Clouds pour over jagged ridges, shadows sweep across pale rock walls and the sky turns from pink to deep blue in seconds. TIMEDRIFT II is filmmaker Martin Heck’s time-lapse portrait of the Dolomites and the Italian Alps of South Tyrol, the second part of his landscape series under the Timestorm Films name.
Set to Max Richter’s “Dona Nobis Pacem 1”, the film gathers sequences from repeated trips into one calm, flowing journey through some of the most recognisable mountains in Europe.
TIMEDRIFT II: how the time-lapse was made
Time-lapse works by taking a photograph at fixed intervals, often every few seconds, and playing the frames back at normal video speed. Hours of slow change, such as cloud building in a valley or sunset light climbing a rock face, collapse into a few seconds of visible motion.
Heck’s Vimeo notes list the kit behind the film: Sony A7s, Sony A7R II and Canon EOS 6D cameras, with Canon 11–24 mm, Zeiss Milvus 35 mm, Canon 70–200 mm f/4 and Canon 24–105 mm f/4 lenses. Many shots also move. A Dynamic Perception Stage One slider and eMotimo and DP NMX motion-control units shift the camera a fraction between frames, adding a slow glide that gives the mountains depth.
To tell the two kinds of motion apart, watch the foreground against the distant peaks. When the camera moves, nearby rocks slide against the skyline. When only the weather moves, the solid shapes stay locked together while clouds and light change around them.
The Dolomites, a UNESCO World Heritage Site
The Dolomites were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site on 26 June 2009. The property is made up of nine separate mountain areas covering 141,903 hectares across five provinces of north-east Italy, with 18 peaks rising above 3,000 metres. The range as a whole spans Veneto, Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol and Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
What makes these mountains look so different from the rest of the Alps is their rock. Much of it is the remains of Triassic carbonate platforms, fossilised reefs and atolls that grew in a tropical sea more than 200 million years ago and were later pushed up into towers, pinnacles and sheer walls. The pale stone glows pink and orange at sunrise and sunset, which is exactly what time-lapse photographers come for.
The range and the mineral take their name from Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu (1750–1801), the French mineralogist who first described dolomite rock.
Peaks and passes to know
- Marmolada, 3,343 m: the highest summit in the Dolomites.
- Tre Cime di Lavaredo (Drei Zinnen), 2,999 m: the three famous rock towers that just miss 3,000 metres.
- Piz Boè, 3,152 m: the highest point of the Sella group.
- Pordoi Pass (2,250 m), Sella Pass (2,244 m) and Giau Pass (2,236 m): high road passes that put drivers, cyclists and photographers right among the peaks.
Tips for shooting your own mountain time-lapse
A first sequence needs far less gear than TIMEDRIFT II. A sturdy tripod, a camera with an interval timer and a strong foreground are enough. Pick a stable composition with a clear mountain outline, then let the weather do the work: passing cloud, fog lifting from a valley or the last light on a ridge.
Shoot in manual exposure so the brightness does not flicker, and allow plenty of time. At one frame every five seconds, an hour of shooting gives about 30 seconds of video at 24 frames per second. The high passes are open roads in summer and the best places to start; in winter, check pass closures before setting out.
For still photographs of the same mountains in snow, browse Laura Wagemakers’s snowy Alps views. For another artist who gives clouds a leading role, explore Andy Lee’s Patagonia Dreaming photographs.
Related reading
- Highline Hammocks in the Italian Alps: The Work Behind the Picture
- Giuliano Mauri’s Tree Cathedrals: Architecture, Growth and Open Sky
- Gran Paradiso National Park: Wildlife and Alpine Landscapes
- Lago del Predil: A Julian Alps Lake with a Story
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