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Comment by sillysaurus2 | Hacker News Reader

The author explains how they took these photos: http://blog.roberttimothy.com/2013/05/Deserted-empty-London-...

I can't tell you how excited I am that you shared my work and that it's enjoyed. I mean, I don't wanna get all Sally-Field-at-the-Oscars but the photos and project took ages to plot and it makes it really worth it when so many get to see it - even worth getting soaked to your underwear to get the shot of Big Ben on Christmas morning! So a ga-zillion thank yous. (And they are very definitely not faked or overlayed or multiple shots - as someone says - in the second last photo you can spot a car, presumably with someone in it...)

Brilliant work, definitely appreciated.

> I didn't want to cheat and use Photoshop

I was actually hoping he did something clever like take multiple shots and stitch them all together.

Ah well, I suppose this is more noble.

If he had, he could have gotten the three (at least) people out of the second-to-last shot. :-)

It's actually much easier than manual stitching.

Take 3+ shots on a tripod then take the median value of each pixel. Anything that is moving (pedestrians, cars) will vanish.

Example: http://www.creativetechs.com/iq/photoshop_cs3s_automatic_peo...

Now That would be a useful feature on a camera. You could call it the tourist eraser :)

Nokia already has it on the lumia: http://conversations.nokia.com/2013/07/03/nokia-smart-camera...

Capturing parts of central London without people is much more of a feat than editing them out. That said, I agree with his schedule, Sunday mornings are also the only time you can drive around the city as if it's like most other cities in the world (e.g. being able to get over a 15mph average for your trip)

My friend could do this in after effects. I can't remember how. I too was hoping this would some kind of interesting compositing thing...

Highly recommended.

Clever use of bomb threats.

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