This project was created for two reasons. My love for Wyoming and all of the beautiful landscapes and wild weather it has to offer. And my interest in sharing that view with those around me. Watching the stars at night high in the mountain wilderness, experiencing a meteor shower in the lower basins, having a supercell spinning directly overhead on the high plains, watching lightning play across the hills and prairies, trying to stand up against 60mph ground blizzard creating winds in the dead of winter, all the while spending much of that time with the love of my life, my amazing and ever patient wife...that is how I quantify this endeavor.
These time lapses (and many more) are available for licensing (average $500 per sequence (depends on use, 24fps, 1080, quicktime format), all sequences are longer than they are in the video, a private gallery is available on request). Please contact me with any inquiries. At this time Ghost Kollective is the only other entity that has permission to use the sequences in the video for any type of commercial use. Please respect that.
Fun facts behind the making of this video:
- Ghost Kollective put a ton of time into making the sound track. No idea how many hours, but I'm sure it's a lot! Can't thank them enough for what they did with it. Wouldn't be Wyoming Wildscapes without such a beautiful and wild song. Please check out their youtube, facebook, and website. Bands like this need our support!
- Every single frame of this video was photographed in Wyoming.
- 14 months from first shutter click to final edit.
- Somewhere in the range of 150 days out driving, walking, backpacking, shooting, and exploring (stopped counting after the first 4 months so I'm guessing here).
- 20,000 miles driven (mostly during the storm chasing from June-August).
- 100+ miles hiked in the wilderness and back country with a pack full of cameras, lenses, time lapse gear, and a slider that really is too heavy for the mountains. Huge credit goes to my super tough wife for carrying a 5 pound battery for me much of the time. 5 pounds makes a world of difference as I was already hauling 75-80lbs. She really gave my knees a few extra years of back country fun.
- 125,000 stills taken over the entire project. There are somewhere around 20,000 photographs in the video...probably more as I doubled and sometimes tripled the speed of sequences through much of the 6:45 final length. Video runs at 24fps, 1920x1080.
- There are 75 sequences in the video...that's quite a bit for a 7 minute time lapse. ;]
- 3 weeks of burning up hard drive space processing, rendering, re-processing, re-rendering, re-processing...again and again. Dust spots are the time lapse Kryptonite, especially when using the camera gear in most of the conditions you see in this video.
- All told, 4 hard drives (6 total counting backups), coming in around 6 TB of drive space (backups...lots of backups).
- Less than a week (about 50 hours total) doing final editing, speed changes, music syncing in After Effects. Yeah I know...should be using Premiere. Next time. (no more Wyoming Wildscapes, but I have something new and fun already planned)
- Shout out to Panolapse for hooking me up with a copy of their awesome time lapse software! Wasn't able to fully utilize it due to my shooting methods during most of this project (only used in one scene in this video, the panning blue MCS shot), but I'll be switching things up to work it into my process. Check them out on facebook. Especially if you don't want to drop more cash on pan and tilt heads. Looks like a fish eye would work best for this software. Can't wait to really dig in with it! Has some other features I've not had a chance to really work with yet, but the RAW stuff looks really promising.
Thanks for reading. And if you'd like to support any future projects, feel free to buy an awesome print from one of the landscape galleries (links in the menu bar above). Not only will you be making me super happy, but you'll have an awesome and unique print to hang in your home or place of business.
- Nicolaus Wegner