Sixth Avenue Between 43rd and 44th Streets, New York, 1948

Todd Webb composed Sixth Avenue Between 43rd and 44th Streets, New York, 1948 from eight separate images. It depicts the west side of Sixth Avenue between West 43rd and 44th Streets, taken on the afternoon of March 24, 1948. Realizing he had to work fast to retain the same light, Webb plotted the shoot beforehand, lining up the edges of each photo with chalk marks on the sidewalk. The image was exhibited at the 1958 Brussels Worlds Fair, and he became internationally recognized as the “historian with a camera.”

“Where am I off to? Gonna check out a record store on 6th. I’ll be back in  a few. Weeks.”

What a treat for the earballs. Imagine what the people of 1948 considered oldies.

[Record store photo found here. Panorama (with caption) and others from here thanks to a Tineye search.]

A Tortoise in Paris

This is Beyond the Valley of Awesome, 26 Gigapixels worth.

That’s a panoramic view of Paris above,  the Eiffel Tower is on the horizon at far left. The black donut in middle left is where we’re going. I didn’t believe it at first, until I zoomed in. Below are screen shots from the same image.

We zoom in a little, the Eiffel Tower is still there, skewed by the lens.

Ignore the yellow “I’s” here. On the website linked above you can use them to click for zoomed images of historical sites.

That image by itself would be worth copying and framing, IMO.

The orange dealies scattered around are clay chimney pots, vents for the flats below.

It’s likely the tortoise was photoshopped in as a prank/copyright by the professional zoomers since there is no barrier to keep it from falling off of the sheet metal roof, but I don’t care… the photo detail is still awesome. After all, look where we came from:

[Link found here. Zoom Archive here.]

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