newyorkcity

Eerie and Fascinating Photos of a Completely Empty New York City Taken in 1964

In 1964, photographer Duane Michals fortuitously found himself leafing through a photo book that contained the work of French photographer Eugene Atget. Atget's intimate 19th century photographs of Paris inspired Michals to attempt to capture a similarly intimate portrait of New York City.

Thus was born 'Empty New York,' a series of photographs showing the streets of the Big Apple completely devoid of live, exhibited for the very first time as a set at the DC Moore Gallery in New York in April and May of this year.

Rooftop Photo from the 1920s May be the First Group Selfie in History

We've shared what we believe to be the first ever selfie in history, but we've never had occasion to share the photograph you see being taken in the image above. Taken in the 1920s on a rooftop in New York City, what you see being captured might very well be the first ever group selfie... although we're pretty sure they didn't call it that.

Photo Project Captures People’s Reactions to Someone Falling Asleep on Them on the Subway

The New York City subway can be a cold place, metaphorically speaking. Headphones, cell phones, that one Seamless ad they've no doubt already read 600 times, whatever their approach, people go to great lengths to avoid communicating with the other people in the car.

So what happens when one of those people breaks, not only the unwritten rule against talking, but touching! How do people react on the subway when a complete stranger falls asleep on their shoulder?

Prolific Graffiti Artist Brags Over Instagram, Earns 23 Counts of Felony Vandalism

If we've said it once, we've said a thousand times: don't post illegal activity to Instagram. Because while the photo sharing service does sometimes seem to be the domain of teenaged girls with a duck face problem and hipsters who would like to share their latte with you, the police also spend time on there.

That's a lesson notorious NYC graffiti artist Peter Podsiadlo, better known as SEMP, learned the hard way this week when his Instagram photos earned him 23 felony counts of vandalism.

Bob Boyd’s Beautiful Photographs of NYC Will Draw You in and Keep You Scrolling

Sometimes, you want to take a break from all the gimmicky photography out there -- the expertly manipulated surreal self-portraits, interesting twists on old concepts and fun forced perspective photo sets -- and browse through some modern-day photography that is just plain good.

This is photography that rests, not upon heavy processing or viral potential, but great composition and a profound understanding of light. I reached that point recently, and it was Bob Boyd's photography that I found myself scrolling through.

Metropolitan Museum of Art Makes Public 400K High-Res Images of Its Collection

NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has officially made available 400,000 high-resolution digital images of the collections it currently has in its possession.

Hoping to keep up with other museums, the Metropolitan has created an initiative, called Open Access for Scholarly Content (OASC), that will “provide access to images of art in its collection that the Museum believes to be in the public domain.”

Street Photographs of NYC, as Captured by a 0.1MP Game Boy Camera

Released in September of 1998, the Game Boy Camera was actual deemed the world's smallest digital camera by none other than the Guinness Book of World Records in its heyday. Created to be an official accessory of the then-revolutionary Nintendo Game Boy device, the camera was capable of capturing images with a resolution of, hold on to your hats ladies and gentlemen, 256x224 pixels.

Take a Look at the Unseen Side of NYC with ‘Exploring Off-Limits New York’

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.

Incredible POV Footage of BASE Jumpers Launching Off the One World Trade Center

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.

Times Square Time-Lapse Captures the Madness that is New Year’s Eve in NYC

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.

The Real Oldest Photo of New York City is Not Nearly As Cool as the Fake One

News flash: You can't believe everything you see on Twitter. We know, we were shocked too.

Such was the case with this striking sepia-toned image that started lighting up the mediasphere yesterday billed as "the Earliest Photograph Taken of New York City - Broadway, May 1850." (And immediately started attracting comments in the vein of: "And they haven't fixed the potholes since!")

Interview with Award-Winning Landscape Photographer Lauren Henkin

Born in Washington, D.C., visual artist Lauren Henkin graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in architecture from Washington University in St. Louis and now resides in New York City. He primary subject is the American landscape. Her most recent project, The Park, focuses on Central Park, the massive constructed urban space and how people engage it.

Short Doc: It’ll Take More than Crippling MS and Near Blindness to Stop this Photog

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.

BTS: Richard Renaldi Introduces & Poses Complete Strangers on the Streets of NYC

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.

NYC Mayoral Candidate in Hot Water After Campaign Ad Used Swiped Flickr Shots

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.

Behind the Scenes with Brandon Stanton and His Humans of New York Project

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.

Gorgeous Photo of NYC and the One World Trade Center Taken from an Airplane

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.

Half-Drag Portraits Show the Before & After Transformations of NYC Drag Queens

New York-based photographer Leland Bobbé has put together a fascinating series of portraits that examine the idea of gender fluidity by showing New York City drag queens in half-drag. The series is called "Half-Drag ... A Different Kind of Beauty" and has earned Bobbé several awards and exhibitions, along with some well-deserved press attention.

Rumble and Sway: An Epic New York City Time-Lapse ‘Mixtape’

It wouldn't be the weekend without a little bit of time-lapse inspiration. So as you're getting ready to enjoy another Sunday packed with football and fun, check out this epic NYC time-lapse and hyperlapse compilation put together by the guys over at The Seventh Movement.

BTS: Hanging Off a Building to Capture an NYC Window Cleaner Ten Stories Up

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.

Then-and-Now Images of NYC Created by Blending in Vintage Crime Scene Photos

Then-and-now photos are always fascinating to see. Historical scenes come to life when blended into or placed side-by-side with modern-day photographs of cities we all know very well. Be it Paris, New York or San Francisco, most of the best-known cities have gotten the then-and-now treatment to great effect by many a photographer.

The most recent Then and Now series we've run across, however, isn't just meant to show how the scenery has changed. When photographer and historian Marc A. Hermann created the images, he purposely used only vintage (Note: and sometimes gruesome) crime scene photos to fill in the "then" part.

Time-Lapse Captures The Rise of the One World Trade Center Over the Past 9 Years

After recovering from the initial shock and devastation of September 11th in 2001, the city of New York began laying down plans to erect a new World Trade Center complex. A symbol of recovery and strength, the complex consists of 4 main buildings, the One, 2, 3 and 4 World Trade Centers.

It took many years of fits and starts, but the crown jewel of the new complex -- the 1,776-foot One World Trade Center -- is complete, and the time-lapse above shows what almost 9-years of construction has yielded.

Then-and-Now Photos of New York City

NYC Grid is a website run by Paul Sahner that explores and documents New York neighborhoods, "street by street and block by block." One of the awesome reoccurring features on the blog is the before-and-after section, which features pairs of photos showing identical locations but shot decades -- or sometimes over a century -- apart.

Photographer Cabbie Captures the Magic of New York City from His Taxi

David Brandford became a cab driver in 1990, and immediately picked up a camera when he realized he now had a front-row seat to life in New York City. Since then, he's not been able to stop taking pictures and capturing the city he loves.

Most recently, New York.com gave Bradford his own New York Moment, offering us a small glimpse into the life of the successful photographer cabbie.

Midtown is a Manhattan Time-Lapse Made Up of 50K Photos Shot Over 6 Months

When you think of New York City, the places that come to mind most likely revolve around Midtown Manhattan. The Empire State Building, the Rockefeller Center, Times Square and more all fall within the boundaries of Midtown.

In an ode to this busiest and most hectic piece of the city that never sleeps, Andrew “Drew” Geraci of District 7 Media put together an epic time-lapse that pays homage to "the lights, cars, traffic, architecture and people [that] make the city come to life as a living, breathing, organism."

New York City Photographed Through a Glass Prism

"NYC Prism" is a project by New York City-based photographer Allen Skyy Enriquez (AKA The Zartorialist) that offers an unusual view of The Big Apple. The 6 images in the series might look like composite images created using Photoshop, but they're actually single exposures. The splicing effect seen in them was created by holding a prism in front of the lens to merge two views of each location into one shot.