One time-lapse to rule them all: Stunning video shows you the land of the Lord of the Rings in 4K

 

 

We've seen some cool time-lapses in our time, but this one has to be among the most visually stunning. Earlier this year, German photographer and cinematographer Martin Heck of Timestorm Films took a four-month road trip in New Zealand. (Better known to most of the world as "The place where they shot Lord of the Rings and a bunch of other cool movies.")

As you'd expect, Heck's camera gear went along with him. Specifically, he took two DSLRs -- a Canon 6D and a 550D (known stateside as the Canon T2i) -- and four lenses (Canon 24-105mm f/4 L, 70-200mm f/4 L and 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6, plus a Samyang 14mm f/2.8. To inject some motion and life to the time-lapses, he also brought a Dynamic Perception Stage One motorized slider and an eMotimo TB3 Black motion control rig.

In between all the hiking, sleeping under the stars, and -- well, everything else you'd do on a four-month roadtrip if given the chance -- Heck paused every now and again and set up his gear for another time-lapse. On his return, he assembled the results at 4K resolution, using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 and LRTimelapse, as well as both After Effects and Premiere Pro CS6.

And those results... well, they speak for themselves, as you'll see above in his video, "Awakening - New Zealand 4K". Note that this four-minute clip is just the first part in a planned four-part series. We don't know about you, but we can't wait to see what Martin has in store for us in the rest of the series!