Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado. 4k UHD HDR Timelapse

This 5 minute short film takes you to the magnificent Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado. The film was photographed in just twelve hours, from sunset to sunrise during a cold, dark and windy April night in 2019.
I was a bit late for sunset (typically me!), but managed to capture some colours in the clouds from a distance. After sunset, the clouds were lit by the new moon, creating lively shadows and clouds while still being able to see the stars. I was lucky to get a good shot of the setting moon with stars above it.
At the same time, the melting water from the snow in the mountains was flowing on top of the sand flats, and it started to freeze, which turned out to be pretty spectacular! More water came and covered the ice, and then froze again. A very special sight, together with the stars and clouds above the mountains.
After moonset, around 03:00 in the morning, the Milky Way emerged above the mountains in all its glory. The new moon was also situated in the opposite direction compared to the Milky Way, making the scene especially dark.
This was my very first attempt on capturing the the core of the Milky Way. the very center of our galaxy, I shot with two cameras simultaneously, getting both a wide angle 14-24 mm f/2.8 on a Nikon D850 and a 20mm f/1.4 on a crop sensor Nikon D7200.
Great Sand Dunes is one of the darkest places in all of the USA, with very little light pollution. It was very special to actually be able to see the galaxy with my own eyes, while the cameras really managed to capture all of its glory with only 15-25 second exposures, lenses wide open. I used a headlamp with a dim red light mode, making it possible for my eyes to adjust to the dark while still being able to place my cameras and do the appropriate adjustments in complete darkness. And, thanks to Nikon for adding lights to the buttons of the D850!
The galaxy core is only visible for a few weeks around March/April on the northern hemisphere, and then again in September/October. It is also not visible when the moon is up, and especially not if it's a full moon, and it's definately not visible if you are situated in or near any major city. This means you have to do some planning ahead to be able to capture it.
The big "star" in front of the Milky Way could be mistaken for being the moon, but it is actually the planet Jupiter, which has been in front of the Milky Way for several months. Saturn also lined up in front of the Milky Way later this year.
The beautiful piece of classical music used in this film is called "Cassini", by australian composer Scott Buckley, which has a library of songs here:
www.scottbuckl...
Hope you'll enjoy this film, and feel free to view my other time lapse movies as well, or check out my Instagram photo gallery!
/ @jorntommeras
/ jorntphoto
/ jorntommeras
Cheers!
- Jørn

[@Passion84GodAlways]

ABSOLUTELY BREATHTAKING FOOTAGE! THANK YOU for sharing this with us!

[@jorntommeras]

Thank you so much 😃👍

[@Passion84GodAlways]

@@jorntommeras Thank YOU!!! 😁😁

[@DavisYates]

Spectacular timelapses! Phenomenal work.

[@jorntommeras]

Thank you so much David, happy to hear you liked it! 😊

[@mixmastermike2128]

3:29 BOOOMMM

[@TheAdventurePortal]

Nicely done

[@jorntommeras]

Thank you so much! 😊👍

[@saunter9705]

Very cool!!! I wanted to ask if I could use 5 seconds or so of this in a video I am making? I can add a link to this one as well.

[@jorntommeras]

Thank you Tanner! I'll see if I could upload some or all of the clips to Shutterstock or simliar in the future.

[@WinslowLincoln]

Nice ... :>)

[@jorntommeras]

Thank you! 😊👍

[@teach1love]

wow. That was...amazing! Heading to the Dunes and the mountains this summer (assuming everything isn't closed). Getting a Gopro and looking forward to doing some time lapse photography. Question- for each of your segments, about how long was the camera running for? I now it is settings dependent but trying to get some ballpark ideas! Time to go look at your other videos!!

[@jorntommeras]

Thanks a lot! I was only there for about twelve hours, wish I had the time to walk on top of a dune! Camera settings were roughly 3 sec interval aperture mode during sunset/sunrise, 5-7 sec interval and aperture mode during bluehour/moonlight, 17 and 27 sec interval during darkness, manual mode, 15 and 25 sec exposure (two cameras) 😊

[@jorntommeras]

And, the camers did about 400 shots in twenty minutes during the brighter hours, and ran for up to four to five hours with the milky way, roughly 800 shots