Thanks to having some extra use-it-or-lose-it vacation time left at work, I ended up having tomorrow (Friday 12 / 3) off with nothing really planned. Since I’m incapable of doing nothing and just relaxing for an entire day, I wanted to come up with something fun, but relatively cheap to do. I also wanted to take some photos, so I came up with the idea to participate in my own live user-generated photo scavenger hunt in NYC.
The idea is simple, I’m going to head into the city with my camera and spend the day doing a scavenger hunt. All items on the list will be things that can be photographed rather than collected. Where the fun part comes in is that the list will not be pre-made. Starting at the time that I get into the city, I will be taking live submissions from people via Facebook, Twitter, SMS, or comments right here on this blog post. The submissions can be just about anything and I’ll find a way to photograph it. Any object, place, landmark, GPS coordinates, idea, or action will work. For actions, I’ll have to find someone performing that action and for landmarks, I’ll have to head over to where ever it is. Submissions can even be some abstract concept or idea that you’d want my take on. The only limitations are that it can’t involve anything illegal or that may result in my injury. That would seriously take the fun out of it for me. The submissions also must be things that actually make sense within NYC (a little more on this part below) so locations/landmarks/GPS coordinates can’t be anything more than walking distance from where I am at any given time.
The point of this, if you’re wondering, is to see what happens when the internet controls a girl with a camera for a day. I want to see what I end up with photos of. This could turn out to be much more interesting than me just photographing anything I want. Or it could be a complete disaster.
My plan is to try to get into Manhattan by about 10:30am. Starting at 10am, I welcome everyone to start making submissions. If you have my phone number, text me, otherwise, use any online method mentioned above, I’ll get it right away. When making a submission, keep in mind that I’ll be in Manhattan and if something is too far away from me, I’m not going to bother with it. So, I’m not going to trek all the way up to Harlem or all the way down to the Financial District and definitely not to any other borough. However, anything in/around Central Park, Midtown, or the Village should be doable.
You can make as many submissions as you like and I will try to do as many as I can, but I plan to be out of the city by 3pm so don’t wait too long. Throughout the day, I will update my location via Twitter and Facebook so check those to see where I’m at and make location-based submissions.
Now, there are two caveats to this…
First, no one sees any results until I’m all finished with processing all the photos. When I’m done, I plan to post them as a gallery here and on Flickr. I expect this to be by Monday at the latest.
Second, before I commit to being in the city in the cold tomorrow, I need at least ten people to say they plan on taking part in this. You don’t need to let me know ahead of time in order to make submissions tomorrow, but I do need to know that there’s enough of a reason for me to actually head up there. So please let me know, again via any of the methods mentioned above, that you will be taking part.
And again, you can make as many submissions as you like anytime between 10am and 3pm.
This should be exciting!