Mauna Loa Time Explorer: A Small Timelapse Project

Shot over the course of four days and two nights on Mauna Loa, Hawaii. There’s an immense amount of beauty in this barren land. So many shapes and colors in the rocks and some of the best skies in the world for seeing the galaxy. And of course it wouldn’t be complete without the amazing view of Mauna Kea.

Shot using Revolve Camera Slider and Alpine Labs Radian.
Sony A6000, Sony A5000, Rokinon 12mm, Sony 16-50mm, Sony 55-210mm.

 

Original Idea

My original idea for this project was to composite people into timelapses. I filmed myself standing and walking in different areas and also made a timelapse from the same shot. It did work out and I was able to composite the real time video into timelapses in Adobe After Effects. What didn’t work out was the video quality of the real time sequence. The 1080p video from my camera was very sub-par compared to the crisp timelapses processed from RAW files.

 

Decision

I spent a month being disappointed deciding what to do with this project. I decided to go through with it even without those scenes. I went through all my timelapses and meticulously chose the best ones to make it in the final video. My brother made the wonderful soundtrack for this project. I think the jazzy track was a good match for the variety of scenes I captured.

 

Fun

This is just a fun little project that helped me improve my workflow and gave me ideas for bigger projects. It’s a way to capture my experience hiking on the mountain and finding many interesting locations. There is a lot of different lava flows on Mauna Loa. There are flows that are very old that have a brownish red color with many trees and plants coming up. There are recent flows that are black and reflect light from the glass in the rock. There are crumbly flows, smooth flows, caves, hills, and just a ton of places to explore.

bts-mauna-loa

Shooting a timelapse and eating dinner before it gets too cold!

 

Far-Away maunaloa

Shot this panorama on the first night in July right after my Milky Way timelapse finished.

 

Persaids-Shower maunaloa

This one is from my second night inn August during Perseid Meteor Shower. An unforgettable night!

 

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