When visiting Cape May for my 30th birthday, I left my camera at home with a dedicated focus on rest and relaxation. That said, I did bring the DJI Spark I’d been dying (but too nervous) to fly. I gave it a whirl and, upon returning home, quickly realized I couldn’t just let the footage lie. I needed to create some sort of video just to play around with my newfound love for aerial videography. The thing is, I had absolutely zero videos — even on my iPhone.
But I did have photos. Live photos, to be exact.
Since live photos record the scene 1.5 seconds before and after the photo, they’re basically recording footage; I just had to figure out how to access it. While much trickier than it should be, I uncovered the full three-second clips to put together a fun, informal video of my 30th birthday weekend. If you’re looking to cobble together some informal clips — or have footage in your live photos you’d love to incorporate in your films — here are three quick ways you can use live photos as footage.
1. Use your Mac’s Image Capture feature
While this is hardly the easiest of options, I personally find it the most efficient when I’m doing a bulk footage upload. Connect your phone to your Mac with an Apple-approved cord (off-brand cords almost never work).
Once you’re connected, find “Image Capture” in your Applications tab. This is more of a back-end way to access the files on your iPhone (a huge time saver when you’re trying to transfer bigger movie files). From here, it’s pretty simple: Find all the live photos you want to download as movie files; click the .mov files and drag them to your desktop or preferred hard drive.
2. Export from Photos
This is a great, cord-free option for exporting your live photos as video files. It’s also pretty simple. Once you’re in your Mac’s Photos app, click on your photo(s), followed by file > export > export unmodified original. The unmodified original file is .mov, which — voila! — gives you a three-second video.
3. Use Google Photos
Of course, after finally figuring out my Mac’s live photo to video features, I stumbled upon Google Photos’ capabilities — and… wow. Their platform not only lets users download live photos as movies; it also offers stabilization features to help these often rough three-second shots look cleaner and more polished.
Should live photos replace video?
Simply said: no. Yes, the fact that I was able to make a one-minute video out of just live photos (plus some trial drone footage) still amazes me. I always overshoot as it is, but realizing I was overshooting without even knowing I was overshooting? That’s my kind of footage safety net.
But live photos are hardly on par with true footage. In the future, if I have even an inkling that I’ll be creating a video for, say, a weekend getaway, I’m going to capture iPhone video versus live photos. The iPhone’s video capabilities are pretty incredible — think variety such as 24fps or 60fps, not to mention 4K! — and I would have loved to be able to slow down the footage in post or crop in on certain frames (while retaining quality).
Of course, at the end of the day I didn’t go to Cape May to shoot a birthday film. I went to celebrate my birthday, and just so happened to be lucky enough to leave the shore with a handful of three-second “movies” that will help me remember this milestone weekend forever, in photo and video form.
Cape May Birthday Celebrations from Stephanie Vermillion Studio on Vimeo.
Feature photo by Tom Sodoge on Unsplash
