Collaborative Photo Experiment

I was driving to work the other day, saw the sunrise and pulled over.  On the side of the road I admired it for a couple minutes.  Gorgeous.  There it was, just cresting the horizon, setting the sky on fire.   And it donned on me–in New York, if somebody else had pulled over to look at the sun the same moment as I, this same ball of fire would be full in the sky. 

I seemed so small, and it so big.  If it had eyes, that same sun, just getting a glimpse of me, would have been admiring how many others for how long. 

This got me to thinking: how cool would it be to have a picture diary–if you will–of the same sun, taken from the same direction, preferably at as close to the same lateral, at the same moment in time, from locations across the country?  It would effectively allow the viewer of the diary to see what the sun sees in a given moment.

I wonder how hard it would be to gather 20, 30, 50, or more people to make something like this happen?  All photographers, I think, should be asked to include some diary entry–something going on in their life, their town, their family.

It would be a project that tells many micro-stories that, tied to the over-arching theme of big and small, would have an opportunity to convey a macro-story.  Besides, if the pictures were good enough, and the diary entries interesting, and quirky, and heartfelt, and humorous . . . could be a good coffee-table book maybe worthy of publishing.

What would be the best way to put a grass-roots ameteur collaboration like this together?

If we could gather enough interested parties, we could then map out picture locations, set a date and time, and put something together.  We’d need to establish some ground rules, as to really make something out of this the we’d need to collect good, quality photos–preferably time stamped for proof that it was the same moment in time. 

If we did this, we could make a double feature out of it and do the same thing for sunsets as well.

I don’t know.  Maybe I’m a dork, but I think it would be kind of a cool collaboration, accomplished with a bunch of strangers from all over the country that would otherwise have no opportunity to meet, or to know/acknowledge ever existed.

How would we go about organizing something like this?