The clock is ticking down to Sunday, May 2nd, at 15:00 hours Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is just under three days away. You may be in New York City reading your morning paper, in San Francisco on an early morning bike ride in the Presidio, or in Beijing having a late night beer with friends to cap off the weekend. What else will happen at that moment in time? Photographers all around the world—including you, we hope—will pull out their cameras and snap a picture capturing the world around them.
Photo by Jan Paulick on Flickr
The New York Times is inviting the world to create a collaborative portrait in which they are asking "everyone, everywhere, to join in making this worldwide photographic mosaic, with each photographer submitting their one best picture." They suggest topics like family, community, nature, economy, social issues and work—the possibilities are endless, so long as they happen at 15:00 UTC.
The project pays heed to a 1986 project, A Day in the Life of America, organized by David Elliot Cohen and Rick Smolan in 1986, which was also coincidentally on May 2nd. This project, part of a series of books capturing a day-in-the-life of a specific place in the world, has been published internationally as compelling portraits of our vastly diverse cultures.
You can snap a picture with camera phone, Polaroid, Contax, Canon or Nikon. Shoot digitally, on film, by pinhole, or through your computer's camera. You may be a professional photographer, a hobbiest, or a student. The invitation extends to everyone, all over the world: really!
Once you've taken the picture that represents your moment on time, be sure to submit it to The New York Times. Pictures will be published up to 1000 pixels wide, so the larger the file the better. Then, send your image to submit.nytimes.com/moment anytime before Friday, May 7th. Between the 2nd and the 7th, the photos will aggregate on the Lens blog and the NY Times, where you'll be able to view them by country and topic.
To find out what time 15:00 UTC is in your part of the world, check Time and Date, then set your timers and have your cameras ready.