Families, Fun and Photography Come into Focus for RIT’s Big Shot Tonight

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RIT Big Shot Photographers

The Strong’s National Museum of Play is the subject of the 2011 RIT Big Shot. Hundreds of volunteers, manned with flashlights, illuminated The Strong’s campus while RIT photographers shot an extended exposure from the terrace rooftop of the ESL Federal Credit Union on Chestnut Street.

Playful points of light will shine on The Strong’s National Museum of Play on Thursday, May 5, for Rochester Institute of Technology’s popular Big Shot photography project.

Hundreds of volunteers, manned with flashlights or camera flash units, are needed to provide the light source for the making of a nighttime photograph of the museum’s exterior. While volunteers “paint” an area of the museum with their light sources, RIT photographers will shoot an extended exposure perched from the terrace rooftop of ESL Federal Credit Union. The city of Rochester will turn off various streetlights along Chestnut Street.

Participants should arrive by 7:45 p.m. and gather on the sidewalk opposite the museum’s pedestrian entrance near the cubes on Manhattan Square. Volunteers need to bring a flashlight or camera flash unit and are asked to wear dark clothing. Each participant will receive a memento print of the final photograph, thanks to Nikon Professional Services.

Volunteers will be broken up into lighting teams and assigned a specific area of the museum’s exterior to light. Some of the architectural gems to be featured include the Dancing Wings Butterfly Garden, the cubes, the caterpillar roof and the sculpture by metal sculptor Albert Paley. Paley, who holds the Charlotte Fredericks Mowris Endowed Chair in RIT’s School for American Crafts, will be among the lighting volunteers.

To provide perspective in the photo, models will be posed near the sign of the museum. And a toy inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame will also be in the final photograph.

Parking in the museum parking lot is limited. Participants using the lot are asked to enter and exit at Pitkin Street. Additional parking may be available at municipal lots.

RIT, The Strong, ESL Federal Credit Union, Nikon Professional Services and the city of Rochester are the event’s official sponsors.

RIT began the Big Shot photography project in 1987. Past Big Shot subjects include historical places from around the world: the Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C.; Pile Gate in Dubrovnik, Croatia; The Royal Palace in Stockholm, Sweden; World War II retired aircraft carrier the USS Intrepid in New York City; the Erie Canal along Schoen Place, Pittsford; and Mt. Hope Cemetery in Rochester.

To learn more go to the Big Shot website.

MEDIA NOTE: Members of the media should enter the museum parking lot at Pitkin Street.