Hypnotic Macro Timelapse Combines Flowers, Ice, and Ink for Stunning Results

Montreal-based art director Christopher Dormoy has created one of the most hypnotic timelapses we’ve ever seen. It’s called “Black Ice,” and it combines ink, ice, flowers, and creative macro photography filming techniques to produce something truly stunning.

“Black Ice is a personal project I worked on during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic and the confinement,” says Dormoy. “I wanted to play with ice, flower and ink and see what kind of universe I can created with the macro and motion timelapse technique. I spent many hours to observe and experiment the ice and how it react with liquids like ink but also, oil, paint and soap. Some effects are hypnotic and surprising.”

Dormoy tells PetaPixel that the 3 minute and 48 second video is the result of about 4 hours of real-time footage captured over the course of two months using 19 flowers and a whole lot of ice, ink, and creativity.

The effects you see are the result of literally injecting warm ink into the ice using syringes, and some of the more dynamic shots were captured using the popular Laowa 24mm “probe” lens, because it can go where other lenses simply can’t, and it’s water resistant to boot. Additional footage was captured using the trusty old NIKKOR 105mm f/2.8 macro lens, and all of the footage was shot on a Nikon Z6 mounted onto various Edelkrone motorized sliders and panning heads.

Here’s a closer look behind the scenes:

The resulting footage is absolutely hypnotic, there’s no other word for it. It’s the first time we’ve seen someone combine all of these various ideas into one: timelapse, macro photography, frozen flowers, and ink-in-water all captured together to produce something quite beautiful.

Check out the full video up top (headphones and full screen recommended), and if you like what you see, you can explore more of Dormoy’s exceptional work on his website, Instagram, and Vimeo.

Image credits: All photos by Christopher Dormoy and used with permission.