Iceland Time-lapse Photography

This beautiful short time-lapse film was shot during the Icelandic Midnight Sun in June of 2011 and has become a recent viral video garnering over a million views in the last few months. The midnight sun is a natural phenomenon occurring in the summer months north of the Arctic Circle and south of the Antarctic Circle where the sun never fully sets and remains visible 24 hours a day. Take a moment and enjoy:

On this project, Joe Capra traveled around the entire island (some 2900 miles) in only 17 days; shooting photos the entire time only stopping to sleep in his rental car and eat when there was a free moment. He shot an incredible 38,000 individual photos during this time period and chose the best sequences for this film.

Iceland during the Midnight Sun is in sort of a permanent state of sunset. The sun never full sets and travels horizontally across the horizon throughout the night, as can be seen in the opening shot and at the :51 second mark in the video.

“Iceland is absolutely one of the most beautiful and unusual places you could ever imagine. Especially during the Midnight Sun when the quality of light hitting the landscape is very unusual, and very spectacular. Iceland is a landscape photographers paradise and playground, and should be number 1 on every photographers must visit list.” – Joe Capra

If you want to take a peak into his mobile working environment on the trip, he offered this behind the scenes clip. I hope he had some jam or sandwich fixings to put on his sad loaf of bread :)

In his post-production efforts, these clips failed to make it into Midnight Sun video you saw above for various reasons. Scenes from the cutting room floor:

Equipment Used in This Production:

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