Early photography was used for one thing: To freeze time. You've probably heard the story of how in 1872, California Governor Leland Stanford hired early photographer Eadweard Muybridge to capture still shots of a galloping horse to settle the bet of whether all four feet would ever be simultaneously in the air.
Nowadays we increasingly blend photography into time-lapse footage, with a goal opposite to freezing time: We try to blend discrete moments into fast-forwarded video, greatly increasing the speeds at which an event appears to unfold. In 30 YouTube seconds puppies turn five years older, dieters get skinnier, you go through a season's worth of outfits. As it once titillated 19th-Century folk to see something in motion frozen still, we now get a kick of seeing frozen moments advanced into rapid motion.
Here are three of the most recent time-lapse vids to catch my eye, in order of grandeur:
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