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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

MCC Members Among Nearly 3,000 People at RIT’s Big Shot Photo


The opportunity to “paint light” on the Kodak Tower drew nearly 3,000 people to the plaza on MCC's Downtown Campus on Sunday night, Sept. 18, to help make Rochester Institute of Technology's 32nd Big Shot photograph a picturesque success.

More than 2,800 volunteers, including MCC students, faculty and staff, provided the primary light source (flashlights and camera flashes) for the Big Shot image while RIT photographers shot an extended exposure with Kodak Tower nearly completely darkened. The MCC campus was included in the image.

To give the photo a vintage look, the RIT photo team had a Ford Model T car parked on the plaza with President Kress in the driver's seat for the photo shoot. The plaza also displayed a 60-by-40-foot large photographic print of of George Eastman, enabling the company’s founder to have a prominent presence in the image. Meanwhile, many volunteers held up pictures of current and former “Kodakers” as the shutter opened.

“The Big Shot always is a community art project, representing one of RIT’s signature events,” said RIT Michael Peres, associate chair of the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences and one of the Big Shot organizers. “All of us with the photo team are absolutely thrilled with the result of this year’s photograph of Kodak Tower. We want to thank everyone for coming out to celebrate Kodak and Rochester's contributions to photography.”

He said capturing the final image was the culmination of many months of hard work and close collaboration between RIT, Kodak, Nikon, Inc., the the City of Rochester, Monroe Community College, Profoto, M L Caccamise Electric Corp., DiMarco Construction, and Asset One, LLC.

“We couldn’t do the Big Shot without the support of our sponsors and the many volunteers who came out tonight,” Peres said. “We’ve created a once-in-a-lifetime photograph of the zenith of photography.”

The RIT team employed several photographic technologies from past centuries to capture the image on a humid Sunday night, including a camera that used a wet plate collodion process invented in the 1850s; two cameras that used dry plate film invented in the late 1880s (just like Eastman himself would have used); and a large format C-41 film camera. Two Nikon D810 digital cameras once again were used to record the Big Shot exposure.

To view the photo and images of all Big Shot subjects, go to https://bigshot.cias.rit.edu/

Caption: Approximately 2,800 people came out to “paint light” on Kodak Tower on Sunday night. The photo on the left is before volunteers "painted with light" while the photo on the right is when volunteers shined light sources on the 19-story building.

Hency Yuen-Eng
Marketing and Community Relations
09/20/2016


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