One of the things I love about showing apartments in New York City is that I get to enjoy hundreds of unique views I would normally never get to see. Even if the view is just of other buildings, there’s always plenty to appreciate. I particularly adore the juxtaposition of newer buildings against the older buildings that still stand proudly, holding their own among the towers of glass and steel. Many of the older buildings’ façades have details you will never see in more modern structures. I’m always keeping my eyes peeled for those decorative elements, so today’s beautiful thing is extra beautiful to me!
In his Highrises Project, Chris Hytha has undertaken to get up-close drone photography of some of the country’s most striking 20th century highrise buildings. Because the drone photos are not sufficiently high in resolution, he photographs each building floor by floor, then uses Photoshop to stitch the series of photos together. Hytha brings out each building’s details using light and shadows, and removes and cleans up the background. The resulting high-resolution images are just glorious, and I imagine they would make the buildings’ architects very proud.
“The high-rise images are created by scanning the building façade with images at each floor level, then manually stitching the series of landscape images into one vertical composition. This technique is time-consuming but well worth it for the extra sharpness and resolution it provides! One of the side effects of this method is the flattening of perspective, making the images almost like an orthographic architectural elevation.”
– Chris Hytha
Hytha is a recent architecture school grad, and his passion for older buildings really comes through in this project. It’s such a pleasure getting to zoom in on all the magnificent details the original buildings’ designers added.
I’ve included a few of his Instagram posts below, but to get the full effect of these incredibly-detailed photos, you should check them out on his website. You can see all of Chris Hytha’s magnificent photos on his website and on Instagram.
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My OBT 
April 18, 2023 at 1:16 pm
What fabulous photos! I appreciate being able to see all of the details of these buildings. I am familiar with a few of them yet would never have the opportunity to see the architectural designs in this way as so much gets lost from ground level. It must take a whole lot of photoshop skill and a great deal of patience to stitch all of those separate photos together.
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April 22, 2023 at 8:40 am
Absolutely! It’s a fantastic idea if you have the time, though!
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April 22, 2023 at 11:23 am
I think it’s possible that it is a very meditative process once you have the skill set.
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April 24, 2023 at 4:02 pm
“I think it’s possible that it is a very meditative process once you have the skill set.” definitely depends on the deadline 😛
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April 25, 2023 at 6:49 am
Very true! Good point.
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April 26, 2023 at 8:32 am
I have always liked how repetitive tasks carry with them the opportunity for deep thought. This doesn’t exactly seem mindless enough, though.
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April 26, 2023 at 8:30 am
Isn’t that the truth!
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April 24, 2023 at 4:01 pm
i was wondering how he got such a great view, and always the cloudy bg. Drone, and photoshop, with stunning results!
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April 26, 2023 at 8:30 am
It was so smart!
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