Jesse Watson has just published a time-lapse he shot of the recent SpaceX launch. You know, the one that looked really strange, and not like any rocket we’ve seen before. However the video is of course over a much longer period of time, and shows a wider angle of everything that went on.
He filmed it from Yuma Arizona, roughly 400 miles away from the launch site. And it took quite a bit of planning:
I scouted four locations that had foregrounds to add depth to the imagery and was uniquely inspiring to my hometown. Location choices were between a favorite local hiking mountain, the Imperial Sand Dunes, or a small hill that resides in the historic downtown area overlooking the city. I ended up choosing the location that overlooked the city, partially because it was the easiest to access with all of my time-lapse gear. I used The Photographer’s Ephemeris and Google Maps to help scouting and initial line up.
I have never shot a rocket launch before, so I did not know exactly what to expect as far as exposure or precise location of the rocket in the horizon. I wanted to be prepared to capture comprehensive coverage of the spectacle. Therefore I packed four cameras and five lenses, to cover wide to telephoto details of the scene. Three of the cameras were rolling time-lapse and 1 was setup for telephoto video.
It’s certainly an interesting story, and also a fantastic video.
Watch below in the embedded player, or if that fails, it’s on Vimeo along with his story.