that he wasn’t sure how he’d do it, but
he told her he wanted to try to combine
these elements in an image that would
show the High Line over the course of a
24-hour time span.Wilkes said that subsequently he had
such a tremendous reaction to that High
Line photograph that when he exhibited
it at the first fine-art AIPAD show in
New York after creating the High Line
photo, he never sold an image quite as
fast as he sold that image.
Since that first composite of the High
Line in 2009, he’s created scores of “Day
To Night” images.The Process
Unlike the film-based photo collage
from the 1990s, each image in the “Day
To Night” series is entirely digital. Wil-
kes generally captures between 1,200
and 1,800 image files for each session,
shot with a large-format, 4x5 cam-
era and captured from a fixed camera
angle. (In other words, he doesn’t move
the camera around like he had in the
LIFE magazine assignment.) To shoot,
he’ll stay at a particular location for 24
to 36 hours at a time, perched 15 to 20
feet above the ground, or even higher, to
capture the images.
Wilkes then selects 50 or so final
images and works with his team to
composite them together to produce one
landscape. The process, from start to
finish takes, on average, between three
and four months.
In many ways, shooting from an
elevated vantage point is an aesthetic
choice. But in some cases, particularly
when shooting in the wilderness, Wil-
kes knows he needs to be off the groundfor safety reasons. The photo shoot for
the “Grizzly Bears at Bella Coola Val-
ley, British Columbia, Canada,” is one
such example.
To create this image, which helped
Wilkes secure a grant from
National Geographic to photo-
graph Canadian endangered spe-
cies and habitats, Wilkes said he
needed to be high off the ground.
“We’re on a 15-foot scaffolding
and essentially right on the edge
of the river,” Wilkes says.
But at one point, one of the
grizzly bears he was photo-
graphing came within 6 or 7 feet
of them.
“I’m so terrified because he’s so
huge...with nails that look like Freddy
Krueger’s! We’re 15 feet up, but when
the bear is [standing upright with arms
extended], he’s almost as tall.” Luckily,
Wilkes had discussed the possibility of
such a scenario taking place with the
local parks department. In such cases,
Wilkes says, the park officials cautioned
the photographer: “You’ve got to be con-
fident and don’t project or show fear.
If the bears start coming towards you,
start talking to them.” Luckily, after
waiting a few tense minutes, the bear’s
body language changed, and it walked
away from Wilkes and his crew. How-
ever, that bear did make it into the final
image. “That grizzly is actually in the
final shot,” says Wilkes, “on the far left
edge in the frame along the grass.”
In many ways, Wilkes says, whether
he’s shooting in remote areas like Green-
land or in the center of a busy metropolis
like New York, he’s always at the mercy
of the elements and his subjects, whether
human or animal.
One of his favorite stories illustrat-
ing this is about shooting in Serengeti
National Park. Wilkes said he had
studied the landscape and decided on
a particular view that would make an
intriguing composition. “But when
you create a composition,” Wilkes says,
you’re really just hoping that the wild-
life shows up in the right place and that
“everything comes together.” So, there’s
an element of chance in every “Day ToNight” photograph.
For instance, as you can see in that
image, zebras had come in on the right
side of the picture in the early morning.
But by mid-afternoon, there had been
little activity on the left side of the image.
But what Wilkes hadn’t realized was
that the area in the lower left would be
“a natural place where these elephants
would go into the watering hole. But
when I made the composition, I had no
idea that that was going to be the case.
“But the way time was changing,”
Wilkes says, “that had to happen in the
afternoon, at about 4 o’clock.” That’s
when he heard this really loud noise
behind the scaffolding.
“I hear this sound, and it turns out to
be a pissed-off elephant directly behind
our scaffolding. And when I see her
there, she’s got her ears flapping and
she’s raising her trunk,” which Wilkes
says elephants often do before they’re
about to charge at you.
The reason she was unhappy was that
it appeared Wilkes’ scaffold was block-
ing her path to the watering hole. Nev-
ertheless, she eventually calmed down,
walked around the scaffolding and
made it into the watering hole...and
into the photograph. “She walks around
us, at which point I ran back to the cam-
era to catch her,” says Wilkes. “At that
moment, she’s literally just dropping
down into the water.” Her position in
the photograph turned out to be essen-
tial to the composition. But it’s an ele-
ment Wilkes acknowledges he had no
control over.
“Visually, she’s an incredible anchor to
the scene, by bringing your eye all the way
into the scene,” he says. “And it happened
at the perfect moment in time.” DPPYou can find the photography book
Stephen Wilkes: Day To Night on
Amazon and other book retail outlets.
Stephen Wilkes’ fine-art prints have
also appeared in the fine-art exhibition
“A Witness To Change,” which ran
from Sept. 12 through Oct. 26, 2019,
at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery in New
York. To learn more about Wilkes, go
to stephenwilkes.com....when you get
higher in elevation,
your foreground,
middle ground and
background
expands.
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