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.
A True Day|Night Backdrop With the Summer Moon
With so many going on vacation, getting the last days down the shore before the kids go back to school, the end of summer always slows dramatically. With some extra time on our hands, this makes a great occasion to produce personal and stock work. So when all of the factors for a true day|night landscape fell into place this past September, I jumped at the chance and headed over to Valley Forge National Park to set up the camera.
Usually when producing a landscape, we generate the night version from the day since so many conditions are needed for the true night version. First, you can not have any wind, all day, since this would ensure the day and night will not line up due to the vegetation moving. Not to mention, wind would also create motion blur in the longer night captures. Next, with no sources of light, you require a full moon to keep the exposures from getting ridiculously long. Even so, five minutes (times eight captures) is average for a full moon night shot. Weather not only needs to be good, but cloud free to ensure the moonlight is not obscured. Last, you have to wait until two hours after sunset, when the sky turns black, before capturing the night images.
I arrived around 4 PM to set up and start capturing the day version. However the light was very harsh at this time, so I ended using a variation captured just after sunset, at 8 PM, for the day image. It was not until 10 PM that I was able to start the night captures, which took about 45 minutes. When I got back to the studio the next day, I had the two images below.
As you can see, the skies were not ideal. I had the obvious orange hue in the day image that occurs at sunset, and the indigo sky with star streaks you get with long exposures at night. I opted to replace both skies; the day with a blue gradient and the night with stock.
Even with the conditions being ideal, we did get some movements of leaves and such with it being most evident in the foreground. So I created a night image from the day and blended in them together just to ensure we had perfect registration from day to night.
At this point the night version was coming together but still needed some final touches. The image was a little muted, so I painted in brighter patches throughout the field and in the distance. To give some life, I added a touch of smoke above the chimneys and an orange glow around two of the windows in the old farm house. Last, I evened out and added a slight gradient to the sky, giving us the image below.
Although we could certainly take this further, such as adding in a couple of oil lamps to the path or perhaps a campfire over the hill, giving it more nuance, I opted to end here and move the image into the stock catalog. After all, we can always add those items in at the behest of the client.
Brushing Off the Rust in Pittsburgh
Just before Thanksgiving we had the opportunity of working with a new crime drama taking place in the Rust Belt. Now that the show is expanding into its second season, new filming locations are being added, creating the need for new sets and, most importantly, backdrops. So it was off to Pittsburgh for a couple of days.
As with any drop, we had to solve a couple problems, first deciding on how to deal with the many electrical wires just outside the location. Initially the team felt it would be best to shoot from a scissor lift in the street using a super wide lens, however doing so would make it impossible to have a matching day and night image. Not to mention, the street in the edges would be more compact while also having extension distortion. So in the end we decided to shoot from the window and remove the electrical poll and wires in post.
Thankfully the building was under construction and we had access to the entire second and third floor. This allowed us to capture additional images from a few different locations and heights, greatly helping with the retouching.
Additionally, we were looking across a parking lot with nothing to break up the vanishing lines. Typically it is best to avoid vanishing lines whenever possible since they draw the eye to the backdrop. In this situation, we choose to warp the center of the image a bit to force the street and building lines to be less angled. We also removed the white fence in the distance and the rear portion of the grey house, which helped a lot in obscuring the effect.
Last, we touched up some of the leaves on the ground and de-saturated the background a bit for a wintry feel, removed a few cars, logos and political posters, and turned the construction site a less distracting grey.
Altogether, the retouching took about a week to complete, and then it was off to the press. Printed at 20 by 60 feet, the drop is now hanging on set ready for filming.
The Swamp
On a road trip down to Myrtle Beach this summer, I decided to take the back roads of South Carolina looking for stock images. Lucky me, I found a classic horror movie swamp scene in Lake View. We did not have time to wait around 9 hours for sunset, so we generated the night version from the day shot, which is what we have to do anyway with a scene like. Here is the transformation.
Night from Day Landscape
Although we always strive to captured the actual day and night version for our translights, often with landscapes without any sources of light at night and a lot of greenery we generate the night version from the day. With out any artifical sources of light, a night image can come out looking flat, dark and dull, not to mention it would be almost impossible to ensure all of the leaves and branches would line up for the print.
Below is a video showing how we recently turned a day image captured on the Forbidden Drive in Philadelphia into the matching night version.