Apr 11, 2011

Mauna Kea - The Big Island of Hawaii - Photography and Film



Hey folks - I'm on the road again this week heading to Boulder, Colorado for a trail running photo shoot, but had to get a little Hawaii footage up as a quick preview from last months trip. 

This footage was primarily shot near 14,000 feet atop the world famous Mauna Kea.   Yes, high elevation and snow both exist in Hawaii!  My primary purpose on the big island was to knock out a bunch of epic time lapse shots of Mauna Kea, telescopes, star trails, the Milky Way and more.  As luck would have it, I had five days planned for the shoot and was skunked the first four out of five days!  (All this on a mountain that boasts clear skies about 95% of the year)  Thick cloud layers continuously gathered and vog, snow, rain and sleet pounded the top of the mountain for the first four days.  I was a bit stressed to say the least.  On the final day and night, the skies cleared and I snagged the resulting footage.  For one nights work, I was pretty pleased with the results.


*As a little warning to those visiting and shooting Mauna Kea; when you blast up the mountain from Sea level to 14,000 ft. without taking the recommended time to acclamate at the visitor center, you will get altitude sickness!   Coming from Utah, where I regularly spend time at 10,000 feet +, I thought I would be the exception to the rule, but the big Mauna Kea threw her wrath my way with a massive headache, insane amount of nausia and barely enough strength to lift my camera bag into the rental car; seriously crazy stuff! I barely held it together as I composed two time lapse shots, started my intervalometer and rolled down the winding road back to 8,000 feet to recover and get some rest for the night. My cameras survived and so did I.

More Hawaii photography to come...this is just a test clip

-Kevin Winzeler

commercial photographer and film maker

Technical info:

Equipement:
Time lapse shots were taken on two 5D Mark II's with an intervalometer. File type: Raw
Lenses: 16-35mm f/2.8 @ f/2.8, 15mm Fisheye f/2.8 @ f/2.8
Support: Sachtler Cine DSLR Head and CF75 legs (shown above)
Other:
-Glidecam HD2000
-RRS - Plates and QR clamps
Packs: Clik Elite

Post-processing:

-Adobe Lightroom 3 (Import and batch processing of all frames)
-Adobe After Effects CS5 (clip assembly and key frames at 16 bits and export to ProRes)
-Adobe Premiere CS5 (cut sequence together)

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Great shots! definitely worth the effort, and discomfort!

Kevin Winzeler Photography said...

@Cory - Some tips on software and the edit are up!

Anonymous said...

Those shots turned out great. Ezra likes watching the little time-lapse movie over and over. He keeps saying "Again?"

Red Clover said...

That video turned out very well, and I loved the music. It fit the stars.