We're suckers for gorgeous time-lapse videos of our stunning city. There's something about the glorious glow of L.A.'s streetscape and budding skyline mixed with twitchy palm trees and the rolling marine layer that always elicits a loving sigh.
The latest such video to show off Los Angeles comes from Scientifantastic, otherwise known as Los Angeles-based photographer Joe Capra.
Capra shot "PANO" over the course of two years, so you'll be able to spot some time-specific moments throughout: 4th of July fireworks, the growth of the Wilshire Grand and the since-dismantled Sixth Street Viaduct. True to its name, the video was produced in a panoramic format by syncing two DSLR cameras side by side. That dual camera setup pushed the video to a staggering 10K x 4K resolution.
The video features superb shots of the usual suspects—Griffith Observatory, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Chinese Theatre, the Broad—but it really shines when its locations take advantage of the super-wide aspect ratio, like the entire above-water stretch of the Santa Monica Pier, a surreal cluster of clouds swooping across the Santa Monica Mountains and both Dodger Stadium and its rapidly filling parking lot.
According to the video's description, shooting a panoramic time lapse was something Capra had always wanted to do. "I love panoramic images and wanted to bring that look to time lapse, and I wanted to do it proper, not by faking it by just cropping the top and bottom of regular time-lapse shots," he said. "I gave it a try many years ago but was never able to get the images from the two cameras to sync properly and get the images to stitched together correctly." We'd say the results this time around are pretty top notch.
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