and then video them going to work. I then shot tons of footage of cars, bikes, trains and walkers getting to work.

I wanted all the images to have a certain mood so I shot everything in the morning with my white balance on Tungsten to give that cool early morning feel.

David Pritchard took part in our commuting challenge. He lives in Summerside area and typically drives the Century Park LRT station and then takes the train to work downtown. Pritchard poses for a photo before heading to work on August 24, 2011. I simply used two Canon 580EX flashes zoomed into 80mm placed to the sides of the car and pointed at his windows. I rolled the windows down to reduce reflections. I had orange gels on the flashes and the Camera white balance was set to Tungsten to make the image blue.

Kim Halmilton took part in the Journal’s commuting challenge. Hamilton usually rides her motorcycle to work downtown from her home in north Edmonton. She poses for a photo in front of her home in Edmonton on August 25, 2011. I used two speed lights placed behind her with orange gels on them. Camera white balance set to Tungsten.

Kevin Wirtanen took part in our commuting challenge. He typically bikes to work downtown from his Terwillegar home in south Edmonton. Wirtanen poses for a photo before heading to work in Edmonton on August 23, 2011.

Pritchard poses for a photo at the LRT station before heading to work.

Here are some behind the scenes images. I build an 8-foot long slider and motion controller that I used for a couple of the scenes.

Thanks to my friend Kevin Hill for helping with this time lapse scene.

Most of the time lapse footage was shot on my Canon XH-A1 video camera and then sped up 20X in Final Cut Pro X.

Here I am all setup and ready to shoot David Pritchard at 6:00 AM. This project involved a lot of preparation as I only had about 15 minutes with him before he headed to work.

This video was also my first time using Final Cut Pro X. I must say the program is pretty powerful and amazing. It makes use of all of your CPUs and has background rendering so you can just keep editing without waiting for anything. Do I like it better than Final Cut Pro 7? For some things yes… for others no. It takes a lot of time to get used to. The speed and added features are AMAZING but the complete change in interface and way of editing is frustrating. Hopefully it will get better with time.