cy kuckenbaker time collapses traffic and reorganizes it by color

cy kuckenbaker time collapses traffic and reorganizes it by color
all images courtesy of cy kuckenbaker

american photographer and filmmaker cy kuckenbaker has created a new time collapse video, this time taking to the highways of california to chart transportation patterns and volume, while revealing the color palette and preferences of san diego drivers. the final footage ‘midday traffic time collapsed and reorganized by color’ breaks down a 4-minute shot of passing cars taken from top of the washington street bridge, removes the time between the moving vehicles  — without altering the speed or including any CG elements  — and classifies the subject by their hue and chroma.

the resulting cinematic display organizes the originally random flow into a neat arrangement of shade; blue cars mobilize all at once, and red ones drive in sync with each other. the overwhelming visual evidence of our car culture was rather unexpected. ‘I was surprised that the vast majority of cars are colorless: white, gray and black. the bigger surprise though was just how many cars passed in four minutes of what looked like light traffic: 462 cars. I had never really considered how many cars the freeways have to support,’ kuckenbaker explains.

still shot of blue cars

white cars

a mass of silver cars

still shot of black cars