News Time-Lapse Systems: our 2016 round-up – part one

With another year almost gone and with 2017 in sight, it is a perfect time to look back at 2016 and what the last 366 days (almost) have entailed for the team at Hideaway Studios Time-Lapse Systems.

Once again, it has been a very busy year! As our previous round-up features have shown, the kinds of projects that we undertake increasingly diverse range of clients we work for continues to grow. As has our skill set, with more new staff brought into the team in 2016.

New year, new faces

In the past 12 months, we have welcomed many new faces to our dedicated, highly skilled workforce. We have appointed several staff members in the roles of editing, web development, camera management and engineering, and will be further expanding our expertise in the near future.

You can learn more about two of this year’s appointments in a news article published in May, available on our website.

Online presence

Talking of our website, this year has also seen some significant developments in terms of our online content.

Designed and created entirely in-house, these developments include the launch of our brand new Time-Lapse Systems website in July, along with its most recent additional feature – a dedicated London services microsite.

To add to these enhancements, we are also in the process of rolling out our new online viewing platform – iRis 3.0 – to all our clients.

We continue to populate both our Time-Lapse Systems website and our sister site for Hideaway Studios Group with fresh and regular content, delivering a combination of subject-specific news & information, as well as broader blogs & features about photography and image-capture technologies.

Popular online features

Our most popular blog post of 2016 was a short informative piece about our time-lapse work at Watford Football Club stadium for one of our long-term clients, GL events.

Launched in August, our Friday Feature series aims to spotlight some of our videos from the Time-Lapse Systems archive. Featuring a new video each week from our Vimeo and YouTube channels, the series documents everything from prestigious projects in London, special events and one-off gigs, to all sorts in between.

One of our news articles that remains noteworthy in terms of its content and popularity provides a report on several of our projects that have required innovative methods of installation. Spotlighting some of our most challenging installations to date, sometimes the unique nature of each project demands that we think outside the box.

Whether installing from a 35ft cherry picker, a cage suspended over central London, or finding fixing positions in church bell towers, we continue to push the boundaries in terms of our time-lapse and site monitoring solutions.

Some more of our favourite blog posts from this year include:

• Photography firsts – taking a closer look at some of the firsts in photography history.
• The GIF – exploring the increasing popularity of the imaging format across multi popular culture platforms.
• Life in the round – discussing the growing desire to capture the world around us in the same way as we see the world around us.

Clients old and new

As a reflection of our ongoing commitment to building partnerships with those we work for, we have continued to complete projects with many of our longstanding clients, as well as forging relationships with new contacts across a variety of different genres.

Having worked extensively for Merlin Entertainment’s Legoland brand in the past, this year we worked with ISG to capture the fit-out of the world’s biggest Lego store.

Opening in the heart of London’s West End, the store at LSQLONDON – a redeveloped flagship office and retail build which we also captured – contains a 637,000-brick Underground Train and one-tonne scale-model of Big Ben!

Other London-based projects include time-lapsing at Sotheby’s art gallery on New Bond Street. Working with esteemed contemporary artist Alan ‘Charming’ Baker, the four-month capture documented preparation for the exhibition, as well as the prestigious event itself.

This year also presented more exciting opportunities in the leisure and entertainment arena, with another of our long-term clients, Alton Towers. To add to the extensive list of jobs we have completed at the resort, 2016 saw our team take a trip down the Congo River Rapids to capture Alton Towers’ first-ever 360° video.

And we have been up to so much this year we have had to split our round-up blog into two! Click here to read the second part.