Those Pesky Times Square Pedestrians
Two Tuesdays ago we were contacted by an art director who needed a custom day|night translight of Times Square. One caveat was that the deadline to be on set was Jan. 5th, a tight production schedule. The second caveat was there could not be any people or cars in the image. The third caveat, the forecast was predicting an inch and half of rain for Thursday and Friday. This all meant we needed to shoot the very next day. Thankfully we were winding down for the year, had nothing going on, and a Wednesday in Manhattan is always a great time. So off I was to 42nd street the next day.
In most locations, we can always count on a few periods where there will no people in the scene. Times Square, as you can see in a rough proof above, is not one of them. So for this location we instead had to capture several images of all angles needed for the panorama. This allowed us to layer them in post and replace where there are people and cars in one layer with a cut of the same location from another that was clear. This is a tedious exercise to say the least.
Fortunately there is a slow down in Times Square during the lunch hours, so it was not too bad. Now the next hurdle, capturing the night image free and clear of cars.
Sunset at this time of year occurs right at rush hour, and 42nd street is a major thoroughfare in Manhattan. The street would be packed at 5 PM, not to mention the exposure would be 10 seconds at this time. I was fully expecting to be there until 8 at night to capture the six slides I needed to create the night panorama. Luckily for us, 42nd street happens to have a traffic light in the middle of the block for some reason. Every 8 minutes or so this light would turn red just as the light at the intersection became green, allowing the street to clear out (see right). I only had enough time for one exposure each time this happened, so it did take 40 minutes to get all of the captures. However, we were done and packed up by 6, which was fine by me.
We spent about two days working on the backdrop in post production clearing up the block, straightening the street, adjusting color/exposure, and getting it past legal (a topic for another blog post). It was approved and into our printing queue by end of day Monday. Although the shop is closed over the holidays, this will be printed first thing in the New Year to be on set by the 5th.
