are we? and if so.. I suppose it’s a good idea to keep clear,

at least until we’ve got our hands on something substantial. All this

mucking about in the middle can be dirty work.

You Are Beautiful Project: Chicago Wicker Park/North Ave El Station

I’m online a lot. That being said I see a lot of great web sites. Even awesome. But rarely do I run across one that I am blown away by the idea.

Wefeelfine.org

Wow.

Wow.
Cool.

Awesome.

Cannot really explain. You must go and check it out.

In a nutshell they are harvesting,compiling, visually illustrating, the mass of human feelings being splattered on blogs around the web.

Fascinating.

Awesome.

Gazing out the window to a 30 degree April. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

Here is a very interesting and well written article about sleepyurbanite.com. The author mentions that the amazing photographer Walker Evans, actually brought a 35mm camera into the subway hidden in his coat.

Read the article it’s really covers all of the facets of this project..

Flying out to NYC for 24 hours, narrowly missing a big snowstorm, having Sleepyurbanite.com featured on The Today Show.. All very surreal, all trippy..All last week. I suppose it’s lucky that this was not my first (or hopefully last) trip to NYC, because I spent most of the 24 hours riding the train getting some shots.

It was a very different experience shooting in NYC. The light in the tunnels are different, the advertising is different, and the feel is totally different.
More yellow, more orange. Most of the cars that I rode had orange seats. (This post is starting to sound like a 4th grade book report- “What I did last summer”). But while the orange seats may seem like such a puerile observation, it made a huge difference in the light that was bouncing up into my little cell phone lens and the overall feel of the shots.

The train cars are much larger than in Chicago, I was riding in the middle of the day so getting close to folks on the cars was a little bit tricky as you can probably imagine. I got some pretty bizarre looks and almost got tossed off one train by the conductor, who was not sure what I was doing, but clearly was NOT happy with it.

I hope to get back to NYC and to get more shots. 24 hours is not even close to enough to create a New York size SleepyUrbanite, but it’s a start.

See you again soon NY… LA?…. London?

View the pics from Sleepyurbanite NYC

See, Matt Lauer Gets it

I was fortunate to have my work featured on The Today show yesterday (2/12/07). The staff and cast were very cool and I was so glad that the showed a lot of the actual work from the Sleepyurbanite.com site. We had a great conversation on the air and when the subject of the invasiveness of the photos came up Matt Lauer mentioned that he thought it made him want to “know more about” the people. And it really hit upon what my actual intention with the work is, but what I have not yet been able to fully verbalize. It really is about how stunningly interesting and cool we all are as individuals. We’re all a friggin miracle every day, so yes, that is why I’m intrigued and photographing all you fantastic people.

If you missed the broadcast you can watch the Today show broadcast online

Sleepyurbanite NYC Edition

I will also be posting photos I took on the NYC train. Did you expect me to be able to resist? Check back soon for those photos!

Thanks for all of the comments on the work. Keep em coming!

SleepyUrbanite NYC: Too Tired To Shrug