Sleeping in NYC

LINK–> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cm2Ny04h_Q

For my collage theme, I decided to do it on the city that doesn’t sleep, New York City. Personally, I am ALWAYS tired and that’s pretty much the reason I decided to do this topic. Most days going to school in the morning, I sleep on the train. Most days going home, I sleep on the train. Some days when I get home, I take a nap. I love sleep. You can almost say that my hobby is sleeping and I know I’m not the only one. I always see other people sleeping on trains, on buses, even on the street. You can walk through Madison Square Park right outside of school and see people laying in the grass sleeping or on benches sleeping. Everyone sleeps, obviously, but I want to capture the moments that don’t just happen between the hours 11pm-8am in our own cozy beds. I wanted to be able to capture the moments where people just happen to fall asleep, whether it be on the floor of a living room, or a bench in a park. I want to point out all the naps and rests that the city that “doesn’t sleep” has to offer. In New York City, people make “beds” out of whatever is available to them when they are tired.

In my collage, you will see various places where people sleep. You’ll see people laying in bed, sitting on a couch, sitting on a park bench, laying on the grass, sitting in a train, standing in a train, DRIVING, and then some people just snoozing on the floor. There isn’t a place where people don’t sleep. For example, my dad’s favorite place to sleep is on the toilet bowl…but I didn’t find it appropriate to include a picture of that for obvious reasons. And I know the reason that New York City is labeled as the city that never sleeps. There is always something going on in the city regardless of what time it is. I just thought it would be fun to take pictures of people who aren’t always part of that “middle of the night”, lively atmosphere…and I was right. It was both fun and funny. As creepy as it sounds, I really enjoyed taking picture of people sleeping. Sure, I would get an occasional weird look from people, but for the most part people didn’t even notice. It was funny being able to be right in front of someone’s face without them knowing and the humor in it helped me get it done.

I wasn’t sure the style in which I was going to do my collage at first. I knew I couldn’t do a video because a video of people sleeping would put everyone watching to sleep! But I also didn’t want to do the old fashioned cut and paste on to paper. I didn’t find any excitement in that…especially with what the topic of my project was. I ended up figuring out how to work iPhoto and used that to help me make my collage with music and all. I had control of everything and I am pleased with the way it came out.