This photographic study originated from numerous observations of pedestrian crossing patterns at one of the busiest bus stops in East Portland, as well as from the goal of local government agencies to control or re-direct these patterns.  A mid-block barrier had been proposed to re-direct pedestrians to a designated cross walk to increase public safety.   Thirty Thousand Seconds is a two-fold effort to represent the areas of density between the two bus stops, and to document these mid-block crossings before they disappear.
       An eight hour day (May 29, 2009) was spent on the traffic median capturing 800 separate images of different pedestrian crossings.  Each photographic image displayed here occurred approximately ten minutes apart.  Coincidentally, in the same week I began to shoot Thirty Thousand Seconds,

the city of Portland asked me to re-design the existing barrier design and to implement an artistic solution.  The city of Portland and the Oregon Department of Transportation hoped that through creative input, the barrier could be portrayed as integral, as well as practical, and consequently be received positively by the community. 
    Thirty Thousand Seconds was a tool that would ultimately inform how color would be applied our sculptural solution.  A density study was built (second slide) using the images above to represent the areas where pedestrians were crossing throughout one day. This study was later translated to our design to represent those crossings to scale in the existing barrier.