Sep-2014
9/11 – Remembering the view
19 shots from the WTC observation deck: 9/6/2001
This post is a special one. A few years ago Alan Taylor, curator of The Atlantic’s fantastic “In Focus” photo blog, did a gallery of photos of the week leading up to 9/11/2001. The full gallery is here and it’s worth a look: 9/11 – The Week Before
At the bottom of Talyor’s post you will see some pictures taken by French tourist Julien Menichini. (who I’ve tried contacting a few times, but to no avail — if you read this- shoot me an email?). Taylor pieced together a two shot panoramic of taken 9/5/2011 and also linked to Julien’s Flickr gallery, which is full of shots from the top of the towers that day. As you’ve seen in previous posts, I really enjoy big panoramic pics! On Julien’s Flickr there were a few sets of un-stiched / incomplete panormaics. I downloaded the sets last year and got to work combining them and editing them (fixing things like tears and color correction).
The picture above is made up of 19 (!!) shots. The camera technology in 2001 isn’t even close to what it is today, and this was clearly without a tripod; but let this be an example as to how you can achieve amazing, moving, and impressive results even with “old” technology. I stitched these together in Kolor Autopano, and did a lot of clean up in PS and Camera Raw.
The East River from the WTC observation deck.
The second shot was compiled from 5 stills in the same fashion. Click through to my Facebook page (here) for a FB sized download.
While I was never fortunate enough to make it to the top of the towers, this shot gives me an idea of the amazing view I missed out on. Thanks again to both Taylor for his fantastic photo blog and Menichini for his very impressive shots from the top of the world.