Skip to main content

Photographer captures 360-degree shot of NYC from atop Empire State Building

Think you have to climb up 102 stories and put some coins inside those binoculars on the top of the Empire State Building to get a bird’s-eye view of New York? Think again. Photographer Aleksandr Reznik of Lithuania recently completed a 45 gigapixel — that’s 45,000 megapixels — 360-degree panorama from the top of what’s considered the world’s most photographed building. And he shot it all by hand.

The photograph’s abnormally high resolution allows viewers to zoom in on the details of iconic buildings and bridges or even Central Park. If Reznik printed the image at 150 dpi, the image would be longer than a football field at 166 feet wide.

Recommended Videos

“The cities with great history and a lot of well-known places are the best for making gigapixel images,” Reznik said. “There are only several places on Earth where you can be high in the center of the city and observe it without the interference of window glass. Sure, each city has some high buildings — but it normally has some problems, like the city isn’t interesting, the building isn’t in the center, or the view is covered by glass.”

The gigapixel count seems impressive enough — but there are no tripods allowed on the Empire State Building’s observation deck. Reznik, who has been shooting for more than 25 years and ventured into panorama work in 2009, shot about 4,000 images by hand during three separate trips to the observation deck. While the photographer says it’s always better to use a tripod, it wasn’t a big issue since he’s shot and stitched together several high-resolution panoramas before without one — including views from the Eiffel Tower and St. Peter’s Basilica.

IMG_8555a_1600a
Aleksandr Reznik
Aleksandr Reznik

Reznik used a Canon 5DSR and a 200mm f/2.8 len. Using a telephoto lens allowed him to include more photographs to cover the same perspective, which gives the photo that high resolution. In 2014, he shot a panorama from the same spot with a 50mm lens, which resulted in a one gigapixel image. A partnership with roundme, a media platform dedicated to 360 views, allowed him to return again in the summer of 2015 for the 45 gigapixel image. He finished the stitching process and shared the shot in August.

The final panorama ended up taking about 1,200 photographs — it took Reznik several months and a $4,000 computer to put it all together. “When you are working with 100 to 200 GB files, all of the procedures are very slow. Opening a file? Fifteen minutes. Saving the file? Half an hour.”

Sharing an image with such a large file size also presents a problem — Reznik used roundme and its recently added Pro Account , which allows users to post large gigapixel files.

“The Empire State Building is just a gem for gigapixels,” Reznik said. The image is the biggest he’s shot, and while 45 gigapixels isn’t the biggest photograph in the world, he believes it might just be the biggest shot by hand.

Hillary K. Grigonis
Hillary never planned on becoming a photographer—and then she was handed a camera at her first writing job and she's been…
Phone cameras are so good, they’ve finally replaced my camera for work
Close up of the camera on the iPhone 16 Pro and Pixel 9 Pro.

For almost two decades, I’ve carried more than twenty pounds of electronics in my backpack for the slightest chance of needing to capture content for my professional life. My backpack usually contained my MacBook, a full-frame camera with a big lens, a tripod, and an assortment of video and audio gear that I always deemed essential.

As it turns out, over the past two years, many of these items were rendered obsolete, as many companies launched new products that were quickly able to replace technology that I previously considered irreplaceable.

Read more
This is what happens ‘when you get two uber-geeks in space at the same time’
NASA's Don Pettit on the space station.



During NASA’s first-ever Twitch livestream from the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday, current station inhabitant Don Pettit and recent returnee Matthew Dominick talked about what it’s like to live and work in a satellite 250 miles up.

Read more
The GoPro Hero 13 Creator Edition is $100 off, but not for long
A person holding the GoPro HERO13 Creator Edition in front of the ocean.

Outdoor enthusiasts who want to buy a new action camera should go for the brand that popularized the product and look for GoPro deals. Best Buy has an offer that's going to be hard to refuse, as it features the GoPro Hero 13 Creator Edition. From its original price of $600, it's down to just $500 as part of the retailer's Presidents' Day Sale. There are still a few days remaining before the $100 discount ends on February 17, but we highly recommend completing your purchase as soon as possible because stocks may run out before then.

Why you should buy the GoPro Hero 13 Creator Edition
The star of the GoPro Hero 13 Creator Edition is the GoPro Hero 13 Black, which is the latest version of the brand's popular line of action cameras. It's capable of recording video at up to 5.3K resolution, and you can grab photos of up to 24.7MP from your footage using the GoPro Quick app. The GoPro Hero 13 Black can also take videos that are slowed down by 13 times the normal speed, and it can last more than 5 hours on a single charge. The front and rear LCD screens will let you frame your shots perfectly, and the built-in buttons enable easy controls for lengthy sessions.

Read more