Perhaps the allure of these images is similar to the reason people are captivated by time lapse videos. Time lapse films allow you to see changes that happen gradually over the course of time within a matter seconds, just like these photos allow you to see the same place at a different time in a single glance.
The images above were created by photographer Stephen Wilkes who captures “images over up to a 15 hour period and later stitching them together into the seamless whole that you see here,” Visual News explains. “The series, appropriately called Day to Night, tells the story of a city which bustles around the clock: people remain in the images both bright and dark. What does change are the activities presented: Coney Island transforms from a suntanning mecca to a brightly lit carnival, while hot dog venders close up shop, and movie billboards light up around Times Square.”
While some of Stephen’s images appear to be a combination of a series of images, others like the one above might even be created simply by merging two photographs taken of the exact same scene at different times. Martin Krzywinski, who specializes High Dynamic Time Range (HDTR) photography, uses the dual image method in a series he calls “dawn to dusk” photography.
“There are several ways to record the passage of time in a photograph, an inherently static medium,” Martin explains, naming more traditional methods like long exposure photography (leaving the shutter open), scanner photography, and using a strobe light to create “sharply frozen images” with periodic bursts of light, then goes into a description of how he creates images using the HDTR process.
If you could create your own blended day-to-night photographs, what cities do you think would make great subjects?