Have you ever walked down a street in New York City and wished you could take a photo of yourself and share it with others?
TrafficCamPhotoBooth.com, a website created by Brooklyn resident Morry Kolman, launched on Monday, giving users access to over 900 traffic cameras across the city and allowing them to take selfies with the traffic enforcement equipment.
After selecting a camera at one of the various locations around the city, users take a photo through the website – either in photo strip or Polaroid format – and now have their very own traffic camera selfie. Kolman explained that the way the Department of Transportation (DOT) hosts the camera feeds is what allows the unique website to work.
“The New York City Department of Transportation hosts live feeds of these traffic cameras,” Kolman said. “These are not live videos. They are live images that update about every two seconds. And if you just load the image URL, like you would load a photo or any other image you find online, that is completely public.”
Kolman, a New York-based artist, said the inspiration for the project came from a class taught by another artist who asked his students to take a photograph without being behind the camera themselves.
A red-tailed hawk was filmed sitting and staring directly at a Minnesota Department of Transportation traffic camera.
“And then I thought, how can I take a photo without taking it?” Kolman said. “I can use photos taken of me around town, right? And you know, I’ve talked about this on the website before, but these cameras aren’t made for people, are they? They’re made for cars, but at the end of the day, people still get caught up in their lenses.”
According to Kolman, over 10,000 photos have been taken through the site and it has received a total of 30,000 to 40,000 visits. He says he has no plans to make money from the project – the site is free and he says users are not shown ads or tracked for their activities.
He also said he would like to expand the project to other cities – and that he would like to collaborate with others to spread it even further.
“Maybe I’ll just open it up and say, hey, this whole website is open source,” Kolman said. “Anyone who wants to contribute can contribute to the repository and let it grow that way. I like to be kind of a steward of it.”
And what does the Department of Transportation think about using its traffic cameras for selfies? The department did not respond to NBC New York’s request for comment, but Kolman does not seem to think there is anything wrong with his project.
“I don’t think it’s that important to them,” he said.
“And frankly, the way the Department of Transportation has set up their traffic cameras makes it much easier to use this type of website than any other city in the United States or even the world,” Kolman added. “And so I’m very grateful, at least for the way they’ve set up their web and API infrastructure.”
