Turn out the lights

I came across a series of images a few days ago and to be honest I’m completely blown away by both the artistic beauty and technical excellence by the artist.

Thierry Cohen has created a body of work called Darkened Cities where major cities of the world are depicted without the usual city light pollution so as to view the starry sky above. But as I read online, these are not simply skylines clear-cut in Photoshop and placed over a night sky image.

“He has traveled to places free from light pollution but situated on precisely the same latitude as his cities (and by pointing his camera at the same angle in each case), he obtains skies which, as the world rotates about its axis, are the very ones visible above the cities a few hours earlier or later.”

http://www.petapixel.com/2012/12/28/photographer-imagines-what-world-cities-would-look-like-without-lights/

http://thierrycohen.com/pages/work/starlights.html

New York 40° 42′ 16” N 2010-10-9 Lst 3:40

The image above, of New York reminded me of some of the photographs taken during the power cut after hurricane Sandy last year. http://www.petapixel.com/2012/11/05/new-york-magazine-cover-features/

New York after Hurricane Sandy 2012

And while I’m thinking of NYC tonight, might as well go off in a tangent and include this stunning image taken over Central Park by Sergey Semenov. The composite image recently won Epson’s Pano Award for most outstanding panorama captured by an amateur.