Tribute in Light 2011

DSC_7839

The “Tribute In Light” ran only one night this year: last  night, the evening of the anniversary, from dusk to dawn this morning.  I had been hoping it would run some evening in advance of the anniversary, so I could post an image of it yesterday, but they only lit the beams briefly a few nights as tests until yesterday.

I also did not plan to post this today. I expected I would want to be careful with the processing, and make the image as best as I could make it. This thought became even stronger in my mind while shooting the Tribute last night. There was a lot of fog, and it seemed difficult to get a good shot. I really was not pleased with most of what I saw on my camera LCD and was certain I was in for a lot of post-processing work.

So I returned home and did not even unload the CF card immediately, but sat down to relax and watch Casablanca with my wife on TMC. When it ended, I unloaded the card and was pleased with many of the shots, but still thought I would spend some time getting them ready before I published. Then, on a whim, after watching the Entourage series finale, I decided to post this image “as is” on Google+. The only editing I did was to straighten the horizon a bit before exporting — no exposure fix, no blending, no filters, no color correction.

Within 15 minutes it was probably my most successful web post anywhere.  I’m still catching up with the comments and all the people who added me to their circles. I have to thank everyone who commented or shared it to their circles, but probably especially Brian Rose, a Google+ photos community manager, who named it #potd, which I presume means “photo of the day,” and it was soon after he did so that the image really took off.

This is possibly the last year for the Tribute in Light. As of this week there is no funding in place for it going forward, unless something happened in the last day or so and I missed the story. As you might imagine, I was not the only photographer who came out to shoot Tribute In Light 2011 last night. When I arrived at Brooklyn Bridge Park, here is what I saw:

This has always been my favorite 9/11 World Trade Center Tribute, in part because of how I felt about the WTC itself, so I am especially pleased with the success of this image. Thank you all.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

This Post Has 11 Comments

  1. Len Saltiel

    12 Sep 2011

    Well seen and captured Mark. Sometimes our best work comes from the heart and not from anywhere else.
    Len Saltiel recently posted..Palace WalkMy Profile

  3. Kris Koeller

    12 Sep 2011

    A great shot. I was out pretty much all night but the weather wasn’t cooperating much, but had some luck from Brooklyn Heights. Nice photo!
    Kris Koeller recently posted..A Tribute in LightMy Profile

  4. Tim Nealon

    12 Sep 2011

    Mark: Great work here. I am glad to see that photographers were out and about to capture these special scenes. Keep up the great work!

  5. Jim Denham

    12 Sep 2011

    Beautifully done Mark! Can easily see why it would POTD! Awesome!
    Jim Denham recently posted..NeighborsMy Profile

    1. Mark

      12 Sep 2011

      That’s a fair cop, Mike. I should have mentioned that I paused very quickly to grab an iPhone shot, but didn’t stop to check how it turned out because I wanted to grab my space at the rail. I’ve never seen so many tripods at once.

Comments are closed.

Close Menu