Fotizmo Photo - The Light-Speed Escalator
February 20, 2007 | Tags: fotizmo, photography, photos, light-in-motion, refocusphoenix, flickrLast night, I got together with my fellow Refocus Phoenix members and went looking for photographic opportunity around Mill Avenue in Tempe. We were almost kept inside by the drizzling rain, but we decided to venture out and take photos from whatever cover we could find. We ended up at the Brickyard on Mill, which provided cover as well as several photogenic areas.
One of the first photos I took [left] was from the base of a flight of stairs, looking up at the second story, where colored LEDs lit up a cloud-painted ceiling. Because it was raining, I set up a few steps from the bottom to get away from the edge of the building's cover. I was impressed by the result of the photo -- the perspective and the colors were bold.
I looked up the stairs again, and the escalator to the left caught my eye. The steps appeared to be about the same depth as the steps on the stairway. Well, I had my tripod set up for the steps, but I could only imagine how the photo would turn out if the world was moving beneath the tripods legs. Well, I could do more than imagine. I could try it.
I scrambled up the stairs with my tripod in the exact state it was in on the lower steps of the stairway. I climbed aboard the escalator and was able to snap three 6-second exposures by the time I reached the bottom.
Those [right] turned out excellent as well! I scramble up the stairs again (the upward-bound escalator was a couple hundred feet away). After showing off the fruits of my curiosity to my fellow Refocus Phoenix members, we came up with the idea of shooting the same photo but with a subject.
We quickly drew up a game plan of timing, number of steps between the camera and subject, and I set my camera's focus for the agreed upon distance. It may be a slow-moving escalator that we've all used hundreds of times, but setting up a tripod and getting in place for a 6+ second pose takes a surprising amount of concentration on the fly.
As we were preparing for the shot, we were under the watchful eye (err.. lens) of James Archer of Forty Media, a fellow Refocus Phoenix member, who was looking on from the upper level.
One of the joys of photographing with a group of other people is getting a photo of a photographer at the helm of his or her camera. I think it adds a sense of depth to the photograph being taken by the photographed photographer (that was intentionally confusing). You get to see a candid view of the "making of" the artistic piece being made. It helps show that the photo you are enjoying came from the real world -- from real person behind a real camera.
Josh and I were both on the escalator, and I had less than 20 seconds to try to make something happen. I was able to get three 6-second exposures in before reaching the bottom, with the third one slightly blurred because the escalator began to bottom out.
I flipped through the three images repeatedly, seeing Josh frozen still in the middle and beams of light flying by him in all directions toward a single vanishing point.
Without further ado, I give you the final result:
I fine-tuned the colors and exposure on the image and uploaded it to Flickr.com. I have been uploading photos to Flickr for about one year, now. I am approaching 500 photos in my photo stream. I have had a few reach Flickr's Explore, which showcases the 500 'most interesting' photos uploaded in a given day. My goal has been to get to the top of that list, featured on the main Explore page.
The light-speed escalator photo, titled "Gomez," quickly grew in popularity. Within 12 hours, it was approaching the top of my lists for most viewed, most favorited by other users, and most commented-on. In less than 24 hours, the photo had more comments and favorites than any of my other photos, including ones I uploaded a year ago.
The photo is practically guaranteed to make it to the top 500 list. The question is "How far up the list will the photo make it?" Only time will tell. We will find out tomorrow (Feb 21st) how the Flickr "Interestingness" algorithm ranks my photo in comparison to other photos uploaded today (Feb 20th).
UPDATE: Explore started showing images for February 20th. This photo doesn't seem to be in the top 500 at all. It's surprising because its stats are significantly better than many of the images that did make the list. The view count skyrocketed, and it turns out this image made it to the Digg.com front page!
UPDATE 2: The success of this photo continued to amaze this afternoon. It made it to the top of the "Top 10 in All Topics" on Digg. For a few hours today, the page linking to this photo was the most active page on Digg, which is currently ranked the #21 most popular site in the U.S. The reason I bring this up is to lead into the current view count for the photo. Right now, the photo has over 120,000 views! It's maintaining a steady pace of growth, even though it was removed from the Top 10 list, which only includes stories that hit the front page in the previous 12 hours.
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