This week We Are Juxt will be sharing with you stories from the amazing 24 Hour Project that Renzo @aliveinnyc and Sam @whittiersam organized on March 24, 2012. We Are Juxt has a few photographers who participated and in celebration of such a worldwide event, wanted to give you summaries of their 24 hours in their respective cities. To see some more of the work of over 65 photographers, in 35 countries, and 5 continents, visit @24hourproject.
My 24 Hours: Seattle, WA
First of all BIG thanks to Renzo and Sam for their hard work in getting us all organized and ready to shoot for 24 hours straight. What a task! Gotta say though it definitely pushed me to shoot low light situations and forced me to figure out how I wanted to document my city. It was rough since I was the only one that I knew of from Seattle actually doing it and so big shouts to those who came out for a bit to shoot with me and especially to those who supported me doing this.
Shoutouts
Before I jump into this, I want to let ya’ll know I centered my DB (Ryan Coleman) when writing this, thus all the hyper-links (I especially like the Seattle Hot Dog Link)…if you know whats good for you as far as history lessons with a dash of humor, a dash of awesome, a dash of “OMG”, and some serious mobile and big camera photography you will go up to the top and search his articles. Check his latest with the Nirvana Series – a personal favorite! BAM, if he had a book, you best buy (get it)!
Got to shoot some night shots with @thisguyfel and he let me use his tripod for the rest of the time I was shooting. Also to close out @boohi_bronson came out with me on the last leg of the project. Also, I have to shoutout Sam (LA) and Tony (Detroit). For the most part, we were in contact every few hours on how we are doing and what our energy levels were like. Tony and I were the only ones in our city (I was in contact with) shooting so we kinda had this unsaid thing to check up on each other also. Some of Seattle isn’t safe for shooting especially at night, and for damn sure Detroit has its parts where it’s not that safe. Seattle has had a spree of cell phone muggings and I didnt want to be a part of that, Tony was my text homie to keep in contact with.
So…
The first 12 hours started with a bboy/ bgirl competition held at the HG Lodge which is a local nightspot in Seattle. Some folks I knew promoted the event and although I looked silly to some folks with my mobile next to the big camera shooters, I was still proud to be able to say I got a few shots that we’re ok during those low light situations. Not only was it dark out, but in the club I was really looking for the light situations and trying to position myself where the light was more prominent. ON top of that shit, I WAS REALLY enjoying the idea of bboys/bgirls from my city teaming up with amateurs and drinking with them and still comin up with some crazy style and power moves. LOVED IT. Between each and every round, each participant took a shot of Jack Daniels. YO, pure entertainment!
After the competition and the club closed down, I thought why not stay up on Capitol Hill and get the folks who club and then get hungry. Their drunk asses had to look for sustenance right?!?! Each corner practically had a food vendor and Seattle is known for their hot dogs with cream cheese in them. If you’re ever out on the town in Seattle and you’re hungry after a night of drunken foolery and pickin up on the opposite or same sex, get yourself a cream cheese hot dog and truly be satisfied with a night complete of fun times. @thisguyfel and I walked up and down Pine Street from Broadway to 14th and back down. Lots of folks getting their eat on. Some drunk folks macking. Some drunk folks reliving their night. Some drunk folks meeting other drunk folks to figure out what drunk folks are supposed to do after getting drunk. Yea lots of that stuff. The cops were walking their beat. The food vendors were making their money. Folks were getting their Romancing the Stone on. What a better way to say I love you and Want YOU than leaning against a stop sign whispering sweet nothings and how your about to tap that…ok…you get the point…
The First 12 Hours
We decided to leave this drunken splendor and go to a city lookout. We went up to Jose Rizal Bridge which is south of the city on its way up to Beacon Hill. We decided to try and practice our night/city shots with the slow shutter app. Some folks were able to pull off some great stuff with long exposures on the big camera and slow shutter tries to do the same for the iPhone. Unfortunately the shots didn’t come out the way we wanted.
Well this died out pretty quickly and @thisguyfel ended up leaving me and I was running the streets solo. Now I forgot to mention earlier, that I hadn’t gotten any sleep since that Friday morning waking up for work. So by this time I had already been running without sleep for 21 hours. I had to get a power nap in. So I got in the car and went to Lake Washington and posted up for an hour nap. I had to =)
I did get some sunrise shots from the lake and decided that those were my own to keep. Plan on printing them and getting them to my boss (my wife) for dealing with me missing for this weekend. She was a trooper and so I hope that not only will she be cool with a sunrise print, but not rack up too many points towards a shopping spree that I know I owe her, YEA thanks a lot RENZO AND SAM!! =)
After this I had to take the son to soccer and do the dad duties for a couple hours so there were some missed opportunities I’m sure, but did get some more kiddo portraits and action shots of my little Pele’.
The last 12 hours I ended up walking downtown in crazy zombie fasihon. I took the train in from the Southend and got dropped off in Chinatown in hopes to capture the morning elders at Hing Hay Park and morning deliveries. From there I ended up going to as many portions of the downtown area I could. Chinatown, Pioneer Square, Waterfront up to the Sculpture Park, back down into the city through Westlake and Pike Place Market, then back down into Chinatown to get ready for an afternoon meeting at Mercer Island with the Juxt partners. There were the typical Seattle tourists and street performers, very minimal Occupy Seattle coverage (which honestly really disappointed me since the day turned out to be real beautiful).
The day was sunny and in the late 50’s low 60’s. IT was great for chasing light. I’d say the bulk of my submissions for the project will probably be from during this time. My energy was pretty high considering I was really working towards almost 40 hours with only 1 hour of sleep.
The Final 12 Hours
After the Juxt partners meeting, @boohi_bronson and I went out and I had already planned what I wanted to end up doing. Seattle iconic shit. The Space Needle, the Pacific Science Center…as much of Seattle Center as I could and end it at Dicks on Broadway. There’s always people there on a Saturday night before midnight. I broke out the tripod and set up shop. These last couple to few hours of shooting is where I got the most interaction from strangers.
“Is that, is that an iPhone on that tripod?”
“I’ve never seen that done before.”
“REALLY?!?! you need a tripod for that?”
“Can I see some of your photos?”
“You did that on an iPhone?”
“That’s from an iPhone?”
“REALLY!?!?! that’s from an iPhone?!?!?”
Through all these discussions I was able to throw out some of the projects like #Fuck_Racism and #HomelessInSeattle and definitely got them to start out on the social networks and get them involved with some of the photowalks by Igers Seattle and get involved with other mobile folks…It was pretty cool to meet folks who were interested. One woman in particular is a student at Cornish is working on getting me to talk to her class. She’s a photography major and the big thing they are talking about now is how viable is the art created by mobile devices. So I gave her my contact info in return for her flipping me the bird for the Fuck Racism Project with Marco and in support of the Trayvon Martin murder.
Closed out at Dick’s, and I didn’t get no burger and fries and large coke. Got some photos, got some good conversation, then bounced.
The 24 hour project was a really cool experience. Would I do it again? Possibly. The answer would be certain if I had folks who would do it with me. That way we could individually cover the city, meet up, chat, and then go back out again. I think that’ll definitely sway me to the HELL YEA answer.
Again thanks to Renzo and Sam for organizing. They have a lot of plans for this project and We Are Juxt is in full support.
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Sounds like it was a challenge, Fam. Good to read about your experience of it.
I would have done this too had I been aware of it in advance. Nice writing & shooting.
Great write up, BP. And thanks for the link to Urban Dic; you know I needed it! 😀
enjoyed this write up bro, would have loved to have joined you.