Editor 's note : This story is part of the iReport Weekend Assignment project , in which the CNN iReport community takes on a special skills challenge once a week . Last weekend 's challenge was to create a time-lapse video that told a local story . This weekend , we 're making mini cooking demonstrations . Head to CNN iReport to join the fun and learn a little something while you 're at it . Time was , if you wanted to make a time-lapse film , first you had to build a machine . In the late 1920s , John Ott was an American high school student with a passion for photography and a lot of time on his hands . He wanted to capture apple blossoms unfolding over time on film , and he knew he needed to take frequent pictures around the clock , even while he was sleeping or away at school . So he wired together a kitchen timer , a camera , a paper clip and a pull cord , and voilà : Photos taken at regular intervals over time and sped back up revealed the beauty of the blooming flowers to the naked eye . Ott went on to become a pioneer of time-lapse photography , filming incremental changes in flowers and insects , and helping to pave the way for scientific research that still today gains insights from slowed-down views of biology and the physical environment . Time-lapse is a photographic technique that captures images much more slowly than normal video but plays them back at standard speed , which condenses long periods of time into a relatively short video . It 's like `` slow motion , seen from the perspective of eternity , '' says Richard Misek , a film professor at Bristol University in England who is writing a history of time-lapse . ( See Misek 's iReport time-lapse of a busy Melbourne lunch . ) When John Ott wanted to experiment with time-lapse , he had to build a contraption , but today 's inexpensive digital tools make it easy for almost anyone to give it a try and share their results with the rest of the world . All you need is a camera on a tripod , an idea and a healthy dose of patience . And a folding chair , recommends Raphael Rodolfi , an iReporter who took part in a time-lapse challenge on CNN iReport last weekend . Someone has to sit with the camera while it 's filming an extraordinary sunset or clouds moving slowly across a sky . See iReporters ' tips for trying time-lapse . Dozens of people shared their first time-lapse attempts on CNN iReport last weekend . Jim Dourney , who shot a day in the life of a busy Florida inlet , said he found time-lapse `` surprisingly easy to do . '' Simple instructions for using the movie-making software that comes standard on may computers are just a Google search away . Maarten Toner runs a group dedicated to time-lapses on Vimeo , a video sharing site popular among filmmakers and creative photographers . It 's a wildly active group , where inventive new time-lapse videos from across the world pop up every few hours . When people first pick up a digital camera and want to try video , `` slow motion is the first thing you do , '' Toner says . `` Time-lapse is the second . '' What 's the draw ? It 's simple to make magic . `` I think people are really surprised by the effect , and then it becomes an addiction . '' Another attraction , says artist Keith Loutit , is that in some ways , time-lapse brings back some of the wonder of analog photography . `` When people turn a camera on and it 's firing away , there 's a real wonder about what 's going to happen . People are so used to looking at the back of the camera now . '' But with time-lapse , you do n't see the result until you get back home . Loutit is a photographer whose work uses time-lapse and tilt-shift techniques to turn the real world into what looks like meticulous animation . His `` Bathtub IV , '' a piece shot over three months in Sydney , Australia , tells the story of a helicopter rescue at a busy beach . He was looking to cast a place he knows well in a different light . When iReport asked its community to try time-lapse as part of a weekend assignment series , several participants remarked that it had made them think about the places they live and see every day in a new way . See all the iReport time-lapse videos . `` Waiting in the cold with my camera made me sensitive to subtle changes in the scene I might normally have missed , '' iReporter Hannah Slagle Palmer said . ( Watch Palmer 's video of gnat-sized airplanes hopping over the Atlanta , Georgia , skyline . ) That 's what it comes down to : `` The power of time-lapse , '' Misek said , is that it `` shows you time frames that you ca n't normally perceive . When it 's at its best , it shows you the world from another perspective . ''
Digital cameras and video sharing sites give new life to an old technique . Time-lapse offers new perspective on places we see every day . iReport challenges its community to try a new skill each weekend . Next up : Teach a cooking class .