After we discovered Matt Molloy’s gorgeous sky series created by stacking hundreds of timelapse photos, we knew we had to get in touch with the talented photographer to find out more about his creative process. Read that exclusive interview, below, while enjoying more of Molloy’s surreal sky photos.
How many photos do you typically use to create one image?
The amount of photos I use differs depending on a few factors. The subject, weather it’s clouds, stars, myself running around in the dark spinning poi on fire, or what ever it may be, as well as the speed they’re moving. It can be anything from the time interval between shots to the overall look of the stacked image I want to achieve.
Sometimes the clouds are moving quick and there’s lots of them. If I stack too many photos from a timelapse like that, it can get a little messy. I usually try stacking all the photos from a timelapse to get an idea of what I’m working with, if it’s too crazy I’ll start taking some out and try again. I’ve also found it helps to watch them as a regular timelapse video to pick out the interesting sections. Most of the sunset stacks are around 100 to 200 photos.
Are all of the photos taken from your timelapses?
All of the photos that I have stacked are from timelapses I’ve shot. I’ve been shooting timelapses for about three years now. For every day that I don’t shoot a timelapse, I probably shoot two the next day. It’s hard to keep up with myself, but it’s too much fun to slow down.
What kind of responses have you gotten so far?
I’ve been using Flickr since 2009, around the same time I got into timelapse photography. I’ve had a great response over there and I think it’s really helped me improve via critiques, comments and inspiration from the other photographers. I just recently joined 500px and I believe that’s where Milky Way Scientist found one of my photo stacks that they shared. When I first saw the post I was thrilled that they shared my photo. I subscribe to them on Facebook, I’m a big fan of the amazing photography they post. Then I noticed the post had 12,000 likes and 4,000 shares. That’s when it seemed to go viral. I didn’t expect that at all, but I’m more than happy for the exposure.
What do you hope others get out of your images?
I hope my images inspire people to have fun and experiment. Find what you love, and enjoy it!
