It’s a part of New York City that few have ever seen or will ever see. Called North Brother Island, this piece of land sits in the East River, housing a piece of NYC history that has been decaying ever-so-slowly for the past five decades or so: a hospital once used to house quarantined patients from the general population of NYC.
New York City culture site Animal recently teamed up with photographer and urban explorer 2e to document the making of some photographs in his collection “Exploring Off-Limits New York.”
From Brooklyn’s Domino Sugar Factory to The UnderBelly Project, the video and accompanying story takes a look at some of 2e's not-so-legal and potentially dangerous adventures.
The NYPD should probably have stopped to think a second before they launched their #myNYPD photo contest on Twitter. Alas, they did not, and what transpired because of this lack of foresight is part social media frenzy and part PR fiasco.
Getting to the top of the One World Trade Center is supposed to be impossible, or at the very least difficult, but it seems that's not so. In a video released yesterday but shot back in September of 2013, three BASE jumpers show that they not only got up to the top... they managed to jump off with parachutes and get off scot-free until months later.
A 16-year-old New Jersey kid is making headlines today after embarrassing the Port Authority, NYPD and private security this weekend for the sake of some rooftopping pictures that ultimately led to his arrest.
My earlier article shows you what you should do with a drone and a camera; this one will show you what you shouldn't do.
Several months after model Avril Nolan sued stock photography giant Getty Images for displaying her portrait and licensing it to the New York State Division of Human Rights for an HIV-related advertisement, a judge ruled the lawsuit will be taken to court rather than dismissed as Getty had hoped for.
Sometimes, all that's required to take a standard photo and turn it into something special and unique is to flip your camera upside down. That's what artist Peter Wegner did for his Buildings Made of Sky series, which features 'skyscrapers' outlined by the New York City streets when you flip your perspective.
If the major photography awards had a "service to mankind" category, the front-runner at this point would have to be #noshittyphotos, an inventive new project that aims to eliminate lousy vacation photos by telling tourists exactly where to stand to get a good shot of major attractions.
Thanks to CES, this week has been filled to bursting with new gear announcements that are either exacerbating your Gear Acquisition Syndrome (G.A.S.) or simply exhausting you. After all, how many "world's first [this]" and "world's lightest [that]" can you take before it all starts to blend together?
So today, although we have more cool gadgets and gizmos from CES 2014 to share with you, we thought we'd start the day (well, in the US it's the start of the day...) by reliving one of the biggest parties of the New Year in time-lapse.
Media giant Clear Channel recently stirred up some controversy when it decided to flat out reject an advertising image of an American soldier embracing a veiled Muslim woman from its Times Square billboards due to its 'uncomfortable' nature.
This post is prompted by, but not exactly about, the Humans of New York project/phenomenon (Side Note: This is not an anti-HONY rant. If anything, HONY is merely the straw which broke the camel’s back).
I’ve been aware of HONY for a while as it’s been gathering steam and it’s never interested me. I’ve skimmed it a few times but each time I do, I have a gut-level reaction to it as "just another white guy photographing New York."
One of the great things about photography is that inspirational stories aren't hard to come by -- whether it's tragic circumstances that are being brought to light by a daring photojournalist or a success story about a young photographer who is just discovering his passion for this industry.
Street photographer Flo Fox's story is yet another kind of inspirational. It's a story of overcoming unimaginable adversity, and a rock hard determination not to let any of life's curveballs get in the way of doing what you love.
Photographer Richard Renaldi's 6-year-long project Touching Strangers has been an incredible success. From viral Internet fame to a full-fledged photo book that exceeded its Kickstarter goal eight times over, there's something profoundly moving about complete strangers posed together, sometimes quite intimately, on the streets of NYC.
In the video above we get a behind the scenes look at how Renaldi does what he does, and how his subjects, sometimes reticent at first, often wind up feeling at ease and connected to this perfect stranger they didn't know existed 10 minutes ago.
New York Republican mayoral candidate Joe Lhota may be running as a law and order guy, but apparently the "law" part doesn't cover intellectual property.
Turns out nine of the images used in a recent Lhota campaign ad -- an ad meant to illustrate what a mess the Big Apple used to be -- were taken without permission from Flickr users, several of whom are not too happy about it.
When we first covered Brandon Stanton and his Humans of New York project almost a year and a half ago, he had accumulated about 3,000 portraits of people from around New York City. Now that number has grown to over 5,000, and the blog that started it all has birthed a book and the kind of viral fame the Internet it known for.
The rules might say to keep your electronics stowed during takeoff and landing, but sometimes, you just can't help yourself. And even though we certainly don't condone breaking FAA regulations, the above photograph is a prime example of one of those times when not being able to help yourself pays off.
Taken by photographer James Kastner, the snap beautifully captures the sun glinting off the One World Trade Center just as the glare on the harbor aligned with Liberty Island. It's no wonder the shot has gone viral.
In early August, the New York Times ran an article on New York City window cleaner Brent Weingard alongside some footage that showed the man scrubbing and squeegee-ing away at massive apartment windows in the West Village.
Thanks to the vertigo-inducing footage of Weingard strapped in ten stories up, the piece got a lot of attention, but one of the main questions the Times got after running it was "who was the daredevil behind the camera?" Thankfully, they've put together a BTS video in response.
One year ago, in August of 2012, New York Times photographer Robert Stolarik was arrested for allegedly using his camera flash to interfere with police during an arrest. However, after taking a look at the evidence, it's the police officer who is in hot water and may face up to 7 years in prison after being indicted on three felony counts and five misdemeanors.
There's nothing like a friendly competition among peers to make a road trip that much more enjoyable, and when you can get a few thousand people to join in and judge the outcome, that's even better. That's what photojournalists and friends Eric Thayer and Joshua Lott did recently when they found themselves in a midst of an impromptu Instagram battle.
In the past, we've had occasion to share some great color film footage that showed London and the UK as a whole all the way back in the 1920s. We've even shown you some stateside footage shot by a French tourist in the 1930s.
The latest bit of historical footage we've come across isn't in color (unfortunately), but it does show a New York City staple right after it was first built: The New York City Subway System.
At the end of 2012, Swiss photographer Gus Petro took a trip to the United States, and was met with a sharp dichotomy. When he visited New York City, he found density in all its glory. But when he followed that up with a trip to the Grand Canyon, he was struck by the sheer emptiness of it.
This led to a project dubbed Empty, Dense, Merge, and the photos below represent the final third of that triad.
Underneath Manhattan's West Side Highway, at 135th and 12th Avenue, photographer Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography discovered something pretty cool: at least 100 old disconnected payphones stacked unceremoniously and rusting away.
Jacob A. Riis arrived in New York in 1870. As the economy slowed, the Danish American photographer found himself among the many other immigrants in the area whose daily life consisted of joblessness, hunger, homelessness, and thoughts of suicide. So when he finally found work as a police reporter in 1877, he made it his mission to reveal the crime and poverty of New York City's East Side slum district to the world.
NYC-based photographer Joy Mckinney has spent most of her life conforming to the norms she believed to be "socially correct." Her latest series, The Guardian, is about breaking through those norms and her own socially guarded personality in order to interact with strangers on the streets of New York in a real and meaningful way.
Portraitist Miller Mobley is a successful photographer twice over. As a college student, he built a successful photography business in Tuscaloosa, AL, working for both local and regional clients. Later, he and his wife picked up their entire life and moved to New York City, where the now 24-year-old Mobley has managed to land all of his dream clients one after the other.
Street photographer Eric Kim recently found himself in New York, and on his last day there he visited Kane's Diner, a spot that all his NYC friends insisted he must go before he left. After a meal of steak, eggs and conversation with his friendly waiter, he decided he would get his courage up and ask the waiter if it would be ok to take his picture.
Fortunately for us, he was able to attach his GoPro to the hot shoe on his Ricoh GR and capture the entire experience -- from momentary hesitation through impromptu photo shoot -- in the above POV video.
In partnership with Historypin and the Central Park Conservancy, Google has decided to expand its Street View repertoire once again, this time letting out-of-towners experience three of The Big Apple's most historically significant locations: Central Park, The 9/11 Memorial and places affected by Hurricane Sandy.
Earlier today, residents of New York and the surrounding area were privy to a really amazing celestial treat; it's called a Sun Halo, and one spent some time today hovering over The Big Apple and making people wonder if Martians were finally invading.
Fortunately (or not, depending on how you feel about it), there were no Martians, just a cool and somewhat rare phenomenon that had people and photographers turning cameras to the sky all day. One such photographer was Richard Silver, who was kind enough to shoot us an e-mail and offer to let us display the photos he had taken.
When people living in the same city look up into the sky, they likely see the same clouds and colors, albeit from slightly different perspectives. Exactly how different are these perspectives? In a recent project called Same Sky NY, photographers living in New York City came together to find out.
Combining the capabilities of a high-speed camera with the basic idea that "there are enough [magical moments] happening every moment of any given day," New York artist James Nares is currently captivating audiences at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with his mesmerizing video "Street."
Want to see what New York City experienced over the past few days? Check out this time-lapse video by Silas Maniatis (SMvideoChan on YouTube). The photographs were captured by a camera mounted to the top of the building at 2 Northside Piers in Brooklyn and snapping away at 2 frames every minute, or 30 seconds between shots.
After Hurricane Sandy devastated New York City earlier this week, photographer Randy Scott Slavin ventured around various areas that had been plunged into darkness due to power outages. He shot eerie long-exposure photographs that make the city look like a ghost town. The series is titled "NYC Unplugged."
Here's the latest installment of Ross Ching's "Empty America" project, which features time-lapse videos of major cities in the United States with all the people magically removed. Over the past couple of weeks, we've visited the beautiful cities of San Francisco and Seattle; this week, the destination is New York City.
Now here's a creative idea that we've never seen before... For this short film titled New York: Night and Day, New York City-based filmmaker and animator Philip Stockton blended daytime and nighttime images of his city into single shots. He explains,
New York: Night and Day is a combination of non-traditional video time-lapse and animation. I filmed day and night scenes from around New York City and combined them back into single sequences using rotoscoping techniques. The piece explores the relationships between night and day, by compositing together scenes shot in the same location over a time period ranging from 4 - 8 hours. I hope you enjoy it.
The National Press Photographers Association announced this week that it will be joining a major lawsuit filed against NYC and the NYPD for civil rights violations during the Occupy Wall Street protests.
With most camera companies moving towards robotic assembly lines and online storefronts, it shouldn’t come as a …
Twice per year something really cool happens: the stars, or rather one particular star, aligns with the grid of streets running through Manhattan island, offering photographers and astronomers alike an opportunity to go out and snap a few very unique and very cool photos. On May 29th (today) and July 12th of this year (it varies a bit each year) the sun sets in perfect alignment with the Manhattan grid. It's known as "Manhattanhenge". On those specific days, when the sun sets, you will see half of the glowing orb above and half below the horizon -- although you can still get some cool, though not quite as perfect, photos on the days before and after.
Two photographers from opposite ends of the country found themselves in similar situations over the past few weeks. Although the charges leveled against each were different, both photogs were ultimately exonerated after video evidence was presented on their behalf. Amateur photographer Joshua Garland from Seattle and photojournalist Alexander Arbuckle from New York were charged with third-degree assault and disorderly conduct, respectively. After YouTube and Ustream videos by others in the area were presented as evidence, however, charges against Mr. Garland were dropped and Mr. Arbuckle was acquitted.
Based in New York, 46-year-old Chris Arnade is a banker by trade and …