California is the most populated state in the United States, and the third largest. It’s almost double the size of the United Kingdom and slightly larger than Japan. If it was it’s own independent country (as it was briefly for a few weeks in 1846), it would have the 8th largest economy in the world by GDP.
It contains the highest summit and the lowest desert in the Continental United States (and the second-lowest point in the world), both of which are in the same county.
It’s most known for movies, technology, wine, and national parks, but also grows more than a third of the vegetables consumed in the US, two-thirds of the fruits and nuts, and an unknown but presumably huge percentage of marijuana.
It contains every major climatological biome except tundra. More important than those facts, to me, is that I was born and spent most of my life here.
My goal was to cram all of the visually stunning things about the entire state, from coastline to mountains to deserts, from cities to wilderness and national parks, into four minutes. I intended to use as a pitch for work from the California Board of Tourism, but now I’m sharing it publicly.
The average clip took 1-3 hours to film and another 3-10 hours to edit. Several cuts are from clips more than 24 hours long. I shot 423 clips over four years to make this, but the majority of the 67 clips ultimately used were shot in the last 12 months.
The music is “Intense Rocks” by Sebastian Watzinger, licensed from Audiosocket.
Most of the individual clips are available for license via Getty Images, Dissolve, or directly. Many of them feature in the Magic Window timelapse screensaver for Mac.
