The Times Square-42nd Street station has consistently ranked as the busiest in the New York City Subway system, transporting more than 200,000 passengers daily. Approximately 330,000 people pass through Times Square daily, many of them tourists, while over 460,000 pedestrians walk through Times Square on its busiest days. Times Square is one of the world's most visited tourist attractions, drawing an estimated 50 million visitors annually. One of the world's busiest pedestrian areas, it is also the hub of the Broadway Theater District and a major center of the world's entertainment industry. Together with adjacent Duffy Square, Times Square is a bowtie-shaped space five blocks long between 42nd and 47th Streets.īrightly lit at all hours by numerous billboards and advertisements as well as businesses offering 24/7 service, Times Square is sometimes referred to as "the Crossroads of the World", "the Center of the Universe", "the heart of the Great White Way", and "the heart of the world". It is formed by the junction of Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and 42nd Street. Times Square is a major commercial intersection, tourist destination, entertainment hub, and neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. After we capture the moment, including the minute or two of fireworks and confetti, we review the results, select the best of the images and painstakingly create a composite image to try to do justice to this spectacular moment. This past year we used two Canon 5D Mark II's, two Sony alpha 900's and one Pentax 645 loaded with Fuji Reala film.
Our job is to provide our client with what he affectionately refers to as "the money shot." We used to use medium-format film cameras and have since switched to digital capture. Going forward, we plan to display some of these Times Square images at the gallery as an interesting counterpoint to the fine-art landscapes we've become known for - please stop by when you are in the neighborhood. The natural landscape is changing minute-by-minute, day-by-day and season-by-season and only by paying attention to these changes can one successfully recognize and capture those unique moments. In fact, it's what we often explain to visitors at the gallery when they ask why their photos don't look the same as the ones on display.
Though the casual observer often assumes the natural landscape is static and requires no thought of timing, nothing could be further from the truth. However, both types of images have one very important thing in common: successfully capturing a unique event at a precise moment in time. And that is very true in many respects - nothing could be further from the natural world than to be in Manhattan, in Times Square perched above thousands of people counting down to midnight. Though the final image is visually remarkable, even it can't truly capture the electric energy of the event - the noise of the crowd and the performers throughout the evening - like being at a concert at the Meadowlands.Īt first glance, this assignment might seem completely at odds with the imagery the gallery is associated with: contemplative images of the natural world. I get to do a completely different kind of photography at the end of every year: an assignment to photograph the dramatic New Year's midnight ball drop at Times Square.įor over a dozen years now, I've been perched on the 4th floor roof setback of Two Times Square, looking south to One Times Square with the ball on top, along with two assistants and a bank of 4-6 cameras waiting to record the exciting end of one year and the beginning of another.