Copyright © Mike Valentine –   Movie Skyline Capture (edited in TangledFX App on iPhone)

Movie city skyline shots are used as an almost mandatory method to set the mood for opening scenes and usually involve dramatic skies or twinkling reflection off steel and glass. This was a stationary time-lapse shot with clouds moving across the screen. It’s always tough to shoot the television without getting unwanted artifacts or pixelation. To soften that, I often edit out some sharpness and move toward painterly using my favorite apps. Sometimes backing up and shooting several times to catch a precise moment.

It’s also a challenge to avoid reflections in the television screen from the window or lights in the room. To avoid those, I sometimes shoot the screen at an angle and then correct the distortion in an app before the final edit. In the end, the final photo illustration looks quite unlike the actual filmed piece and captures a single moment that may have gone unnoticed or certainly unstudied in the motion footage.

It’s quite a process, but one that is very Zen for me.