Wildfire Storms

Published: 10/28/21 alongside a digital and print article
Partnering Desk: Climate

Giant wildfires this year (2021) have generated enormous storm clouds, sending smoke into the stratosphere. The effect is similar to a volcanic eruption.

Days after California’s Dixie fire ignited in mid-July, a fire-generated storm cloud rose more than 40,000 feet above its western flank. Using high-resolution radar data, The New York Times reconstructed that cloud — known as a pyrocumulonimbus, or pyroCb, for short — to show a model of the Dixie fire’s first massive thundercloud and how high it reached.

Read the insider story on how this story came to life

When to wear a mask

Published: 9/15/21 alongside a digital burst
Partnerning Desk: Science

The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are remarkably effective at preventing serious cases of Covid-19. If you’re vaccinated and become infected, you likely won’t get very sick, but you might spread the virus to immunocompromised and unvaccinated people, including all children under 12.
Masks are highly effective at stopping transmission. This is why the C.D.C. recommends you wear a mask in high-risk circumstances, whether you’re vaccinated or not.

But do you know in which circumstances you should be wearing your mask? Test your knowledge of the C.D.C.’s mask guidelines for vaccinated people by taking this quiz.

Race a Gold Medalist

Published: 8/2/21
Partnering Desk: Graphics

Lamont Marcell Jacobs of Italy ran a 9.80-second 100 meters to win the gold medal on Sunday 7/31 at Tokyo Olympic Stadium.
Using live CV speed analysis, we captured and processed the speed for Jacobs, and placed it along a 20m track so the user can race against an Olympic gold medalist.

CLIMBING IN TOKYO

Published: 7/30/21 alongside a digital article
Partnering Desk: Graphics

The Olympic lead wall is the best event for Adam Ondra, the world’s greatest climber. It’s an endurance event with routes that are designed to limit, or even eliminate, any rest areas for climbers. But Ondra is a master at energy efficiency.

Hurdling IN TOKYO

Published: 7/27/21 alongside a digital article
Partnering Desk: Graphics

If you were going to design the ideal hurdler, it would be Dalilah Muhammad. Her strides are precise. She keeps her head and hips almost exactly level.
Muhammad maintains her speed by keeping her body movements consistent between sprinting and hurdling. Her head and hips deviate only slightly. She consistently hits her optimal take-off and landing marks at each hurdle for efficiency and minimal breaking.

In Tokyo, Muhammad will try to maintain her sprinting mechanics as she navigates 10 barriers for a grueling 400 meters.

Gymnastics in Tokyo

Published: 7/19/21 alongside a digital article
Partnering Desk: Graphics

Sunisa Lee is the best gymnast in the world on the uneven bars.
Lee’s routine in Tokyo begins with four of the event’s most difficult skills strung together without breaks.
The sequence requires near perfect execution.

Hidden Light on Mars

Published: 6/1/21
Partnering Desk: Science

To find hints of past life, Perseverance’s primary camera — called Mastcam-Z — sees a Martian landscape we humans cannot see: a planet bathed in technicolor blues and infrared light.

Our human eyes were not trained in Martian light. Certain wavelengths, like infrared, are imperceptible to humans. Others are too close together for the human eye to differentiate between. Mastcam-Z, like your phone’s camera, captures true color images of Mars using a pixel array that combines R, B and G.

Gospel Choirs Return

Published: 5/11/21 alongside a digital article
Partnering Desk: Graphics

In March 2020, as New York City became the epicenter of the pandemic, churches in Harlem like Bethel Gospel Assembly closed their doors and silenced their choirs

But the music would return. This spring (2021), Bethel found a way to bring a few singers and instrumentalists back into its sanctuary to sing.

The Vertigo Effect

Published 4/23/21 alongside a digital burst
Partnering desk: Culture

The New York Times is helping film fans get ready for the 93rd Academy Awards Sunday night (April 25) by bringing an effect used in many classic films to Instagram.

The Vertigo effect is a camera technique first used by Alfred Hitchcock in Vertigo, his 1958 film, and it has been seen in other classics including Jaws, The Lion King, Lord of the Rings, Pulp Fiction and Raging Bull.

The effect works by dollying—moving forward and backward—and zooming simultaneously in opposite directions, undermining viewer’s normal visual perception. Taking users through a step-by-step process and including a separate mode specific for the application’s selfie camera.

Crypto at Christie’s

Published 3/10/21
Partnering desk: Art

On Feb. 25, Christie’s auction house opened bidding for its first-ever purely digital artwork. The work is an amalgamation of 5,000 illustrations created over 13 years by Mike Winkelmann, who goes by Beeple. It eventually sold for $69 million.
Amid frenzied interest in Bitcoin and meme stocks, the speculative market for NFTs has skyrocketed over the past year. But behind the crypto fervor, Christie’s milestone is significant for digital artists who have struggled to monetize their creations. If scarcity confers value, NFTs offer a way to determine provenance that can be inclusive of digital assets. Unbound by physical constraints, Beeple’s NFT shows off at least one unique quality of digital art: The piece can scale to extreme proportions.  This effect shows a super-scaled 'copy' of  "Everdays: The First 5000 Days."

Reopening Schools

Published 2/28/21 alongside a digital article
Partnering desk: Graphics

The C.D.C. is urging communities to reopen schools as quickly as possible, but parents and teachers have raised questions about the quality of ventilation available in public school classrooms to protect against the coronavirus.
This effect illustrates how 3-4 different parameters (e.g., opening a window) affect particle concentrations in a classroom of socially-distanced students, where one student is carrying coronavirus.
Accompanying context (in copy) explains the significance of making certain decisions to reduce the risk of coronavirus transmission.

You can also read the article in Spanish here.

Music of Carnival

Published 2/19/21 alongside a digital package
Partnering desk: Narrative Projects & Culture

From J'Ouvert in Brooklyn to Caribana in Toronto and Notting Hill in London, Carnival has come to be a full-tilt joy fest of renewal, resistance, and remembering for Caribbean immigrants. The Times asked Don Letts, the legendary London-based DJ, and filmmaker, to break down what makes a great carnival song. This AR experience puts you inside the song "Elaine the Osaka Dancer" by Mad Professor, and allows you to walk among the individual music tracks and see and listen to how music is made.

Flying on Mars?

Published 2/18/21
Partnering desk: Science

In July 2020, NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter hitched a ride on the Perseverance rover. The rover succesfully touch down on Mars on Thursday, Feb 18. 2021. The Martian atmosphere is 1% as dense as Earth's, which makes it hard for the copter to take to the sky without crashing. This effect provides a side-by-side comparison on what would be Ingenuity's flight on Earth vs Mars. Showing the difference in atmosphere, physics, and overall difficulty of the first aircraft to attempt controlled flight on another planet.

100 Years of nom wah

Published 12/2/20 alongside a digital article
Partnering desk: Culture

After one hundred years of downturns and urban upheaval, Chinatown’s oldest restaurant braces again as pandemic lockdowns return to Manhattan. This effect takes a stroll down Nom Wah through the decades and how this restaurant fits into the bigger puzzle of Chinatown in history.

(See the project in detail here)

This face isn’t real

Published 11/23/20 alongside a digital article and print article
Partnering desk: Graphics

This effect is a part of an article that talks about seemingly real people one finds on the internet who don't exist in real life, and how to spot them. The figure on the article and effect is 100% generated by an algorithm using StyleGAN2 generative machine learning model. We named her Maggie.

How masks work

Published 10/31/20 alongside a digital article and print article
Partnering desk: Graphics

As the country grapples with an increase in cases of COVID-19, there is renewed value in understanding social distancing and the role of masks in preventing the spread of the virus.
This effect visualizes the way COVID-19 droplets move through face mask fabrics, how heavier droplets and smaller droplets transmit differently, and why social distancing and masks are important for lowering transmission rates.
This was published as a part of a bigger compelling editorial use-case, because it allows users to see an otherwise invisible threat that actually exists in the very place they’re standing, as well as the ways effective preventative measures like social distancing and masks mitigate the risks to themselves and others.

You can also read the article in Spanish and French.

(See the project in detail here)

Election FORECAST

Published 10/26/20
Partnering desk: The Upshot

Using visual distortions this effect allows you to see your surroundings as clearly as experts see the 2020 election.
Look through your camera and notice the distortion around you. In this effect, a completely blurry picture represents an uncertain 50-50 guess, and a crystal-clear view means complete certainty.