YouTuber JeffHK has a unique niche: he’s a young mariner who lives his life at sea aboard mega container ships, and he wants to bring us along for the ride. His videos cover everything from how to join the maritime industry to how to anchor a megaship, and occasionally—and fortunately for those of us unlikely to go seabound ourselves—he creates a stunning timelapse that only someone in his position could make.

In the case of the video below, he takes us through Asian ports from Colombo to Hong Kong, during dramatic weather and stunning sunscapes, culled from about 80,000 photos and 1500GB of project files. In a particularly beautiful sequence (around 6:33), a long exposure capture of a nearly full moon causes the frame to appear like "daytime with stars in the background."

JeffHK is also very open about his process (See this clip describing what gear he brings aboard). He shot this timelapse with a Nikon D750 and a Rokinon 12mm f/2.8 lens. He would occasionally adjust exposure manually, but he left it on deck days, nights, and through all kinds of weather, admitting that this caused occasional problems like water ingress into the camera lens.

The mariner has become a filmmaker, and apparently also a poet, sharing that "Sailing in the open sea is a truly unique way to grasp how significantly small we are in this beautiful world." Thanks, JeffHK, for sharing a perspective of the world that few of us get to see firsthand for ourselves.

timelapsejeffhk
Cinematography & Cameras