Dan sez, "Danish photographer Peter Funch stakes New York City street corners out for two weeks at a time, taking pictures of passersby from the very same spot. He then uses Photoshop to composite the results into single images. I love the mass of yawners."

Peter Funch (Thanks, Dan!)

  • Anonymous

    Holy SHIT. This guy’s work is AMAZING!

  • Kennric

    Kennric’d Golden Rule:

    Do unto the guy who thought of the brilliant idea you should I have thought of, and would have too, if you didn’t have so many other things going on, what with the breakup and the move and having to work a real job all day unlike some people… as you would have them do unto you if you had gotten off your ass to actually do the thing instead of him.

    So: Bravo Mr Funch!

    (If that -is- your real name.)

  • brie

    FIRST. But seriously this is really creative, it really looks like he had models. Which program does he use to edit?

  • Simon Mainwaring

    Wonderful work dramatizing our shared humanity in single snapshots. A reminder that the most powerful ideas are the simplest and right in front of your eyes.

  • David Carroll

    This technique is very cool.

    I don’t live in NYC, but I do intend to try this out in my locality ASAP….

    I especially like the wedding party collage, and the ones where everyone is exhaling smoke at the same time….

    Thank you Mr Funch, I hope you don’t mind if I emulate your style.

  • jackie31337

    I love these photos, thanks for sharing! I think my favorites are the yawners, the kids, the people taking pictures, and the flock of airplanes over the beach.

  • Gloria

    @10: Hmm? My boyfriend works for a CG effects company, and “compositing” is widely accepted lingo.

  • apoxia

    I yawned when I saw this photo. I must be high in empathy.

  • apoxia

    After looking at the photos I really like the one with all the people taking photos, and then the next one of all the people posing for photos, and then the one at the beach with dozens of planes in the air. Very cool.

  • Cowicide

    Thanks to Cory for pointing us to this!

    This is pure, creative genius at work… brilliant, inspiring, thought-provoking and mesmerizing photography/art/composition/craftwork.

    More!

  • igpajo

    Fantastic. I would have loved to see a couple where he composited (sticks tongue out at PaulR) everyone ‘out’ of the photo, except maybe one person who’s doing something odd, like looking surprised that everyone’s gone.
    Really makes you wonder about the old adage “seeing is believing”.

  • mutuelle

    Great work…absolutely astonishing result!
    I yawned too!

  • Mr Brown

    it would be possible to walk into any one of these scenes in life. this knowledge, that our society is like, so so, combined with the highly stylized feel of the images produces an enjoyment experience in my brain.

  • dbarak

    ( Ø› ¿sıɥʇ ÉŸo Êžuıɥʇ noÊŽ op ʇɐɥʍ ‘ƃuıʌǝıןǝq sı ƃuıǝǝs Êžuıɥʇ noÊŽ ɟı

    oɾɐdƃı ʎq pǝʇsod 81#@

  • obscurica

    Looks like the cover to Strange Days to me.

  • PaulR

    “to composite”? Ugh!

    You shouldn’t verb nouns. Nor adjectives. It makes you sound like you work in the sales department…

  • Anonymous

    Holy crap this is great!! This is exactly what BB does best – point out things like this.

  • SamSam

    These are just great. The lighting in each is really consistent across all the people, so they must have been taken in a short time.

    @ #10 PaulR:

    Do you host a party? Mail a letter? Salt your food? Drink your water? Cup your breasts? Ship your package? Dress your daughter? Fool your boss?

    All those verbs were converted from nouns within the last few hundred years. Stephen Pinker estimates [1] that about 1/5 of all English verbs were originally nouns. The English language is fortunate that it’s structure is one that allows very easy, very natural noun conversions. They allow us to express what we mean efficiently and accurately, and the process is an innate one for English speakers (which is why such conversions are continuously happening, and have done for hundreds of years), because the language is formed in such a way to make it natural.

    >/offtopic<

  • chixon

    This is how rumors get started.

  • Editz
  • pitir

    This is a fun technique! I’m a VFX student (looking for work now, actually) and this looks like something that would be cool to do with moving footage and rotoscoping. Granted, it would take MUCH longer, but the results would be very interesting to watch.

    This guy has the closest name I’ve ever seen to my own: Pitir Furch. I have a doppelganger!

  • Anonymous

    Either this guy is the best Photoshopper in the world (fixing differences in lighting at different times during the day, etc), or these are stagedor use composite images from various sites.

    I vote fake.

  • freeyourcrt

    Getting those model release forms signed must’ve have been a royal pain in the tripod. And from New Yorkers no less!

  • PaulR

    @ to many to list:

    1) Often, there exists a suitable verb. Or your text needs editing. The verb here should have been: “assemble”. Dan could have sezzed: “He then uses Photoshop to assemble the results into single images”.

    1a) Jancola, isn’t a compositor also known as a typesetter?

    1b) I refuse to use ‘email’ as a noun.
    There, I’ve started another flame war. ;->

    1c) The old conventions about where to place periods, commas, and other punctuation vis-à-vis quote marks and parenthesises, never made sense. The old non-’The Hacker Dictionnary’ usage wasn’t uniform and didn’t clarify meaning.

    2) I’m with Hobbes on this one. (Not Leviathan’s Hobbes. GIS for “Verbing weirds language”.)

    3) Examples of “making plain your ignorance”, er, verbing leeched from http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/mcintyre/blog/2009/03/verbing_weirds_language.html
    Minneapolis bars putting leaves in streets
    Governor offers rare opportunity to goose hunters
    Textron Inc. makes offer to screw company stockholders

    To be fair, McIntyre lists these as examples of ‘back-formation’, but they do depend on verbing nouns.

    More weirding of the language, from various blogs:
    A D.C. government employee took the morning off because a friend of hers was being “funeralized”.
    I once heard someone state that “although we didn’t get a majority, the vote was at least ‘pluralitized’”.
    “How are we going to incentivize people on the inside, standing up and legitimate that way of behaving….” (Ok, so how many verbs are there in THAT sentence?)

    4) From http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/family/verbing.html
    “..When I cook pasta, can’t I noodle?…”

    5) The other comment I wanted to make earlier:

    Um, no, the shadows and lighting are all over the place. From the link provided by Cory, counting from the top: images #3, #4, #9, #12, #13, #15, #16, #20 are, to me, obvious examples.

    Take image #3, for example.
    Second person from the left, with the high heels, shadow towards the camera, lit from the left and back. Woman just to the right of her: shadow going right, yet lit from the right.
    Person with white bag at right side of photo, shadow towards the center, lit from the right.
    Woman wearing a white hijab (Hijabed woman? Whited hijab?) in the center. Lit from her face side, yet her shadow is veering right.

    Now, look at #4. Obvious, no? #5′s flaws are more subtle. The two faces on the left weren’t lit from the same angle.

  • freeyourcrt

    (I like the one that looks like the Spanish Inquisition)

  • Anonymous

    hi Paul R
    as a comment to your “take image #3 for example…. now look at #4.
    I photograph on corners where the light comes from different directions because of reflections from glass buildings – like downtown manhattan. It makes the sunlight being more uneven and the object/people more lit.

    enjoy you weekend..

    P.Funch

  • sciencemike

    Woot! Super Win. Full of Awesome! Mr. Furch should have more information on his sight so folks can purchase these lovely images. Whoo Hoo!

  • Miss Jess

    This is super cool. An epic win for sure.

  • jancola

    As a professional compositor, PAULR, let me inform you that “composite” has been a verb for quite some time. It’s even in the dictionary as such.

    Also, these composites are quite superb.

  • Anonymous

    Does nobody cover their mouth when they yawn anymore?

  • ill lich

    Yawning?

    Or singing?

  • Anonymous

    Is there a book available of these that I can purchase? I would love to give it as a gift.

  • dbarak

    Oh come on, these pictures are fakes…

    ; )

  • David Carroll

    Behold my initial humble effort at this technique:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/david_carroll/3449993908/sizes/l/

  • dculberson

    BRAAAAAINS!!!!

  • Anonymous

    Wow… this is like my multisync photos… on steroids…
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/–mike–/sets/72157612239803314/