JOOK LEUNG’S NYC CUSTOM HOUSE PANOS
by Michelle Bienias
Read 'A Conversation with Award Winning "Tribute in Light" Photographer Jook Leung'
The Beaux-Arts style U.S. Custom House sits smack in the heart of New York City, on historic Bowling Green, location of a fort built by the first Dutch settlers. The site housed several buildings over the centuries when, in 1899, architect Cass Gilbert, who later went on to design the Woolworth Building, won a design competition to build a Custom House on the site, needed for the collection of revenue and registration at the busy port. It was saved from demolition in 1979 and nearly $30 million was spent on its restoration. It is now home to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York and the George Gustav Heye Center of the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution (now there?s a name in need of change).
Award-winning VR photographer Jook Leung was hired by the 9/11 Commission to photograph a 2-day hearing (March 31 ? April 1, 2003) at the busy Custom House, also the site of the WorldCom and Enron bankruptcy hearings. For these shots, Jook used a Fujifilm S2 with a Nikkor 8mm fisheye, taking four shots every 90-degrees. He also used a custom rig attached to the rim of the lens like a collar, instead of to the camera, as the lens was bigger and heavier than the camera.
It?s always interesting to take a peek behind-the-scenes and discover what equipment the photographer used and the overall conditions of a shoot. Sometimes, what appears to be a masterly crafted shot is a result of sheer luck, and vice versa. Jook says the key to this type of photography is a mixture of luck and prepared anticipation: knowing your camera position, exposure and brackets. On the first day of the hearing, NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg arrived to speak to the Commission. As Jook was taking some conventional photos along with the assembled press pool, he spotted a window of opportunity to shoot his pano and jumped in. ?It was satisfying that I was able to get good expressions on the faces of all the many people in this panorama,? says Jook.
He shot the exterior pano before the hearing start at 9 a.m., so was pressed for time. ?The building was in shadow and there was a big white police van parked across the street,? Jook says, so he halfheartedly took his shot halfway up the steps. ?I finished and collapsed my tripod when a group of visitors stopped to discuss the architecture of the building. I saw they would nicely block the big bright police vehicle so I quickly set up again at the foot of the stairs and got the pano that you see here before the people moved on.?
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