My 5 Best and 5 Worst Timelapse Projects of 2022

What a year 2022 was! International travel finally returned to some sort of normality and the wearing of masked was gradually reduced.

It was a big year for me as I wanted to make up for the lack of activity in the previous years.

I managed to get to some amazing locations, mostly within the Middle East region, and captured a lot of footage include time-lapse videos.

In this video I’d like to share some of my experiences from the past 12 months, including my 5 best and 5 worst time-lapse projects of the year. What made them great to work on including the efforts made to get to certain locations, and why some didn’t turn out as expected.

Also, there will be a couple of special mentions including some experimental projects I had the opportunity to try.

So let’s get in to it!

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First up it’s the Edge of the World view along the Tuwaiq escarpment, west of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.
This place is developing as a great tourist spot and has an amazing view especially at sunset.

However, my attempted time-lapse sequence didn’t quite go according to plan. Firstly, I was way too late setting up, bad choice of composition and simply, not a very interesting scene.

In 5th place for my favourite time-lapse projects of the year is the view across the diplomatic area of Manama in Bahrain.

At first I thought this would end up in the bin as there were so many technical issues and things that went badly wrong, including these floodlights that unexpectadly turned on after sunset.

However, this ended up becoming a time-lapse tutorial that I put together, detailing how I managed to salvage the entire sequence. So far it’s done reasonable well on YouTube.

The 4th worst timeless of the year has to be Hatta in The United Arab Emirates.

Hatta is in the eastern region of the country near the border with Oman. It is a very mountainous region in contrast to the desert regions further west.

I was hoping for some dramatic scenery but unfortunately, it turned out be quite bland. No clouds, bad composition and fairly uninteresting surroundings.

The 4th best time-lapse of the year was the work I did at the Saudi Arabian Founding Day celebrations at Ithra budding near Dammam.

This was the inaugural celebrations of a new national holiday introduced by the government in 2022.

I did 5 or 6 different time-lapse sequences around the building, all while it was still busy with visitors. I wanted to try and capture a sense of celebration with lots of people moving in front of the camera with a fairly slow Sutter speed.

I ended up selecting this sequence as my favourite. I used pixel motion blur in After Effects to try and smooth out the people moving and also to reduce the amount of flicker from the spot lights. I think this helps draw more attention to the video projections on the surface of the main building that were looping continuously.

My 3rd worst time-lapse of the year is… The view facing the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. It’s a really amazing spot with the sunset in the background and this nice water feature that reflects the building.

So nice that it attracts many tourists and instagramers. I thought I had a perfect spot, but unfortunatly, there was a relentless stream of people walking past my lens.

Too many the end to edit out so this project was eventually binned.

My 3rd best time-lapse of the year goes to… The Thee Ain Village in the Al Baha region of Saudi Arabia.

In the south western region Saudi is mostly quite mountainous which makes it a great place for adventure and photography. The Thee Ain Village is an ancient heritage site that dates back to the 8th century, and has been restored and preserved by the Saudi government.

I actually had a lot of technical issues to deal with in post production, similar to the time-lapse I created in Bahrain.

In the end it turned out to be another tutorial video that I put together detailing how I managed to remove this annoying flickering light, that almost ruined the entire sequence.

A special mention goes to the time-lapse project I did when visiting the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia.

Usually this place is considered off limits to non-muslims and westerners. Therefore, I had to be carefull with my choice of content creation.

I managed to get a hotel room that was almost in the perfect position opposite the southern side of the Mosque. I thought that this was probably my best chance to shoot a day to night style flow motion time-lapse sequence. I used 3 different lenses, the 15-35, 28-70 and 70-200 with the Canon R5 and R6 cameras. The title of the project is ‘Religion Never Sleeps’ and the idea was to show worshippers continually passing through the mosque throughout a 24 hour period.

So not a perfect project due to the constraints involved but also a really good experience and huge learning curve producing this type of work.

Another mention goes to my time in Positano on the Amalfi coast in Italy. This was the first time I managed to fly the new DJI Mini 3 Pro. There are so many amazing views along the coastline and interesting photographic opportunities. However, it was during the evening when I decided to try a hyperlapse from the accommodation I was staying at. It wasn’t perfect and also wasn’t a disaster. Thankfully the drone made it back safely as I was flying over a residential area. But this was my first experience of creating a hyperlapse using a drone.

Moving on to my 2nd worst time-lapse of the year…

This has to be the Elephant Rock site in Al Ula, north western Saudi Arabia. This is huge sandstone outcrop that was gradually formed to look like a standing elephant.

I’ve visited a few times, and every time I end up with an incredibly underwhelming time-lapse sequence. I’ve taken some really interesting photos around this area but never managed to capture the incredible scenery in a time-lapse. I tried on several occasions some at sunset and some at night but the this sequence was bad compositionally, bad weather and not enough happening within the scene to make it interesting.

The 2nd best timelapse of the year goes to… The view over the Treasury in Petra.

There are several viewpoints overlooking the main attraction, but the best is a self guided hike through the main site passed the amphitheatre and Royal Tombs, turning right at the Palace Tombs. Then there is a set of steep steps that will take you up and over the mountain back towards the Siq walkway and overlooking the Treasury rock carving.

The viewpoint is actually under a tent that is maintained by a local Jordanian who serves tea, coffee, juices and will help you will photo tips. We stayed here for almost an hour along with many other tourists. In this time I managed to create a few time-lapse sequences at various different angles.

The view can be fairly dangerous, especially if there has been significant rainfall, so bee careful if you plan to visit. Had to hold the strap of the camera at all times to prevent the camera from falling over the edge. Anyway, it was a very worth while effort hiking all that way for an amazing view.

My worst time-lapse of the year and absolute epic fail goes to… Stargazing at the rock towers of Gharameel.

This is another place in Al Ula, western Saudi Arabia. The weather was quite bad at this time which meant that stargazing and any astrophotography was difficult to achieve. Anyway I set up the camera to see what I could get and the whole thing was a waste of time. The foreground was out of focus and the cloud cover blocked out the nights sky. It’s a great area though for photography so probably worth another try in the future.

Now here’s my favourite time-lapse sequence of the year and it’s not in the Middle East.

When arriving in Positano on the Amalfi coast you’re basically treated to a real life postcard display. Everywhere is a picture in this amazing region of Italy.

Because of that very reason this area has had a lot of attention in recent years. An army of instagrammers and YouTubers decend on to his region every year, with social media totally saturated with the same type content and viewpoints.

I wanted to find a different view, something that few others had attempted. So from researching the area I found Le Tese di Positano viewpoint that overlooks the entire town. The hike would take well over an hour trekking up some very steep steps and over some rough ground. It was extremely hard work but worth it for the views along the way, something that wouldn’t be possible if driving to the location.

The location sits 700 meters high above Positano on the cliff face right above the main town.

I managed to arrive just in time for sunset, so set up the Canon R5 and RF15-35 and used my Custom setup for Auto Timelapse, a technique that I developed with the new Canon mirrorless cameras and have used on almost all of my time-lapse sequences throughout the year.

I used this technique as time was short, the sun was setting very quickly and it helped to speed up the overall set up.

What made this time-lapse most satisfying is that the view was almost exactly as I had imagined it, also the hike was so long and tiring it was so amazing to be rewarded with such a great view and piece of work at the end.

So that rounds up the best and worst of my timelapse projects of 2022.

Thanks for viewing this far, it’s appreciated, please hit the like and subscribe buttons for more of my content. Hopefully 2023 is just as rewarding as last year.