Rockefeller Center, Through the Viewfinder

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The day I thought of this series I left with the intention of taking some simple photographs of Rockefeller Center and the tree, but ended up with something much more interesting: hundreds of photographs looking through peoples viewfinders on their cameras and cellphones.

It was actually a pretty challenging thing to do.  Rockefeller Center is packed with people streaming through the area and I usually had to get directly behind a person to capture a good enough photo from their viewfinder.  Add into the mix the low light in the area, being bumped constantly, along with people shaking their cameras around and a lot of great photographs were lost.

A couple of times I had a perfect photo in view, only to be almost knocked off my feet by a passing tourist (or more likely at the speed they were going a native New Yorker).

But many times I was the cause of my own inadvertent bumpings, and I heard one to many comments from this about how annoying tourists were with their photographs.

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2 Comments for "Rockefeller Center, Through the Viewfinder"
John Connors says:
  • December 24, 2010 16:48
  • Interesting concept I wish I would have thought of myself. I was down seeing "Jersey Boys" a few weeks ago in NYC and started to walk over to Rockefeller Center to show my wife the tree when we realized that it was way too crowded with tourists. We turned around and left. In retrospect we should have did what you did and used the crowds to our advantage and show what they could see through their viewfinders. Great idea! Awesome photos!
  • James Maher says:
  • December 24, 2010 18:17
  • Thanks so much John, I'm glad you enjoyed them. It gets too crazy around there for me as well, and imagine trying to stop suddenly and photograph strangers viewfinders! I almost got knocked over by 20 people when I was doing this :)