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Shooting As Spiderman

How do you make a cartoon figure look real in New York City? For the new Spider-Man movie out May 3, Columbia Pictures hired New York photographer Steve Kahn to produce 14 shots of Spider-Man in action. "They wanted him flying between buildings, hovering over police," said Kahn, who spent weeks walking around the city getting ideas.

"I shot the photographs knowing that Spider-Man had to be in the photo," he added. Upon finishing the full-color street scenes, Kahn rented a studio where he shot stuntmen in Spider-Man costumes delivered by Columbia Pictures. He then digitally inserted those images into the street scenes. The project took about 30 days.

In the movie, Tobey Maguire stars as Peter Parker and presents Kahn's photographs as his portfolio to the newspaper editor.

Kahn believes he was picked for the job because he knows how to make New York look "New York." He has lived in and photographed the city for 15 years and recently published a full-color photographic portrait of SoHo. But the Los Angeles native said "it was a real challenge to follow a cartoonist's fantasy and make it look real."

Columbia Pictures hired another New York photographer, Christophe Agou, to deliver the dÉcor for Peter Parker's apartment. Agou said he rented out 20 of his black-and-white images of New York, which hang above Peter Parker's desk, among other places. "I think Columbia found my work very creative and illustrative of New York," Agou said.

Columbia Pictures declined to comment.

-- Victoria Marcinkowski