Philly No Pants Subway Ride

No-Pants-Subway-Philly-2014

I could not have been happier with my first “Post-Mummers” shoot in 2014.  For those outside Philadelphia, the TV station I where I work, PHL17, is the home of the Mummers Parade. As the interactive lead and primary photographer for my station?  That 8 hour televised parade is a really long day/days for me.  Social media, hundreds of photos, dozens of videos and web pages, troubleshooting, web streams, etc. Long Day.

So the next big thing?  Kinda snuck up on me! But since No Pants Subway Ride is a favorite, I try and bring my A-Game.  And I think I did!  I was happy with so many aspects of how the shoot and content that followed went  Part of the A-Game is being prepared the second you get to a shoot. In this case? The best shot I got in terms of what we would publish? Happened in the first 30 seconds of the event.  I was happy with other shots as well– but the shot that launched the most interest in the piece?  Literally unfolded moments into the event.

No Pants Subway is one of those titles that web clickers, literally can’t resist. And the image i used for the thumbnail/feature really reinforced that attention- even if NONE of the subsequent images lived up to the “promise” of “blue polka dots.”  Funny how people are SO SKEPTICAL of every aspect of life– except web headlines and images; only aspect of life people ACTUALLY expect the best.

So, in addition to the pics, I was really happy with the article I wrote as well as how we ran the article on social media.  The images I used on Facebook and Twitter were tailored in a different way than any of the other images and included click/back info.

Screen-shot-2014-01-13-at-12.03.41-PMThe actual No Pants Subway Ride in Philadelphia, or NPSR as they shorten and hashtag it, was smaller than some of the other 60 cities that do it worldwide on the same day. New York gets over 4000 people.  Philly might get 100 over the entire length of the ride. (NPSRs seem to pick up people as they go.)  Still?  The people they get are really awesome and play it perfectly.  Every single person I asked to shoot cooperated and that makes the day a lot easier. *(But when folks are half clothed, or less, I ALWAYS ask).  Here are some of my favorites from the day and you can see the whole package, pun intended, that we produced here.

The event, locally, is lead by Richard Furstein. I have met him a few years now as this was my 3rd or so, NPSR.  Richard is a quiet, soft spoken person when I meet him each year and he’s very calm and collected when he instructs the riders what to do in the event of other riders, police, press, or any other scenario that could happen on a Imrpov Everywhere adventure.  But I don’t let the quiet fool me as obviously, the dude’s got some big cajones to get 100 people to ride the Septa Subway in Philly with no pants.

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2 thoughts on “Philly No Pants Subway Ride

  1. Your niece is apparently a big fan of this event, or she just loves your blog! Looks interesting!!

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