There's something about shooting time lapses that's magical in and of itself. You set up your camera, do some mental arithmetic, press start, and then you wait. Hours. And when you finally wake up, dazed and disoriented at 3am in the morning, shivering on the desert floor, you look and what you've shot with tremendous satisfaction — or disappointment, as we experienced once when we found a completely fogged-up lens.

Here's a sampling of some of our favorite time lapses from Northern Chile.