Storm chaser and photographer Mike Olbinski has been cranking out incredible time-lapse videos for a while now — this is the third one we’ve covered on Digital Trends. Yet, despite his large body of work, with six Vimeo Staff Picks under his belt, his latest release would make one believe he is just getting started. Titled Pulse, the all black-and-white film takes a dramatic turn form his previous videos and is somehow both more dramatic and more relaxing at the same time.
“Storms are full of color. The blues, the greens, the warm oranges and reds at sunset,” Olbinski writes on Vimeo. “But black and white speaks to my soul. I love it. There is something when you remove the color that lets you truly see the textures, movement and emotion of a storm.”
Pulse was not created from new footage, but rather represents a compilation of shots Olbinski made on past storm-chasing adventures. Whereas his previous films had each focused on a single type of storm, like monsoons, Pulse mixes and matches various types of extreme weather together. It is also a bit slower than his usual work, with a soundtrack rich in bass that runs like a heartbeat under the video.
Available in 4K, the video was output from still photo time-lapse sequences captured on the 50-megapixel Canon EOS 5DSR and 22MP 5D Mark III. Lenses ranged from an 11-24mm wide-angle up to a 135mm telephoto.
While the footage itself was not new, it still looks strikingly different from Olbinski’s previous work. In Adobe Premiere, Olbinski rerendered all of the clips in black and white and went with a wider aspect ratio than he had used before. “It actually feels like it brings you in closer to the action, almost like you were standing right there with me,” he says. For the full effect, we recommend watching the video full screen and with headphones on.
