cities

Photographer Captures the Neon Beauty of Kyoto at Night

Photographer Xavier Portela’s shots of Kyoto, Japan, at night give a newfound appreciation for the neon charm of the city. Propelled by his vision to articulate and illustrate the various sounds, temperatures, and pulsating electricity of bustling cities, Portela’s images stir the imagination and set stories of intrigue and possibility adrift.

The Photographer Who Shoots Wildlife in European Cities

Bristol, UK-based Sam Hobson is a wildlife photographer with a difference from others: he primarily shoots wildlife that he can find in and around cities: foxes, badgers, deer, toads, squirrels, herons, ravens, pigeons, goshawks, falcons, gulls and others.

This Photographer Walked Over 2,200 Miles in the World’s Biggest Cities

In 2015, photographer David Gaberle walked over 2,200 miles (3,600 kilometers) through some of the world's most metropolitan areas, photographing people in cities such as New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sydney, London and Seoul. He's now turning this project into a book titled Metropolight.

US Working on Rules for Flying Drones Over Populated Areas

The FAA has been scrambling to come up with appropriate rules for multi-rotor camera drones since the flying machines took the world by storm a few years back. And while the first set of proposed rules were revealed a little over a year ago, it seems a US Government committee is already working on a very important update.

Photographer Blends Day and Night by Compositing Photos Shot at Different Hours

The idea of ‘average’ is strange, especially when it’s put into real-world situations and memories. The places most familiar to us change on a daily basis, even if it’s just the slightest bit, but when we look back, our brains piece together this conglomeration of what we’ve seen over the days, months and years to create a familiar, cohesive memory.

It was a similar line of thinking that inspired photographer Wolfgang Hildebrand to create his strangely chaotic compositions of city streets.

10 Best Cities for Working Photographers in the US

You carry a camera everywhere because you just never know when something or someone worthy of having its picture taken will appear. You also work plenty of weddings and events, or you may be a photo journalist for a newspaper. You are a photographer, and are always on the lookout for beauty. But what makes a city good for a working photographer? While it’s important that there are plenty things to photograph, these statistics are equally relevant as well.

Cardboard Cities: Incredibly Detailed City Scenes Made of Cardboard

Just look at the above photo. It looks like an extremely well-lit photo of an abandoned wasteland in the middle of some old town, doesn't it? Well, while that might be what it's depicting, that isn't what it is. It's cardboard. All of it.

Titled Cardboard Cities, this collaboration between set-designer Luke Aan de Wiel and photographer Andy Rudak is sure to make some jaws hit the floor.

Handmade Diorama Maps Created Using Thousands of Printed Photos

What you see above is a "map" of Paris created by collaging thousands of photographs shot in the city. It's just one of the amazing pieces in Japanese photographer Sohei Nishino's Diorama Map project. The series contains maps of many of the world's most famous cities, and all of them are photographed and collaged by hand.

Exploring and Photographing the Sewers of Major Cities Around the World

Last year, New York-based guerrilla historian, urban explorer and photographer Steve Duncan gave an 18-minute talk (seen in the video above) to the audience at TEDxPhoenixville. Duncan spoke on his motivations for going deep into the underground infrastructure in major cities around the world, peeling back layers of a city to see and document things that are hidden to people above ground.

Photos Showing the Strange Similarities of Human Cities and Human Neurons

In the side-by-side images above, the photo on the left shows a city as seen by astronauts on the International Space Station, and then photo on the right shows a photo of a neuron imaged with fluorescence microscopy. One is massive and seen from a grand scale, while the other is microscopic and cannot be seen by the human eye, yet they look strangely similar in their structure.

Infinity Imagined has a gallery of these comparisons of cities and neurons, showing the strange and striking similarities between the two.

Major Cities Around the World Captured in 8-Second Double Exposure Photos

One method for capturing "multiple exposure" photographs is to shoot a long exposure photograph of a scene with your camera pointed in different directions while the shutter is open. Photographer Nicolas Ruel uses this concept in an ambitious project that has taken him around the world. Titled 8 Seconds, the series features famous cities around the world (e.g. New York City, Tokyo, Beijing, Barcelona) captured in surreal multi-exposure photographs.

A Time-Lapse of Canada and England, As Seen Through a Snow Globe

Freelance filmmaker Colin Mika scored a viral hit last year with his time-lapse video of Los Angeles shot through a snow globe. This past November, Mika created a followup video as a holiday Christmas card on behalf of Canadian law firm McCarthy Tétrault. He visited six cities across Canada and England: Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Québec City, Montréal and London.

Starry Nightscape Photos of Major Cities Around the World

German photographer Jakob Wagner is a master of nighttime cityscape photography. For his series titled Nightscapes, traveled to various countries all over the world, shooting gorgeous images of urban environments that are teeming with points of light from buildings and cars.

Glimpses of World War 2 Seen Through Photos of Modern Day Europe

After collecting old World War 2 photographs taken in major European cities, Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov spent a year traveling around Europe to re-photograph the same scenes as they look today. He then carefully combined the old images with the new ones to create photographs that show two views of the same location captured over 60 years apart.

Satellite Photographs Showing the Rapid Spread of Humans Across the Earth

2008 marked the first time in history that more of Earth's population lived in cities rather than in the countryside, and by 2050 nearly 70% of the world's population will reside in large cities. A new series of satellite photographs captured decades apart by NASA's Landsat department and the U.S. Geological Survey offers a striking look at how human cities have spread across the face of the Earth in just a few short years. The image above shows Las Vegas in 1984 and in 2011.

Post-Apocalyptic Photographs of Major Cities Around the World

Silent World is a project by Paris-based artists Lucie & Simon that shows post-apocalyptic views of famous locations around the world. All but one or two of the people in each location are removed from the scene. Rather than use multiple exposures and compositing the images to remove moving objects (e.g. people and cars), they chose to use a neutral density filter -- one that's normally used by NASA for analyzing stars -- in order to achieve extremely long exposure times during the day.

Long Exposure Photos That Capture the Hustle and Bustle of Big Cities

Metropolis is a project by photographer Martin Roemers that consists of long exposure photographs that show the bustle and chaos of large cities.

Specifically, I’m looking at the small stories of the street vendor, the commuter, the passer-by, the market stallholder and other pedestrians, who populate the street or are a part of the traffic. Despite the megacity and its mega-commotion, their environment still maintains a human dimension. I present this by photographing busy locations from above. Moreover, every photo has a long exposure time so that the big city’s vitality is shown through the movement of people and traffic while the image literally focuses on the small story in question. Every megacity is a theatre and every city has a different stage and different actors, but in the end every single one of them is trying to make its way in today’s modern society. [#]

The project was awarded 1st prize in the 2011 World Press Photo competition in the category "Daily Life".

Jaw-Dropping Time-Lapse Shots of Earth

Between August and October of this year, the crew onboard the International Space Station used a Nikon D3S (at high ISOs) to capture photographs of Earth as they zipped around it at 17,000mph. Michael Konig then took the footage and compiled it into this eye-popping time-lapse video showing what our planet looks like from up there.

Living Pictures: Photo Collages of Windows Spotted Around the World

Photographer Anne-Laure House photographs illuminated windows at night in cities around the world, and arranges them into beautiful collages. She writes,

At nightfall, the windows of the flats that are lit up attract more attention than the façade of the buildings that frame them. Lit interiors become real tableaux vivants. The interior takes precedence over the exterior, and we can glimpse moments of people’s intimate lives. I am not actually interested in their intimacy as such, but rather by the space itself – the warmth of a particular light, the twinkling of a Christmas garland or the shimmering glow of a television, the corner of a painting. All these details stir my imagination and inspire my work. When I gaze at these windows, I like to tell myself a story. I capture these intimate moments and build my own structures."

The collage above shows windows seen in New York City.

Time-Lapse Strolls Through the Streets of Famous Cities

Ask a photographer to shoot a time-lapse portrait of a city, and they might choose a number of famous locations to photograph with a fixed camera. Photographer Jesse Kopp, however, prefers to stay at the ground level and photograph what it feels like to actually be roaming around the streets. He visits famous cities around the world and creates time-lapse videos out of photos taken while walking from landmark to landmark. It's an awesome way to get a feel of what each city is like (the video above shows Paris).

Incredible Photos that Capture Day Turning into Night

For his project "Day Into Night", photographer Stephen Wilkes set up a 4x5 camera with a 39-megapixel digital back 40-50 feet off the ground in a cherry picker, and photographed the scene throughout the course of one day. Keeping a constant aperture, he adjusted his shutter speed to compensate for the position of the sun. Afterward, the hundreds of images captured were edited to roughly 30-50 photos, and then seamlessly Photoshopped together to show a gradual transition from day to night.

Unusual Uses for Potholes in Large Cities

Husband and wife photography duo Davide Luciano and Claudia Ficca have a project called "Potholes" in which they stage unusual scenes around giant potholes found in large cities (e.g. Montreal, NYC, LA, and Toronto). The project started after they collided with one such pothole and needed a way to channel their frustration into a positive project, transforming something useless into something humorous and creative.