Bring to Light NYC

Last night I headed over to Brooklyn to shoot some photos at Bring to Light, a free one-night event featuring light installations and music along the Greenpoint waterfront. This was billed as New York City’s first nuit blanche festival, which draw huge crowds in cities like Toronto, Paris and St. Petersburg. They generally go all night, although the Brooklyn event had a midnight end time.

I saw this event from two perspectives, the passive viewer and the amateur photographer. One one hand, you’re watching a video of a winking eye projected on the side of a building and thinking this would be a lot better stoned. Down the street eleven people are thrusting their iphones at a spinning unicycle chained to a signpost. You muddle through a bunch of kids throwing glowsticks at each other to go look at the laser sphere which is… pretty damn lasery and spherical. On the other hand, it was fun to get in some DSLR quality time photographing these installations, especially as many of them encouraged crowd participation (a little too much participation at times). Even though this nuit blanche wasn’t even comparable in scope to the one in Toronto which attracted a million people, it was a mellow scene for new photographers to fuss around with their tripods, f-stops, and ISOs. Since the neighborhood was incorporated as the backdrop in many of the exhibits, the act of slowing down and seeing a familiar setting a bit differently was a nice aspect.

I posted a few photos from last night below and more on Flickr.