Kodak Tower Lit by 2,800 People with Flashes and Flashlights

For their 32nd annual Big Shot nighttime community photo project this year, the folks over at RIT decided to light the iconic 19-story Kodak Tower skyscraper at night… by hand… with the help of 2,800 volunteers holding flashes and flashlights.

The two photos above show what the Kodak headquarters in downtown Rochester, New York, looks like normally when photographed at night (left), compared to what it looks like with a huge amount of handheld artificial lighting (right). Standing at 366 feet (111.6 meters), Kodak Tower is the 4th tallest building in Rochester.

The organizers and a crowd of about 2,800 volunteers gathered together in front of the skyscraper at around 8pm on September 18th, 2016. The participants pointed their flashlights and fired their hand-held flash units at the building while photographers shot photos using various photo processes, from a wet plate collodion camera, to dry plate, to film cameras, to a digital Nikon D810.

Here’s what the tower looked like from the ground while being illuminated by volunteers:

This is what the lighting looked like from observers high above:

And here are the resulting photos that were shot using the 2,800 handheld lights (with some extra support from 24 Profoto B1 flash units):

You can explore this latest Big Shot project and previous ones over on the official website.

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Image credits: Photographs and video courtesy RIT Big Shot, Kristine Boworth/Nikon and Matt Yeoman. Images reproduced with permission