Timelapse Photographer Captured New York City’s Blackout on Camera

This past Saturday, just before sunset, the lights went out in New York City. Well, a big piece of it anyway. A massive blackout left a large section of Manhattan dark, and across the river in New Jersey, a timelapse photographer captured the whole thing on camera.

The full blackout lasted about five hours and affected a swath of Manhattan that ran from Midtown as far up as 69th street on the Upper West Side. People were trapped in elevators, traffic lights stopped working, subway platforms went dark, broadway shows spilled out into the streets, and half of Time’s Square’s billboards stopped working.





And while all of this was going on on the ground, New Jersey-based photographer and cinematographer Joseph DiGiovanna of NYC_Timescape was shooting his daily timelapse of the New York City skyline. Even though the blackout started while it was still light out, you can see the moment the lights began turning back on just before midnight at around the 27-second mark above, or in the shorter version below:

In case you’re curious, this was the reaction on the ground the moment the lights came back on:



To see more of DiGiovanna’s work, head over to his website or follow NYC_Timescape on Instagram where his goal is to post the sunrise over New York City every single day for 30 years.

(via Curbed)

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