What The World’s Metropolises Would Look Like With No People


Like a scene from The Walking Dead or Omega Man, photographers Lucie & Simon reduce some of the busiest places on Earth to barren landscapes. You can almost hear the oppressive silence but how did they accomplish this feat?

The pair reportedly employed a neutral density filter, “normally used by NASA for analysing stars” to achieve this effect. ND filters essentially equalise all wavelengths of light passing through them. This allows photographers to take long-exposure shots and easily cut out the any blurring caused by people moving around. The solitary people you see in some of the shots simply stood still for the duration of the exposure. [Lucie & Simon via Popular Science]