Stephen Wilkes Puzzle Tunnel View, Yosemite National Park, Day to Night

Photographer Stephen Wilkes is one of America's most iconic photographers, widely recognized for his fine art, editorial and commercial work. Day to Night, Wilkes's most defining project, began in 2009. These epic cityscapes and landscapes portrayed from a fixed camera angle for up to 30 hours capture fleeting moments of humanity as light passes in front of his lens over the course of a full day. A select group of these images are then seamlessly blended into one photograph, capturing the changing of time within a single frame.

“I like to describe myself as a collector of magical moments,” he has explained.  “My work is a combination of art & science.  I’m exploring the space time continuum within a 2 dimensional still photograph.  Time is something we’ve never been able to put our minds around, yet in a unique way these images begin to put a face on time.”

Stephen Wilkes has teamed up with 4D Brands International to launch a full puzzle collection of the Day to Night Series. With over forty epic images to come, you can expect to experience all the famous and historic places that Stephen has captured throughout his decade long project.

I have always been inspired by the magnificent El Capitan at Yosemite National Park. Achieving  this view required perhaps the most challenging setup I have ever had to do. I was tethered, along with two of my assistants, to the edge of a rock outcropping at a 45-degree angle . The working area was the size of a four-by-eight piece of plywood, perched on top of Tunnel View; the slightest misstep could have toppled the camera over the edge. 

Once I began shooting, my focus was solely on the ebb and flow of light and the people in the foreground.  Most of the great works that have been done on Yosemite don’t include people, and I wanted to create a photograph that celebrated not only the Park’s breadth and scale, but also the way humanity interacts with nature.  Busloads of people visit Yosemite every single day and I focused my eye on capturing the many individual moments that took place over 36 hours.  My favorite moment was watching a father having fun with his daughter, throwing her up almost eight feet into the air.