Ground Zero Memorial lights – World Trade Center – NYC

World Trade Center Tribute In Lights |  2012 at Ground Zero | New York City

Each year since 9-11, NYC has installed memorial lights to commemorate the anniversary of the terrorist attacks. I’ve gone in twice before to photograph them and in fact, one of the images I shot was used in a Madame Tussauds 9-11 installation in Times Square  (which was pretty cool!!)

Anyway – this year I wanted to go in again, but this time try and photograph them in a different manner. I’d always gone right downtown to get up close and personal, shooting very close to the light source. But this time I  wanted to make my way down there, shooting various perspectives as I approached them. It was a beautiful night for a walk (which turned into a small bar crawl as well) I was surprised to find that they moved the lights from where they were in the last, so it took a bit of hunting ( “…go into the light, Carol Ann…” ) to get right to where they were.

The streets were really very quiet Tuesday night, and I think the perspective of the buildings along with the lights growing larger is pretty interesting–I hope you do as well!

 

we started in Washington Square Park

 

got out the fish-eye for something different. I haven’t walked around NYC with a tripod in a LONG time!!

I love how they just ‘vanish’ into the sky

the new tower was light red, white and blue, as was the Empire State Building. I kept thinking – someone had to go in there and change a LOT of light bulbs….

if you look carefully at the light beams, you’ll see squiggly lines. These exposure were about 13 seconds long and there were these ‘things’ flying around in the light beams. Way too large to be bugs, we think they were birds, seagulls or perhaps bats. You couldn’t really tell WHAT they were, but they sure liked those lights

more squiggly movement really clear in the right hand beam here