611 - The Fulton Center
Today I tried to shoot the Oculus- but ended up in a dystopian nightmare instead.
And I know, I know… I’m hitting all the cliché New York spots right off the bat. But they’re cliché for a reason. And it didn’t even work out how I wanted it to. So there’s that.
Now, if you’ve lived under a rock for the past decade, the Oculus is a subway stop built right next to the World Trade Center in New York City. It was designed by Santiago Calatrava, a Spanish-Swiss architect commissioned to design a building that resembled a dove to symbolize peace and new beginnings at Ground Zero.
The inside of the station looked absolutely gorgeous from photos I’d seen online, and I figured it’d be the perfect place to kick off my New York architecture series, after the stunning success of the Vessel adventure.
The only problem was I had to decide whether to shoot Oculus after dark, or during midday lighting. Each choice had its own pros and cons. If I shot it after dark, I’d have less people, and no distracting backdrops in the windows. If I shot it during the day, I’d be able to see through the windows to the blue sky, and get light shining through in potentially sublime patterns. Which look did I want the most?
Well… I took a bet and ended up going midday- namely because it seemed like a 50/50 chance of a good photo, and it happened to be more convenient for me. It was not the move.
Besides the obvious fact that there were hundreds, if not thousands of people walking around, the intense light through the windows didn’t create peaceful patterns- it created harsh shadows. On top of that, the blue sky I was hoping to see through the windows was interrupted by random skyrises in the surrounding area.
An extremely obvious problem that I didn’t foresee for some reason. But the fact of the matter was that I was here, and I had my camera. I was going to shoot something beautiful, whether I liked it or not.
I whipped out Google Maps and started hunting for anything in the surrounding area that looked remotely futuristic. I ended up landing on the Fulton Center, which was a separate subway stop right across the street. The Fulton Center was unique in that it also doubled as a mini retail mall, and it had this crazy looking sky window.
The project itself cost $1.4 billion dollars, and I’d somehow never seen a photo of it online.
Cha-ching. One photoshoot coming up. I took it as a sign to embrace originality in a city plagued by cliché.
Lining up a couple shots wasn’t hard, because the place was nearly empty. Everyone was next door at the Oculus. Just another instance to support my theory that some of the best photography spots in the world are hidden right next to the most popular photography spots in the world:
What a fun set of photos. I particularly enjoyed that second one because of the blurry rail in the foreground. I almost always seem to focus stack images these days, but this felt like a welcome departure from that norm.
Anyway, that’s that. The Fulton Center is real, folks. And shout out the York for forcing me to be original. What un-cliché spot was next in this City of Dreams?
I’m on a mission to explore as much as humanely possible.
Want to see my progress? Check out the Adventure Map.
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