This astonishing timelapse tracks 20,000 miles and 150 days of Wyoming wonder (VIDEO)

Photographer Nicolaus Wegner has a deep and abiding love for Wyoming, and all its natural wonder and astonishing weather. Which is why he's done two separate "wildscapes" of his state, and his most recent video is a powerful and stunning look at its natural landscapes. Shot and edited over the course of 14 months, it's a stunning love letter to the cowboy state.

On his website, Wegner lays out some of the huge amount of time and effort that went into him making the wildscape. He explains:

• 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)

That's an insane amount of storm chasing, hiking through wilderness, slogging through mountains, and just generallytaking photos. But you know what? We think the final video's worth it.

So put Vimeo on fullscreen, dim the lights, and spend seven minutes seeing the grandeur of Wyoming.

(via DPReview)