The nature films of Louie Schwartzberg

[Video Link] When I was at TED earlier this year, I happened to sit down next to film maker Louie Schwartzberg. He makes gorgeous nature films. I recently watched the videos on his YouTube channel. They are all stunning.

This video was shown at the TED conference in 2011, with scenes from "Wings of Life," a film about the threat to essential pollinators that produce over a third of the food we eat. The seductive love dance between flowers and pollinators sustains the fabric of life and is the mystical keystone event where the animal and plant worlds intersect that make the world go round.

• [IvonaPoyntz]

  Absolutely stunning

• [Aaron Swain]

  Fantastic!

• [Gordon Klock]

  I could spend the rest of my life just watching stuff like this,& I would never miss movies or T.V.,(for they are too cheap & vulgar a distraction by comparison)

• [Rosin Ffield]

  i find it absolutely astonishing how such images of crystal clarity and dazzling colours do STRICLY NOTHING to me, do not move me in the slightest,

  while simple images as these below send me right into space, with so much heart, feeling, warmth texture and magic to them:
  https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/384676_271710379548248_131927110193243_821576_1382973081_n.jpg
  or this:
  https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/561843_356749661044319_1803407180_n.jpg
  and this:
  https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/378859_271710269548259_964058413_n.jpg
  or my friend Stefi’s pictures:
  http://www.mo-artgallery.nl/images/schneidersDG3schneiders.jpg
   

  • [penguinchris]

    I too am typically not particularly moved by crystal clarity and dazzling colors, preferring an analog film look. 

    But there are exceptions, such as this video (and maybe 1/3 of the footage from the Planet Earth series). There is amazing artistry here – provided both by nature itself and by the cinematographer – and a degraded analog look would, well, degrade it (whereas it adds to most things, like your examples).

    This is so far above and beyond the typical crystal clear look of digital photography – which again, I agree is pretty awful – it’s almost unbelievable.

• [Charlie Visnic]

  I was lucky enough to interview Louis for the EPK of his film Hidden Beauty.  He is an amazing individual.  His cinematography is mind boggling to the point of skepticism that it isn’t 3D animated.  He has a room in his house devoted to capturing time lapse, mainly of flowers.  For the past 30 some-odd-years he has had a time lapse running 24 hours a day.