High-Res Timelapse Captures Hotel Fire at The Address in Dubai

Photography Tips  •  Time-lapse Photography

Even though 2016 has barely begun, we’ve already got a candidate for this year’s most beautifully horrific video: a tremendously detailed, high-resolution timelapse of a frightening blaze that erupted in a five-star Dubai hotel on New Year’s Eve. The video is well done, but it also portrays such an abjectly horrible image, that we expect you to have some mixed feelings while watching:

The trouble began on the 20th floor of the Address Downtown Dubai, which was completed in 2008 and boasts more than 170 rooms. A few curtains allegedly caught fire in one of them, leading the blaze all the way to the ground. As CNN reported, the staff acted calmly and quickly, and only a few guests sustained minor injuries; many in the city even turned their backs to the inferno to watch the city’s famed New Year’s Eve fireworks, with more than a little irony.

Meanwhile, several kilometers away, Ukrainian timelapse photographer Kirill Neiezhmakov was watching the whole thing unfold with his Canon 60D and 70D cameras. He’s had some experience shooting hyperlapses of the futuristic city before, but this was something different—so he held his shots firm until he had about two minutes of footage, and the result is mind-blowing.