How to take selfies with New York City’s traffic cameras

Ever walk down a New York City Street wishing you could snap a photo of yourself to share?

TrafficCamPhotoBooth.com, a website created by Brooklyn resident Morry Kolman, launched on Monday and it allows users to access over 900 traffic cameras around the city – giving them the ability to take selfies using the traffic enforcement equipment.

After selecting a camera from any of the different locations around the city, users snap a photo using the website – in either photo strip or Polaroid format – and they now have their very own traffic camera selfie. Kolman explained that the way the Department of Transportation (DOT) hosts the camera feeds allows for the unique website to function.

“The New York [City] Department of Transportation hosts live feeds of these traffic cameras,” Kolman said. “Now, they’re not live video. They’re live images, they update about every two seconds. And if you just load up that image URL, the same way you would load up a picture or some other image that you would find online, that’s completely public.”

Kolman, an NYC-based artist, said the inspiration for the project came from a class he was taking from another artist – who challenged their students to take a picture without being the one behind the camera.

A red-tailed hawk was captured on video sitting and staring directly at a Minnesota Department of Transportation traffic camera.

“And then, I was thinking, how can I take a picture without taking it?” Kolman said. “I can use pictures that are taken of me around the city, right? And you know, I kind of talked about this on the website, but these cameras are not made for people, right? They’re made for cars, but at the end of the day, people still get caught up in their lenses.”

According to Kolman, over 10,000 photos have been taken using the website, and it has been visited 30,000 – 40,000 times in total. He says he doesn’t intend to make money from the project – the website is free to use, and he says that users aren’t served advertisements or tracked.

He also said that he would like to expand the project to other cities – and that he would be happy to work with others to make it more widespread.

“I might just kind of open it up and say hey, this entire website is open source,” Kolman said. “If you want to contribute, you can contribute to the repository and kind of let it expand that way. I’m happy to be like a steward of it.”

And as for what the DOT thinks about their traffic cameras being used for selfies? They haven’t responded to NBC New York’s request for comment, but Kolman doesn’t seem to think they take issue with his project.  

“I don’t really think it matters to them that much,” he said.

“And honestly, the way that the DOT has their traffic cameras set up makes it a lot easier to use for this kind of website than any other city in the United States or even the world,” Kolman added. “And so, I’m very thankful, at the very least for the way that they set up their web and API infrastructure.”