HDR, Tone-Mapping and Standard Timelapse Photography in Asylum

HDR Photography  •  Photography Tips  •  Time-lapse Photography

Drew Geraci and Drew Breese are photographers to the core. Every day they take photographs purely for the joy of it. When you spend seven months of your time shooting one project, as they did when making the timelapse video, Asylum, your dedication to photography becomes obvious. The two battled asbestos covered rooms, squatters, and ghostly apparitions to gather the nearly 35,000 individual photographs they needed to complete this stunning project made up of a combination of traditional HDR, tone-mapping, and standard timelapse techniques:

Asylum was shot using two Canon 5D Mark IIs that were paired with either a Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 II, Canon 24-105mm f/4, or a Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens. To get the pan effects, the Drews employed a Dynamic Perception Stage Zero and a Merlin Head. Once the stills were captured, the two took the RAW images into Adobe After Effects CS5.5, Adobe Light Room 3, Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 to edit the HDR photos, do tone mapping, and turn them all into a timelapse. Take a look at the video below for a behind the scenes look at how they created Asylum:

The overall eeriness the two were able to portray in the timelapse only adds to the story that is being told throughout the course of the video.

“The barebones of what we do is knowing how to tell a story, If you can’t do that then I think you missed the point.”