More than just parks: tranquil videos of America's National Parks

September 24, 2015 8:14 PM

More Than Just Parks is "a project started in an effort to effect a greater awareness of the treasures that reside within America's National Parks." So far, there are four short videos: Olympic ^4K (info) // Smoky Mountains (info) // Joshua Tree (info) // Redwood (info) // the tumblr blog
posted by filthy light thief (6 comments total)

Via Presurfer, who celebrates 15 years of blogging (along with Everlasting Blort, by MetaFilter's own madamjujujive and quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon).
posted by filthy light thief at 8:19 PM on September 24, 2015

Oh, wow, the Joshua Tree one honestly brought tears. Beautiful. Thank you for posting these.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:37 AM on September 25, 2015

Thanks! I know timelapse videos are kind of played out (or overdone), but these made me miss Joshua Tree and the redwoods something fierce.

I'm looking forward to seeing more of these as they're produced in the coming months. I wasn't sure if they'd actually get to all 59 National Parks, so I figured I should just post this now.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:09 AM on September 25, 2015

I climbed a mountain in New Hampshire last weekend, and the "Smoky Mountain" video took me right back there -- even though the leaves haven't even changed yet!

Beautiful stuff.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:04 AM on September 25, 2015

wenestvedt, the leaves are changing now in GSMNP, especially at higher elevations. I'm actually a little apprehensive about this coming winter; in my ten years living adjacent to the Park this is the first year the leaves started changing in August.
posted by workerant at 1:05 PM on September 25, 2015

Nice one of Joshua Tree! Agreed on the time-lapse cliche but still an interesting way to compress a day of shadows and light down to a few seconds. (Also they used that same spiny lizard and desert bighorn in a half-dozen shots, ha!) The LAX traffic is crazy in the time lapse, too. We rarely hear the jet traffic because they're still at 15,000 feet or so, but it's one of the busier flight paths in the country.
posted by kenlayne at 10:22 PM on September 26, 2015