A shot in the dark

@600 has gotten a lot of attention in the photoblog world recently. At a certain time tomorrow (11/4/8) a bunch of photographers across the world will make pictures simultaneously, with the results posted here. Kevin Miyazaki orchestrated an almost identical project last summer with interesting results. The difference this time is that tomorrow is election day in the U.S. Presumably this was the impetus to create such a project, to document a potentially historic (or possibly heartbreaking) day.

Which brings us to the problem. The name @600 refers to 600 internet time. Don't worry if you don't know what internet time is. No one does. It's a completely self-referential oxbow of a meme like Esperanto or Pokemon. The problem is that when you convert internet time to regular time, you discover that @600 ranges from 5:24 AM PST to 8:24 AM EST. For most of the country, not only will there be very dim light during those hours but very little will be happening. If the idea of @600 is to capture election day, why not capture a more active part of it? There may be other parts of the world for which 600 falls at a more convenient time, and indeed it will be interesting to see reactions across the globe, but isn't the main action in the U.S.? The election is here. Why not schedule the photo shoot to coincide geographically? The whole thing has a half-baked feeling. Good idea, poor execution. I mean, internet time? Come on.

From west coast photographers like myself, I predict a lot of photos of computer monitors in an otherwise completely dark room showing nytimes.com.