I can’t believe that another year has gone by, and another Earth Hour has come around. Earth Hour 2010 took place on 27th March 2010 at 8.30pm local time. It’s the time of year where an increasingly large number of people, businesses, buildings and monuments switch off their lights for an hour…
Last year I wrote about the event in my blog post about Earth Hour NYC. This year I headed back up the Top of the Rock building in New York City to try out a couple of different lenses for the view of the switch-off.
You can learn more about Earth Hour at the Official Earth Hour Site. The idea started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia – but it wasn’t really until last year that I picked up on it when over 4000 cities around the world took part. Going from 371 cities taking part in 2008 to 4000 in 2009, things are looking promising for 2010!
I think I still prefer the photo that I took last year below – the cloud cover seems to add a lot more drama and makes the dark Empire State Building really stand out during Earth Hour, against all the light pollution reflecting back off the clouds.
Other landmarks included in the 2009 switch-off were the Las Vegas Strip, NY’s Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Building (above), Chrysler Building, UN headquarters, and Broadway theater marquees, Golden Gate Bridge, Seattle’s Space Needle, Sears Tower, Thomas Edison’s New Jersey laboratory (the birthplace of the light bulb), the Great Pyramids of Giza, the Acropolis and Parthenon in Athens, St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, Big Ben and Houses of Parliament in London, Paris’ Elysee Palace and Eiffel Tower, Beijing’s Birds Nest and Water Cube, Symphony of Lights in Hong Kong, Sydney’s Opera House and Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro…
The photo above shows someone else braving the freezing cold temperatures on the ‘Top of the Rock’ observation deck. The weather forecast says it’s just above freezing, but with the wind-chill, it soon left me with not much feeling in my fingers! It was a huge difference from last year, where the cloud cover provided some much-wanted warmth. The downside of the cloud cover was that last year everyone only had about 10 minutes to take their photos after the lights went out – the whole thing was then shrouded in thick clouds.
Top picture:
Canon EOS-1D Mark III
1/3 sec at f/2.8
ISO 800
45mm (Tilt shift)
Related Posts:
Earth Hour 2009
National Geographic Photo of the Day (Earth Day 2009)
Perito Moreno Glacier Trek in Patagonia, Argentina
