Breathtaking Time-Lapse of Arizona's Monsoon Season

Over the summer, photographer Mike Olbinski spent an astounding 48 days on the road chasing storms during the monsoon season in his home state of Arizona. His epic new video, “Monsoon II,” is a captivating collection of the best of the best time-lapse footage he captured during his extended time on the road witnessing these giant storm systems. This is one time-lapse video you need to check out.

According to Olbinski’s blog post, he drove 17,000 miles over those 48 days and captured a total of 105,000 frames of time-lapse footage. Of those 105,000 frames, only 55,000 made the final cut of “Monsoon II.” The result of cutting nearly half of the total frames captured means that the video is chock-full of only the most incredible scenes of Arizona’s monsoon season.

“When I’m out there capturing footage for these films, I’m constantly thinking about the story I want to tell,” Olbinski wrote. While you can’t predict the exact footage you’ll capture and end up with on these kinds of projects, you can still generally plan out how pieces can fit into the overall story you are aiming to tell and keep refining it as you go. This balance of having a solid game plan formed before you begin and adapting to the frames you end up with is something that takes practice when doing long-term projects, but it's important so that the final production shows the best, most appropriate work that stays true to your original vision.

Ryan Mense's picture

Ryan Mense is a wildlife cameraperson specializing in birds. Alongside gear reviews and news, Ryan heads selection for the Fstoppers Photo of the Day.

Log in or register to post comments
3 Comments

Excellent job.

I saw already many timelapse but this one is sublime beautiful work

That was absolutely amazing. I love watching weather and storms, but to see it like that and then with the added soundtrack on top that was great.