Crowds, Top of the Rock – New York, New York

In yesterday’s photo essay, I mentioned the southern view from the Top of the Rock is the most compelling. Most agreed, and thus the visitors were lined up on one side of the building. Here are street photos of the crowds with the setting sun in the background.

The third observation level has the benefit of a glass-less view for the highest-quality photographs. It also offered concrete pillars to stabilize cameras. They don’t allow full-sized tripods. However, using these pillars with a pocket tripod might be a way around this limitation. I utilized image stabilization for my urban landscapes at night, which worked well.

I walked around to investigate, shooting this image with the Fujifilm X100V. For the most part, I staked out an ideal spot by the wall to capture my money shots. I occasionally pointed my GFX 50S II towards to west to capture the crowd, as I did in the first photograph.

As you can imagine, most were armed with smartphones to capture their memories. Some had hefty dedicated cameras, including one that had a long telephoto. I used the 35mm to 70mm (27.65mm to 55.3mm equivalent) on the GFX, which generally worked well, though a slightly wider view would’ve been ideal. I should’ve shot a few pictures for a future panorama in retrospect. Something I haven’t played with but supported in the newest version of Capture One.

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