Pixiq

I think I’m hot stuff when I work on a Photoshop file and get up to 30 or 40 layers. Wow. But I feel so inadequate and trifling when I look at the work my friend, artist and illustrator, Bert Monroy has been working on for the past four years. An illustration of Times Square in New York made up of over 500,000 layers. That’s not a typo, over HALF A MILLION layers. Ouch.

It’s an incredible piece that is 60” by 300” and will be unveiled at Photoshop World this March 30 to April 1^st in Orlando. Printed on an Epson printer on their DisplayTrans Media, Epson will be displaying it in a custom build lightbox. Just how cool is that?

Weighing in at over 6.9gb when flattened (makes you wonder how long Bert had to look at a spinning beach ball on his Mac) this image not only has unreal detail, but the best part of the entire illustration, for sure, is the fact that I can say I’m in the picture! I’m standing next to my good friend and photo legend, Jay Maisel. Also next to me is Ryzard Horowitz, who I was lucky enough to assist back in the ‘70’s. In fact, this incredible image of Times Square is populated with all sorts of photographers and digital luminaries, like Thomas and John Knoll who wrote Photoshop, Julieanne Kost, Russell Brown, Scott Kelby, and a cast of hundreds. It’s a virtual Monroy Universe of Digiterati luminaries. Not to mention a younger Bert driving a cab in Times Square, as he did in his youth.

So every lightbulb on Broadway, as the saying goes, was completely fabricated and illustrated by Bert, as is every element, every square millimeter, in this photo-realistic illustration.

Take a look here if you missed the link above and you can scroll and zoom around,  in and out of the image. It’s very impressive. See if you can find me. A clue, I’m near the Toys R Us store, which is funny as I did the first photos that appeared on the outside signage of this very Times Square store for them when it first opened. Then they found out vendors would pay to advertise there and there went that gig.  That’s the life of a photographer. Another clue as where to find me, look for the Mr. Frostee truck, of course. Where else would I be?

And do look at Bert’s portfolio on his website. This illustration and all his others are truly amazing when you realize that they are all illustrations, created by Bert’s hand and his mind. As someone who couldn’t draw a straight line with a pencil and a ruler, work like Bert’s truly amaze me. His columns in Photoshop User Magazine always blow me away when he explains what it takes to draw some of these elements, like the lights on the signs in Times Square. Of course, with the knowledge I got reading Bert’s columns, I can now draw a straight line in Photoshop. I learned- hold the shift key down and Photoshop will make it straight for me. Yeah!