Timelapse Photography Showing the Amazing Power of Hawaii’s Volcanoes

Photography Tips  •  Time-lapse Photography

Having photographed each of the United States’ 59 National Parks, professional landscape photographer QT Luong is no stranger to capturing the magnificent vistas of the natural world. An experienced outdoorsman, he cherishes the challenges that come with the shots that he wants to take, whether it be scaling tall mountains, traversing lonely streams, or trekking scorching sand dunes. But when he came to Hawaii to capture the beauty of its many volcanoes, he faced an entirely different kind of challenge. How does one capture the dynamic nature of the ever-changing volcanic landscape in a still photo? You simply can’t. The answer lies in doing a timelapse:

For the project, QT set aside his old dependable large-format camera in favor of something more modern. He used Canon 5D Mark II and 5D Mark III cameras with an assortment of lenses. Post-production was done on Adobe’s workhorses — Lightroom, Photoshop, After Effects, and Premiere Pro, among others. It’s a labor of love that was two years and hundreds of man-hours in the making. And the resulting video is nothing short of breathtaking.