Inspiring and Stunning Time Lapse Featuring the Night Skies Over Kings Canyon

You’ll feel inspired after watching Gavin Heffernan’s (Sunchaser Pictures) stunning time lapse video KINGS, taken in Kings Canyon and Sequoia national park in California. Star trails, the Milky Way and meteors paired with a dramatic soundtrack produce a truly epic and magical visual. 

We arrived on the summer solstice of June 21st, 2014 and shot for 3 days and two nights. Most night shots were captured with 25 second exposures on two Canon EOS 6D's with a variety of wide, fast lenses, including a 24mm f1/4 and 28mm f1/8. The star trails effect is created by tracing rotations of the Earth's axis, using long exposures and a freeware rendering program called STARSTAX.

Unlike the desolate deserts of shoots past, these locations were teeming with wildlife - from native trout running in the streams, to deer so tame they'd walk right up to you. Our most exciting nature encounter to date came when a big brown bear stumbled upon us as we were setting up a timelapse! (see the entire encounter in behind the scenes doc here: vimeo.com/102038182 at 2:29). This doc also includes other amazing parts of the parks we saw (Giant Sequoias etc) but couldn't quite fit into this one timelapse.

 Check out the BTS by John C. Brookins below:

Find fantastic stills from the adventure here.

[Via DIYPhotography]

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