Quote:
Originally Posted by RandySavage
Hong Kong and New York are very close. I would argue that Hong Kong looks more impressive in some photos partly because, due to its geography, someone with a tripod can stand on the southern tip of Kowloon and get an evenly distributed panographic image, like the amazing one above.
It's not possible to do this in New York: the midtown and downtown skyclusters are too far away from each other and Manhattan doesn't curve like Hong Kong.
So even the mindblowing pics, like the ones by RFC graphics below, don't do NYC justice because they don't fully capture the skyline. It is my number one now. When the new WTC is finished, nothing can touch it.
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Most skylines look attractive because of many different circumstances such as the setting and how the buildings are organized. New York partly suffers from this because it simply has too many skyscrapers spread over a fairly large area - the main clusters are too far away from each other.
It is not a city's buildings alone that makes a skyline - far from it. Imagine downtown Vancouver (a rather bland building collection with a homogeneous height) in the middle of flat plains, it wouldn't look nearly as spectacular as it does in reality, with the mountain backdrop and the surrounding waters.
Sure, New York doesn't have the picture perfect mountain backdrop as Hong Kong - but its surroundings (the waters, the fact that it is located on an island, the bridges etc.) still add to the skyline rather than the opposite. The main clusters being far away from each other hurts it, but not nearly as much as for example Shanghai's skyline. It is simply way to large and spread out to be done any justice whatsoever in photos. That's why you only see pics of Lujiazui alone (the small area where Jin Mao and SWFC is located - makes up perhaps 2% of the total skyline), or chaotic pics showing a wall of buildings in every direction.
There is not a single good location for capturing all of Shanghai's skyline - it is simply way too big.
A lot of large Asian cities suffer from this because of the mass urbanity that stretches like an ocean for miles and miles. Imagine the skyscrapers of Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tokyo, Bangkok or Manilla being neatly lined up along the water á la Chicago, with a mountainous backdrop Vancouver-style.
If skyline pics of New York doesn't do it justice - think about these cities!
Examples of the capture-impossible skyline of Shanghai;
You always find yourself in the middle of the chaos with a wall of buildings blocking the view in every single direction, wherever you are;
Photo by fangbiansile / Bob Loblaw
If you get higher up, such as the observation deck in the supertalls, it is possible to get a more comprehensible view of the building ocean - but now it's rather an areal shot than a skyline shot. Plus of course the fact that the show below still doesn't show even 1/4th of the whole skyline:
A final overview photo, also taken from from a supertall (Shimao Plaza) illustrating just how incomprehensible this skyline is.
Photo by Charlie Xia / spiky247 @ Flickr