Sumptuous Barcelona time-lapse: Half a terabyte of photos, 100 subway rides—and it’s worth every one

 

 

We've linked to quite a few cool time-lapse videos on the Imaging Resource news page, but a new Vimeo Staff Pick uploaded last week has to rank among the best -- and quite likely, the most labor-intensive. Alexandr Kravtsov spent no less than three months shooting the Catalonian capital of Barcelona in northeastern Spain, and the result is truly sumptuous.

According to Kravtsov, the video was assembled from 480GB of source material, and no less than 24,000 photos. Along the journey to capture it all, almost 100 subway rides were needed, a camera was broken, and a flash drive -- presumably along with the photos on it -- was lost. And as you might expect from those huge numbers, capture was just the beginning: Kravtsov sums up the subsequent post-production experience as having consumed "countless hours", and that sounds to us to be a masterpiece of understatement.

Plenty of de rigeur pan and zoom effects help to focus and retain your interest, but it's the city of Barcelona itself -- famous for its architecture -- along with Kravtsov's keen eye for an interesting subject that really captivate. Watch the video for yourself below, and we think you'll agree.

Want to see more of our favorite time lapses? How about one year of nature compressed into 40 seconds, the surprising beauty seen by an Antarctic ice-breaker, or a rare southern aurora in the night sky over Death Valley?

(via Vimeo Staff Picks)