"The silence of the world, like a quotation, is suddenly endowed with an oppressive eloquence."

June 19, 2012 7:21 AM

Silent World is a neat photography-video project in which a neutral density filter is used to remove most of the people from some of the busiest cities in the world.

The few people visible in the shots stood still for the length of the exposure.

[via]

posted by quin (27 comments total)

This is what a neutron bomb would do- protect property while eliminating people.
posted by mareli at 7:24 AM on June 19, 2012

I saw this on another site a couple weeks ago and it was pointed out that it isn't a simple "they were standing still" issue. For instance, the flags in this image would then be missing. Or the shadows here. And did this person really stand in the middle of the road with one leg raised for however long the exposure would take the cancel out the cars?
posted by DU at 7:31 AM on June 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

....anyone else thinking of that sequence from 28 Days Later?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:31 AM on June 19, 2012

This is what a neutron bomb would do

Well, except for all the buildings, streets, and vehicles full of the rotting corpses of men, women, children, and pets being devoured by carrion-munching birds and beasts coming in to feast. Those are missing. And who are those neutron-proof people just standing there are they the aliens we knew were among us?
posted by pracowity at 7:32 AM on June 19, 2012

I do like the pictures, I should point out. I'm just also interested in how they were really made.
posted by DU at 7:32 AM on June 19, 2012

Also can be done by using averaging in Photoshop across several exposures. Much less sensor noise, too.
posted by bz at 7:32 AM on June 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

In line with DU's comment, one photo showed a digital clock showing the time, in several others water was shown as static....

I too would be interested in how this is actually done....
posted by HuronBob at 7:39 AM on June 19, 2012

Looks like they merged frames from video, and used a lot of Photoshop. Definitely not Neutral density -- you'd see more blur.
posted by schmod at 7:43 AM on June 19, 2012

probably a combination of effects...ND filter, image stacking, and selective editing (i.e. the clock, flags, shadows, etc are prob from the one exposure where they look best and aren't obscured by people)
posted by sexyrobot at 7:46 AM on June 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

I'm thinking that they didn't read this.
posted by HuronBob at 7:52 AM on June 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

This is what a neutron bomb would do

Well, except for all the buildings, streets, and vehicles full of the rotting corpses of men, women, children, and pets being devoured by carrion-munching birds and beasts coming in to feast. Those are missing. And who are those neutron-proof people just standing there are they the aliens we knew were among us?

Still actually blows up a lot of shit. Has an explosive load in the kiloton-range, but a neutron radiation effect many times larger.

It was never actually intended for use against civilians anyway. The thought they could blow p armored divisions with it because the neutrons would get through the armor and irradiate the crew.

Thankfully, they stopped using it and we get to see these very lovely pictures.

What's amazing is that our presence in the scene seems to make our own buildings smaller and more everyday.
posted by Ironmouth at 7:56 AM on June 19, 2012

I would expect the neutral density filter to look more like this, especially in Grand Central, I think they must have taken clean pieces from a multitude of frames and pasted them together.
posted by phirleh at 8:00 AM on June 19, 2012 [3 favorites]

buildings, streets, and vehicles full of the rotting corpses of men, women, children, and pets being devoured by carrion-munching birds and beasts coming in to feast. Those are missing.

I hope their next project will release these images in a coloring book where you get to draw those in yourself.
posted by CynicalKnight at 8:04 AM on June 19, 2012

If you click through to slide #34, you can see the original video and the resulting composited image. Tellingly, the people on the highway didn't appear in any of the video frames shown - they were probably never there, given how dangerous it would be.

It's definitely not using a ND filter to accomplish the effect, except maybe to get the aperture all the way down. Seems more like painstaking Photoshop layer work and a really sturdy tripod.
posted by 0xFCAF at 8:08 AM on June 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

"I would expect the neutral density filter to look more like this," I instantly started humming "♫ smoke on the water...." (which other than that one phrase, doesn't fit, but my mind went there anyway)
posted by HuronBob at 8:10 AM on June 19, 2012

... you can also see from that video that the parked cars have been 'shopped out entirely.
posted by 0xFCAF at 8:10 AM on June 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

I suppose the "Silent World" photos affirm that yes, we no longer feel the need to have our shoes shined at busy street corners. But, we still definitely can't stand still long enough to be in an artsy photo. This isn't so new.

To their credit though, these images are a skateboarder's dreamscape.
posted by obscurator at 8:11 AM on June 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

Why the music from Koyaanisqatsi?! The cynical part of me thinks that they chose it so that their video would automatically gain the same respect as the film... but although the idea was potentially quite interesting, Koyaanisqatsi is obviously on a whole different level.
posted by BobsterLobster at 8:36 AM on June 19, 2012

My guess is that they make one very long exposure to eliminate people, cars, birds, etc and then go back and make several exposures for the specific elements they want to include like the flags, fountains and a specific person. They then combine all of the images in layers in PhotoShop. The photography part is pretty easy but my guess is one of them spends days on each image in post.

Great find - the images are gorgeous.
posted by photoslob at 8:45 AM on June 19, 2012

I got started on a project along these lines a few years back while I was working on my undergrad in photography. Definitely nowhere near as polished as those and mine were all taken in my moderately unphotogenic home city of Toronto.

Inspired to dust that project off and see if it ends up going anywhere this time around!
posted by rhooke at 9:11 AM on June 19, 2012

Now I know I'm not the only one who secretly thinks it would be really cool to be the last person on the planet. Also, These pics remind me of walking around almost any city at 4am. Very cool!
posted by ianhattwick at 9:39 AM on June 19, 2012

Reminds me a bit of the first photograph to include a human being. ( I tried blurring out a crowd just a bit with a ND filter a while ago, left the shutter open a little too long, and it very nearly turned into a neutron devastation filter....)
posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 10:32 AM on June 19, 2012

Why the music from Koyaanisqatsi?! -- "I once told Philip that he creates a feeling of existential dread better than anyone else I know of." -- Errol Morris.
posted by crunchland at 11:09 AM on June 19, 2012

As far as the technique, to recreate this I would take a series of still photographs of each location and use layers to composite a person-free master. Then take the master image into a compositing program (like after effects) and use a technique called camera projection to animate camera movement and add 3d geometry.
posted by jade east at 11:34 AM on June 19, 2012

whatever technique is being used, one this is certain: these compositions are gorgeous works of art.
posted by rattleandhum at 1:48 PM on June 19, 2012

I've done this by writing a short program to take the median value of each pixel over the length of the movie.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:01 PM on June 19, 2012

I am fairly sure I recently read about a point and shoot camera now that does this in camera, by examining and averaging several stills. I do not remember the one.

The ND technique comes "back" every ten years or so when it feels new, reaching back to the beginning of photography, when exposures really were 10 minutes and longer.
posted by caclwmr4 at 11:51 PM on June 19, 2012