This pretty incredible time lapse video reminds me at times of scenes from "2001 A  Space Odyssey" and "Blade Runner."    A sincere congratulations to director/photographer Michael Shainblum for creating something truly special and pretty magical.   I really appreciate his unique take on what has become an extremely popular field: time lapse photography.

Mirror City Timelapse from Michael Shainblum on Vimeo.

From his Vimeo description:  

When I first started Mirror City, I wanted to create a video that was completely out of the norm. I wanted to showcase something unique and artistic, which takes Timelapse photography into a more abstract direction. Mirror City is a visual story through some of the great American cities: Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. These clips were all processed from their original form, into the kaleidoscopic visuals that you see in this video. Many people visit these large cities every day, and all of these places have been shot and filmed, but I wanted to emulate these urban landscapes in a way that nobody has even seen before. I wanted to put man-made geometric shapes, mixed with elements of color and movement to create less of a structured video, and more of a plethora of visual stimulation.
The video starts off with simple mirrors and recognizable architecture, as the video progresses, so does the visual stimulation, showing the real abstraction of the piece.
I have worked on this piece for an extremely long amount of time. I have spent time mirroring images and videos for the past five years, and I have been working on this specific piece for about four months. I felt it was time to combine Timelapse photography and the simplicity of a kaleidoscope, and create Mirror City.
 

Generally speaking:  you only get one chance.

What I mean by that is:

Every time I use the word "game changer" I’d better damn well be right.    Every time I recommend someone or something:  it better be good.    For what it’s worth:  those are the standards I live by.

A few months ago I recommended Alex Buono’s "The Art of Visual Storyteling Tour" to the readers of this blog.

Last week, I was in Austin, Texas to attend his workshop just to make sure that I had made the right call, which was based on my knowledge of Alex’s work, his work ethic, not to mention his obsessive attention to detail within his presentations (to the point that if frankly bugs me!)

In Austin,  I watched Alex full of energy smack dab in the middle of his two month tour, do a "tour de force" as we Frenchies say (not quite Paris Texas, but  close enough.)

You’ll see 3 of the few of the hundreds slides he presents interspersed within this post,  just to give you an idea of some of the higher level stuff Alex goes into.

I can say without a shadow of a doubt that Alex Buono is one of the most prepared and thoughtful speakers I’ve seen,  and I would recommend you attend the second half of his workshops  if you haven’t chosen to do so already.

If you’ve missed it in your city:  fly across the country.  Literally.

To be super clear:  I have no involvement in the tour whatsoever.   Alex is definitely a friend, and a fellow Canon Explorer of light, but my interests here are simple:   I just want to make sure you don’t miss out on this opportunity as Alex is only able to do a workshop like this once every year during his 2 month hiatus from SNL in the summer.   And I know he can’t do it next summer as of now, due to a conflict.

Below is a little video that he did, that includes the MōVI (they announced they’re shipping the M10 in 30 days, and that the M5 will ship in Q4 and is priced at $4,995 earlier this week.)

Visual Storytelling Tour — MoVI Demo from Alex Buono on Vimeo.

If you don’t believe me –  below are quotes from the workshop’s students  – I asked Alex to pull some of the quotes from various social media sources to give my enthusiasm a little backup…

Below you’ll also find the remaining workshop dates –  They’ve reconfigured some things and increased capacity slightly due to demand, but don’t wait too long as most are already close to being full, and a few were already sold out prior to that increase.   If you found that your city was already full before check again, as there may be a few new seats available:

 IRVINE, CA = Saturday, July 20th

LOS ANGELES, CA = Sunday, July 21st

LAS VEGAS, NV = Tuesday, July 23rd 

DENVER, CO = Thursday, July 25th

SAN JOSE, CA = Saturday, July 27th

SAN FRANCISCO, CA = Sunday, July 28th

SALT LAKE CITY, UT = Tuesday, July 30th

PORTLAND, OR = Thursday, Aug 1st

VANCOUVER, B.C. = Friday, Aug 2nd

SEATTLE, WA = Sunday, Aug 3rd

 Here are some of those comments:

@JourneyBoxMedia: "Spent yesterday w/@alexbuono at the visualstorytellingtour.com. 1. Find a location close to you. 2. Go. 3. Make better films."

@pedropabloa: "Traveling all the way from #Venezuela was TOTALLY worth it! Thanks you @AlexBuono and the crew from the amazing VST tour!"

@KiserKarn: "Mega thanks for the fantastic workshop in DC. An old dog learned some new things!! ;-)"

@DavidCWeldonJr: "@AlexBuono’s ‘Visual Storytelling Workshop’ is worth every penny. It’s like a year of film school and 20 years in the real world, in 1 day."

@zachphillips: "Thanks so much for the incredible class today. Every detail was beautifully executed, AND I got to play with a MoVI!"

@JoshJacobs16: "Incredible day yesterday at @alexbuono’s #ArtofVisualStorytellingTour. It’ll stay with me forever. To my film friends: do this!"

@Bertitude: "Need to go ice my brain for a couple hours. @AlexBuono’s workshop blew my mind with how in depth he got."

@TrevorFWard: "My mind is being blown at this very moment. Make it stop. I can’t take any more."

@joshtheorange: "Spent an amaaazing 12 hours with @alexbuono yesterday. Best. Workshop. Ever."

“Enter the MōVI with its ability to smoothly pan, tilt or roll remotely while it’s being operated – which allows me the ability to create camera moves that are unlike anything I’ve ever seen and yet are incredibly easy to execute.  After they nailed the shot on take one, I just stood there with a dumb look on my face: “Uh…I guess we should do it again, right?” So we did another take and they nailed it again. I looked at my watch and realized that at this rate, we were far ahead of schedule which gave me the opportunity to further finesse the shot, and the luxury to create half a dozen shots instead of just one or two – and in a very rare occurrence for any of our SNL shoots – we finished ahead of schedule.”   – Alex Buono