Photogs Capture 'America: 24/7'

For one week last May, more than a thousand professional photographers turned their lenses on America in an exhaustive search for the ordinary.

In New York, Mark Gaarten documented dog walkers in Central Park.

In Pittsburg, John Beale took his camera to Kennywood Amusement Park.

"We're recording one week in history and this is a volume that will hopefully be around for decades," Beale explains.

In California, photojournalist Jeffrey Aaronson found a rural schoolhouse.

"[I] thought that would be a nice way to sort of start out doing this brush stroke of America," Aaronson remarks.

The professionals were joined in a week-long photographic quest by thousands more amateur and student photographers. They were answering a call to produce a visual time capsule.

Photographer Rick Smolan and editor David Cohen conceived the project: a huge photo book called "America 24/7," and the level of participation stunned them.

"It is an amazing time in our history because it's a time when Americans feel that they're being misunderstood around the world," Cohen says. "I think the message that we're getting from photographers across the country is if the terrorists knew us, if they knew what our lives were like and they knew what our values were, they wouldn't be doing this."

Almost the only rule for photographers: the pictures had to be taken on digital cameras and sent in by email.

"The best thing in our mind that digital photography could do was to create a democracy of imagery to allow not only top pro's to go out and tell the story of America, but to let everybody tell their own story," says photographer Lou Manna.

A shoeshine man at The Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh, who donates all his money to charity, inspired Robin Rombach.

"If there were more Alberts in the world maybe things would be better," Rombach says.

And photographer Ed Kashi hunted for stories on the streets of San Francisco. He looked for the Hispanic culture in the mission.

In the end more than a million images were submitted for "America 24/7." They poured in electronically to what was called "Mission Control." There, powerful computer systems stored the images and teams of top photo editors went to work choosing the best.

"I don't want to give, you know, inflated view of what we're doing here," Cohen sighs. "But I don't think anyone's ever harnessed this much photographic talent. And it's only now … it's only through digital photography that this is possible."

In 1986, Rick Smolan and David Cohen hired 200 top photographers to spend 24 hours taking pictures all over the country. The result was the best seller: "A Day in the Life of America."

The two men say digital photography has changed the art in ways that isn't comprehensible yet.

"Now with the digital, you can look at 6,000 pictures a day without too much effort," says Mike Davis, one of the photo editors who helped judge the one million pictures submitted. "We're looking at Kansas now. And I imagine the stereotype is nothing ever happens in Kansas. But beautiful light and just daily life that happens there is captured with precision and insight. It's making a nice set of pictures."

The photo editors had to select a thousand or so images to be included in the "America 24-7 book." They'll choose more for upcoming books from every state.

And as they looked at all the photographs from 25,000 professional and amateur photographers, the editors saw a common theme emerging.

"I'm surprised that an awful lot of pictures that are rural instead of urban," says editor Neil Ulavitch. "[There's] an awful lot of weddings and kid's ballet classes."

The technology may be high tech, but the pictures are not.

"What the photographers came back with was something that was strangely old fashioned," David Cohen explains. "When people were asked to tell their own story of America, and tell what America meant to them, they went back to traditional things."

Traditional perhaps, but real all the same. On his quest, photographer Jeffrey Aaronson discovered there are still rural, one room school houses all over the country.

"I mean, when the children are coming enthusiastically in front of the schoolhouse, doing the pledge of allegiance, starting their day, to me I could make this picture and it could be 100 years ago," he says.

What appears in the 300 pages of "America 24/7" may well be an idealized view of America, but it is, after all, an America that still exists.

"America: 24/7" is scheduled to be released Oct. 27.