In his "Then and Now" series, French photographer and chief editor of infographics at Sciences Avenire Damien Hypolite's juxtaposes the "real" contemporary France to the virtual, ludic urban landscapes of Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed: Unity. This kind of photographic comparison practice is very common in Game Art, but I assume it will gradually disappear as gaming photorealism will achieve results comparable to film and photography. What's particularly interesting in Hypolite's case is that his comparative intent is not simply spatial, but chronological, as the game is set during the French Revolution and thus its "reality" is juxtaposed to modern-day Paris.
On an ad hoc tumblr, the photographer explained his modus operandi:
"I spent an afternoon playing the game, in HD, hiding the HUD of the game. I had a map of Paris near me and virtually went to famous spots in the city and took screenshots.
Then I printed them on photo paper from a photo terminal, took my bike, and went to the right spots. The final shots were taken with my smartphone, a Sony Xperia Z1.
Back home, I corrected a little bit the levels in Photoshop and that was it, the World Wide Web did the rest!"
LINK: Damien Hypolite (via Lense)
