In May, I had the opportunity to have a couple of my photos displayed in Times Square. I posted a few photos, but never explained anything about it.
One of my favorite photographers, Vincent Laforet, posted on his blog that he was giving photographers around the world an opportunity to have their work on the Nasdaq and Reuters big ass digital billboards right in the middle of times square. Things like this always sound so ridiculous to me that I overlooked the article and forgot about it until later in the day when Fstoppers posted about it as well. As I read more into it, I noticed that all you had to do was send your photos in to an email address listed on the blog, easy enough, so I did just that.
That was on a Saturday I believe, and there was nothing saying if your photos were chosen to be displayed on Monday. You either have to be in Times Square at the time, or watch one of the streaming cameras of the intersections that run all day online somewhere. It was a nice day so I figured I'd go check it out and ride my bike around the city. I had no expectations of seeing my photos with thousands of other people, I just figured I'd go meet one of my idols since Vincent said he was going to be on the corner watching during that time.
I ride my bike to Times Square and find 10-15 other photographers on the corner waiting for the photos to be displayed along with Vincent and a small crew on the corner documenting it. As the photos began popping up, I stood there thinking that I was going to look at everyone else's photos and not see mine since a million people probably made submissions as well. Within the first 10 seconds or so, I see my photo pop up, and then the second one right after. I snapped a couple of pics really fast and said "Oh shit" which drew the attention of the other photographers there waiting to see theirs on the screens. After a while, I noticed they kept showing a few photos over and over again and mine happened to be in that cycle so I got to see them a few times within the hour. After seeing my shots up there, I was kind of upset I didn't send in more than just 2 photos, but then again, I didn't expect them to show either of them in the first place.
Throughout the hour, a good amount of photographers showed up to watch and I didn't hear any of them scream "Oh shit!" so I don't know if any of their photos were chosen too, haha.
Even though Vincent was busy working on his BTS video of what was going on, I got to say hi and got a picture with him in front of the billboards. I thanked him for giving me the opportunity to do that and he seemed shocked and impressed that my photos made it, so I guess that was a good thing. His photos scrolled along the bottom screen and mine were on the top so it was kind of cool to see his and my work side by side in Times Square.
