Creator Database [Logan Paul] I Took 4,120 Polaroids In 99 Days
Something about authenticity. Trying to capture the most amazing moments on Polaroid camera. That this is real. Life isn't short. You just gotta do more. Woah. Hi. My name is Logan Paul.
Last year, between boxing, professional wrestling, and launching a variety of different businesses, I was able to pursue a passion project of mine. I picked up a Polaroid camera and traveled 84,000 miles around the world in 99 days and took over 4,000 Polaroids. At the end of the journey, I hand selected 99 of the best final images to mint as NFTs where the buyer also gets the physical Polaroid. Okay. But look, the project is nearly done. We have auctioned 98 photos, and there's one left, number 99. This project has been incredible. The community that we've built and the people who have been following us on this journey on Discord is also incredible.
About 50,000 people brought together by the same interest in art, virality, stories, community, and tech. I'm so pleased with how this project has been received, and I am so proud that this is just the first installation, and I cannot wait to continue doing more originals. But those 99 days were life changing for me. Beyond transformative, I got to live some of the coolest experiences of my life, meet some of the most epic people ever, and document it and capture it all on camera. So sit back, relax, get some popcorn, and enjoy because these are some of those stories. I kidnapped my brother's dog for this photograph. His name is Thor. I love this little golden retriever.
I think he's a little special, but that's what I love about him. And he resembles the dog from my favorite animated film of all time, Up. Squirrel. So we put a bunch of balloons on him, and we took a bunch of photos, but to be honest, none of them turned out too great. It was way too windy. And to be honest, Thor ended up slipping out of his collar, and the giant balloon shack slipped off into the distance. Don't worry. We recovered them, and so we tried again.
I decided I just wanted a close-up of Thor's cute face, and I got it. Hung hanging out, balloons in the background. And when you say to someone, it smells like Updawg in here, they say, what's Updawg? And then you say, not much. How you doing? Anyways, this is Updog. I love mythology. Dragons, fairies, mermaids. And we had a custom mermaid tail made for, like, like, $3,000, and we put the mermaid tail on her. She basically couldn't move, so me and George had to, like, drag her around.
The the angle on this photo was tough. I would had to stand on this ladder, and the ladder would be, like, sinking into the sand as the water would wash up. And we tried this photo a bunch of times. It actually took us 2 different tries to shoot. I had to fly Tricia back out to Puerto Rico because I didn't like what happened in the first round. The sun, the waves, the reflection on the sand, I didn't like the original takes. Sometimes, I'm a little dark with my work. I like the ability to interpret chaos, and you see all And you see all these videos online.
Oh, mermaid found washed on shore. And so we put Trisha face down kind of with her arms spread in what looks like a pretty desolate situation. And perhaps, who knows, this was the last living mermaid on earth. We killed a mermaid for this project. I took a lot of inspiration from this project just by living based on what I was doing or experiencing in my life, And one day, I came across Pablo Picasso's light paintings. I thought they were super cool, and I found out you could replicate these with a Polaroid camera. It's a long exposure picture, so you have the ability to capture light if you open the lens for a certain amount of time. There's a ton of cool effects that you can do with this, including you take a steel wool and a kitchen whisk, and you stick the wool inside the whisk, light it on fire, and then swing it around with a dog leash.
In long exposure, it creates this cool umbrella effect with all the flares. And we decided to go to the ocean. When we did the spin, it created a really cool reflection on the surface of the water. And then if you really look at the final photo that we ended up liking, the main flare that shot off the top created like a 9, and then it reflected on the bottom also a 9. 99 originally. So we're going to Cleveland. We're going back home today. About a knockout tire in Woodley this weekend.
Wow. It's crazy. It hasn't changed a bit. They haven't changed one god dang thing. Dude, we are in Ohio. Ohio. Alright. He's out of estimate.
Fuck out of me. If I can take a Polaroid and get in a Polaroid. My brother's on the cusp of starting the rest of his life, of really beginning his legacy.
You know, we brought it
to Cleveland. This is the first step of many. Cleveland showed up. This is one of the best cities on the planet.
For Jake, in the ring, what does he need to do to be successful?
Win. That's a badass photo. So we're back, bro. We're back home. This is where it all started. Like, this is really where it started. We have to take a picture of it. That's the coolest shit ever.
Hey, Greg. Does this work? What happens if the cops pull us over? For what fucking reason? A topless girl driving a motorcycle without her license?
Julia, you got to stand up.
Let's fuck go. Ephaleeds. It might be Ephaleedes. I don't wanna fuck up the pronunciation. Google it. It means freckles. My friend Kelsey's, a redhead. She She has freckles.
We were in San Diego, and there's this really beautiful cliff that overlooks the ocean. And when we arrived, serendipitously, there were 2 retro vehicles there that matched her hair, an old school Volkswagen and some other old car. And I had the tiny Polaroid because I broke the bigger one the day before. I broke, like, 25 Polaroids during this whole project, but the picture turned out great. She's super happy and smiling. I was able to overlay it on a bigger pool. Wow. And this picture is really cool because it's the only one in the collection like this, and the serendipitous nature of the vehicles, her hair, and the beauty of the photo, I love it.
Here we go. Mike Tyson, the Evander Holyfield. What happened here? He's got a bloody right ear hit by Mike Tyson.
My plan is gonna be simply this. I I have this crazy idea. Could you put this fucking ear in your mouth? Could you see the Oh, fuck. These ones are the wrong side. And you got me a fucking elf ear, bro. It'll go. Woah. I love the way this fucking photo is rolled.
There are only about 200 albino alligators in the world, and we had one and put a croc in its mouth. That's why the photo is called the cannibal. Do you get it? Trying to get a crocodile to hold a croc in his mouth was not easy. This thing was not co opted Something about the black frame, the white crocodile holding the black croc, the just the the juxtaposition of neutral colors. Black and white are neutral. Right? I'm color blind. I don't fucking know. The irony of the photo, I I think, is awesome, and I loved how this came out.
So we showed up to the Invisible House. I don't know how we found it. The structure is magnificent. This is actually one of the most expensive houses to rent in Joshua Tree. You know, sometimes we show up with ideas and sometimes we don't. This was one of the times we didn't have an idea because while we were shooting this project, everything is so back to back to back. We had a schedule to be on time in certain places. We tried to get on top of the structure.
We couldn't find a way to get up there. We pulled the truck up. I stood on top. Trisha was the perfect subject to kinda stand a little, what's the word I'm looking for? Like, sexy almost? Like, provocative? Yeah. That's it. She stood provocative. In the open door frame, the house kinda extended to infinity towards the back of the photo, loaded it up with the black frames. We were so pressed for time.
Just had to stop the shoot early because we had to get to the airport to get to our next next destination. So, you know, we're shuffling through wondering and hoping that we got the shot, and it turns out we did. We were invited to an ancient May ceremony in El Salvador. We obviously were not allowed to film during the ritual, but afterwards, we climbed a pyramid nearby. However, the pyramid actually had yet to be unearthed. It was still in the ground. So at the summit was just this box, this really cool, like, ancient box. And I loved the way it looked, so I put some leaves in the foreground, had my friend Crystal walk in front of it and snap the photo, and the timing was perfect.
Again, just like things worked out in this project, her outfit just matched the environment so perfectly. And this is one of the oldest Mayan civilizations in the world. You could feel the history in the photo. Some of these photos are planned, some aren't. This one was not, but I love how it turned out. I did not know that Stonehenge was so close to London. Lucky for me, we had a billionaire friend who was nice enough to let us borrow his chopper. Now this structure is magnificent.
I've never seen anything like this. There's these giant stones that are, like, stacked on top of each other in the middle of a field, and no one knows for sure how they got there. People speculate that maybe it was extraterrestrial life. And I'm looking through the photographs that we had taken, and I see one where the sun is hitting the monument perfectly. And it's cool, but then I glance at it again, and in the top left where it's kinda like overexposed in the clouds looks like the shape of a flying saucer. Oh. It has this really unnatural curve on both the top and bottom. And then if you look closely resting in the center looks like what appears to be a cockpit.
Maybe it's a cloud structure. I don't know anything, but you tell me what you see in this photo. Jesus. That's the name of the crazy German rapper. Jesus. Perhaps you've seen this guy's music video online where, well, firearms, narcotics, a glass bottle, and a bunch more shit I probably can't show. Well, we were in Hamburg, Germany, and he lives there too. He's great.
So much energy right off the bat. Hey. We started taking shots. Immediately after this encounter, I did end up breaking my hand. David, look at it. Oh. It's It's fine. Anyways, we're taking shots at this famous bar.
Oh, what's it called? What's it called? Hole in the wall boxing bar in Germany. Zurich. A lot of famous fighters have trained there. The Klitschkoz, Mike Tyson. Now me. I'm just kidding. I have no wins. Anyway, you go in the basement.
There's the boxing ring and a sun, what's it called? On top. In the windows, there's a sky light. So I'm pretty drunk with Jesus at one of the most iconic boxing spots in Hamburg. Mike tells Jesus to scream. Actually, fucking scream. He does it. No. And there it is.
See the
way I walk? I'm a Batman.
Drunken Germany. No surprise there. Drunken Germany. No surprise there. That's what you do in Germany. I make really bad decisions when I'm intoxicated and my ego tends to flare up. And I saw this boxing arcade game and this like hole in the wall bar. It's the one with a bag drops down, you hit it, and you get the high score.
Well, my drunk ass wanted to set the high score, so I tried like 5 times. The bartender saw how hard I was going, and he said, sir, I have to warn you. Be careful. I've seen bones before. Like, everyone hits their hand on this column. And so I'm like, okay, dude. I'm a boxer. And and now my hand bone, my hand.
David, look at it. Oh. Fuck. Move your fingers. And hypothetically, if I can't, we're going to the hospital. And it turns out I shattered the worst possible bone in your hand for boxers, the middle knuckle, the 3rd metacarpal. I spent the night in a cold German hospital not knowing if I was ever gonna be able to box again. When the alcohol wore off, this was very depressing, but the photo's cool.
We came up with this idea in Suit Supply. It was so random, they brought us an entire bottle of vodka for, like, 3 of us. So we just got drunk and bought some suits, one of which was this blue suit that I bought, and I happened to break my hand in Germany, like, 3 days prior, and the cast also happened to be blue. I decided to pick up some colored frames. There's 8 different colors in the packs. So when you shoot the photo, you never know what color you're getting. And the blue lagoon in general is is breathtaking. Here I am looking like an idiot with no pants on and a suit at the Blue Lagoon.
Everyone else is just minding their business. But the way this photo turned out is so cool to me. It has the little snowflake. The frame is that icy blue. This photo turned out great. I think there's something so beautiful about the raw human body. It's such a state of vulnerability. It's just beautiful, and that's why there's a handful of tasteful nudity in this project, including this one, number 78, a very liberating experience.
We are on the Black Sand Beach in Iceland, and I asked my friend Dave, the German videographer, if he'd be willing to run along the beach naked and he was down. And before he went to do it, I told him, Dave, I know this is odd, but you're probably never gonna do this again in your life. And I promise you, enjoy it because it will be a very liberating experience. And he did, man. He took off his clothes, just started running along the beach, and here I am chasing after it with a Polaroid camera. And it's definitely an example of a moment, a very special moment that was caught on film. The black sand beach in Iceland is insane. One of the coolest, most unique landscapes I've ever seen in my life.
It's in the middle of nowhere. This was also my vidIQ for Kevin's 22nd birthday. He shot pretty much everything in originals. He's actually shooting this right now. How you doing, Kev? So, yeah, we partied the night before. We got drunk in the middle of nowhere. So we wake up this morning. The weather had predicted 100% rain for the entire week.
So we go to the black sand beach. My subject is my subject. Olivia is in a fucking all white outfit and she's incredibly hungover. We all are, but she had it pretty bad. The sun comes out. You have the contrast of a businesswoman in an all white suit on the black sand beach. And then I realized like this is the shot. And it has this crazy green aura.
Sometimes these miracles happen, but this was definitely an amazing photo in a beautiful nowhere. Iceland, one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen in my life. I consider it a dreamscape. It's the landscape you see in your dreams. We heard about this wrecked aircraft that had been there since 1973, and it's in the middle of this barren landscape in the middle of Iceland. So we had this $400 giant stuffed penguin, and I thought it matched the aesthetic of the plane nicely. And as I'm taking these photos, you know, they were cool. It's a cool plane.
It's like, you know, I don't really got a penguin, but I needed a little something more. And in the most miraculous way, just as this was happening, a rainbow showed up. Right behind the plane, everyone starts screaming, rainbow, rainbow, rainbow. I put it on low exposure, managed to snap like 3 photos before the rainbow disappeared, and straight up, I consider this photograph a miracle. It's perfect. You could see the a birthday. You could see the rainbow on the right side of the photo. In this one, no tourists were in it.
The little penguin, and I love it. There is a guy who lives in Iceland who also happens to be the world's strongest man. His name is He goes by the mountain. He was in Game of Thrones, and he's huge. I mean, this guy is massive. That's why they call him the mountain. Well, we did a podcast with him in Iceland, and afterwards, I was able to convince him to be in my project. And I also managed to find, like, a bighorn sheep.
I'll be honest. This was a very good looking sheep. And so I had Thor, the world's strongest man, walking this beautiful bighorn sheep like a dog in the middle of a random farmer's barn in the middle of Iceland. In real life, the circumstance was odd, but the end result was awesome. How do I describe this photo? We traveled so far for this photo, almost the most north you could be on this planet. It is so north that the sun does not even come up over the horizon. So there's only about 2 hours each day of sunlight. We were guaranteed that we'd see an orca.
I thought that the orcas would be jumping out of the water, and I'd be able to get a Polaroid of, like, an airborne orca. I guess they don't do that here or something, but we did manage to find a pod of orcas, and it was so cool. And here I am at the front of the boat trying to capture them as soon as they come out of the water. The issue was the water is a dark color and it's dark in general in Norway, so the Polaroid doesn't really capture the light well. And so as an artist, again, with the time limit on this project, I had to just take what we got. This is the best we got. We tried to capture an orca on camera, and in the photo we selected, we could see the fin of an orca. That's why I put whale question mark.
And truthfully, it was another lesson for me that, again, it's not about the destination, it's about the journey. At this point in my 99 day journey, I'm exhausted. Traveling, partying, shooting, working, just constantly thinking, exhausting myself physically, mentally. I'm at my breaking point, Kevin. We land in I don't even know. Go right to a chopper, and it was the most beautiful ride I've ever had in my life. We land on a glacier where I'm immediately taken away by a snowmobile to the peak of this mountain where they tell me I'm gonna ski attached to a man off a mountain, and he's gonna safely guide us down with a parachute. Okay.
We are flying through the fucking air at a 120 miles an hour. I have a 7 foot tripod with a Polaroid on self timer. The picture would take, I'd pull the tripod in, I'd grab the Polaroid, I'd like shove it in my pocket, put it back out for another photo. But we landed safely. I'm like sick as a dog at this point just from the pure exhaustion, laughing at what just happened from flight to flight to flight. As soon as I discovered light painting in the Polaroid, I became obsessed with it. We would practice this technique pretty much almost every night we could. Oh, damn.
Some of my favorite photos in this collection are light painting photos because it's almost actually impossible to get a good one. Why does the blue one appear red? The colors almost start to blend in with each other, you know.
Oh, Jesus. It was me.
In fact, fact, on number 15, fortune favors the bold, this was a complete accident. Kevin was holding the the light bar, and then one of the lights, like, dropped off and fell on the ground. And I told him I'd just pick it up and wave it around in the air. So we just wave it a couple times, and the result was breathtaking. Woah.
Woah. What happened here?
When we started this project, it seems so extensive. 99 days is a lot. There's no coming back. I got this sweater made for an ape that resembles the fur of my board ape and my friend is down to let us like dress up his ape like my ape and take a picture of it. I think it'd be hilarious.
He has
an ape? An actual ape.
He's like a
He has a human. Oh, he thick. He does it better than I do. He looked so bored. He's like, he just All of these, I put my life into. Each image, anyone can look at and and have something to think or feel something because some of this shit's crazy. I love this photograph. The best purchase I've ever made in my life is my ranch.
I have an 84 acre ranch in California that used to be owned by Timothy Leary, the father of LSD. He had a hippie commune called the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, and they all lived there and did acid all day.
Turn on, tune in, drop out.
But this was right when psychedelics were taking over America led by these people. So, there's just a lot of rich history on this land. In fact, they would produce it there too. They made over a 100,000,000 tabs of acid, and it was called Orange Sunshine. And we had this mysterious figure stand there with this mask and a pitchfork as the sun was setting over the mountain in between the barn doors, and you can almost feel the the rich nature and the history of the land that the photo was taking on it in. Number 20, orange Sunshine. We had an artist friend of mine named Blue paint this vinyl record like the earth, and I bought this real old school record player from the Pasadena flea market. I broke the record.
You broke the world record, baby. Put in the field at my ranch, and called it broken world record. Do you get it? Life and death. This was an accident. I put George's girlfriend, Shauna, on top of my razor with a shotgun with a giant bunny mask on, and she looked so badass. I was taking all these photos, playing with a thing called a splitter. It's a custom lens cap for Polaroids that allows you to split the frame in half, and using double exposure, you can print more than one image on one frame. It's a pretty cool effect, but I forgot that I had it on for this one.
And so I took this photo, and she happened to be pointing gun right at the center, but half of it was blocked out by the splitter. And I looked back at it, and it became super thematic. In one side is life, and you're looking down the barrel of a shotgun, and the other side is death. This was one of the most magical moments during the 99 days. Anything we do at my ranch is like my happy place. This one's gonna be nutty. So we have my yolked friend put on a pig mask and hold a katana. This is a real katana, by the way.
Very sharp. And we'd beamed the light from the truck onto him as we played music and just vibed out. I think we were smoking, drinking a little bit, partying, and we were just having the time of our life shooting this weird photo. Woah. Woah. Came up over the mountain, and it gave this, like, eerie ghostly effect of the pig moving across the frame. But it reminded me of the psychedelics that were done on this property because after all, my ranch was owned by a bunch of hippies. This is a fact.
Some of these photos turn out a certain way, but the memories behind them are unfreeking. This guy means more to me than he'll probably ever know until he sees this. I love David Choe. The first time I saw him was on Joe Rogan, and I immediately reached out because I loved his interview so much. The guy seemed like tapped into some otherworldly artistry shit that I just wanted to know more about. And then out of nowhere, he makes and sends me a giant, like, 6 foot tall Charizard costume. And then this was right before I was about to fight Floyd Mayweather. And when the fight got announced, you know, everyone's talking shit saying this and that, then I get a text from David Cho, very simple, says, you will win.
That gave me so much confidence. I printed out the text and hung it on my wall to look at every morning before training. And so when he invited me over to his house in LA to do a video and kinda make some art with him and then capture him for my Polaroid project, I was so down. We had a really therapeutic on camera 1 on 1, and I got to sit down with someone who I think is incredible and is artistically, like, on another level. So he puts on this outfit with socks, and how do I say this? He jerked off in all of his socks. That's what he said. I don't know if it was a joke. It's what he told me.
He's an artist. So he lays in the middle of the floor. I spray paint an outline of him and then just start snapping away Polaroids. Creating art with an artist who is operating on that level, once in a lifetime experience. I was very reckless during this point in my life. After all, I just accidentally drunkenly broke my hand in Germany by punching a wall. And I didn't really give a fuck about many things.
Come show me how much of a pussy I am. Come on.
Yeah. I was feeling like a bit of a loose cannon. So in the hospital, after my surgery, which went well, by the way, I now have a 40 millimeter screw in the center of my hand. And after months of physical therapy, I can make a fist now, so it looks like I'll be boxing again. But in the recovery room, I had a friend wear a nurse outfit with a very red wig and straddle me while pouring tequila in my mouth while I was holding a joint. I gotta say, there's no I got nothing to say. Fuck, dude. I already
I'm gonna be honest with you.
I don't even know if I wanna do the dress.
I think it's wake
wake Well, the photos we got today
are
they're beautiful. They're sick.
Bro, I didn't even know you had all
these reviews. I know, bro, because, dude, that gets extensive. This is big as fuck. No. Either wild. This is the only one of all these. I think when I look at this one, I'm like, what the the fuck? Ladies and gentlemen, this is the first Polaroid that will ever be sent into space.
That's gonna go to nearly 40 kilometers above the Earth. Oh, my God. It worked. It worked.
Greetings from a 110,000 feet above the Earth. That is right. Is that is that right now? Oh
my god. When that begins its reentry into this atmosphere, it's gonna be falling back down to earth in the 300
miles per hour. Oh my god. I can see it. It's official. Number 83 has been to space. This is my favorite photo in the entire collection. I'm obsessed with light painting with a Polaroid camera. We played around with this effect a lot, and every time we did it, we'd learn more and I'd get more ideas.
For this photo, we alternated the colors. It was orange, white, orange, white, orange, white, etcetera. We know water reflects really well with these types of photos. So I stood on one side of the pool while the rest of the team was on the other side. And so these photos took a while because after each one, you'd have to check to see if the settings were right. If it was centered, if you liked the pose, but on this night, we had colored frames and you never know what color frame is coming next. And on the one take where we happen to get the rotation perfectly in the center with this really cool pose
But what the fuck is that? The
frame was orange. Almost the exact same color as the light when it showed up in the photo. People have killed people's pictures like these, bro. The girl standing perfectly in the center. It's reflected on the top and bottom like a bull's eye on a dartboard and miraculously made one of the coolest photos I've ever seen taken on a Polaroid camera.
What are you up to this week? Oh, yeah. That's right. You do the other thing?
This is Human 1, the kinetic video sculpture and accompanying NFT. NFT. I'm selling to our bidder at $25,000,000.
Yeah. Let's see. This one's sick. It's the one candid one. It almost looks like he's not even in the same room. I'm confident that 1 of the 99 will be In here. Up for auction. I almost met Quentin Tarantino.
He was speaking at NFT NYC in New York. I attended his seminar. And so he was taking pictures with a couple people, and he came to me. I was I knew this was my opportunity to get a Polaroid of one of the greatest directors of all time. I would be honored to have him in my project. Right when I went to ask him for a photo, he was like, yo. Like, I'm gonna go get some tequila. I'll be right back.
I was like, okay. Fine. Go. I let him leave because I thought he'd come back like he said. He never came back for me. Don't meet your hero, Shins. When I have a photo in mind and I come so close to getting it but I fall short, it destroys me. So I didn't do it, and now I don't get what I wanted.
Now I'm heartbroken. And in my angst, I was feeling reckless. Relevate you. The next day, we went on top of a building, a beautiful skyline in New York City. I climbed over the rail. My new security guy is freaking out, and he's horrified. I lay down and just start snapping away Polaroids. But regardless, I missed Quentin Tarantino, and I was upset.
And that's why this photograph is called Chasing Tarantino because that's what I did in New York, and that's why I took this photo.
I like the Polaroid part. This is the coolest thing he's doing. At the fight, I saw you taking photos. The sparkle in your eye about this Yeah. Uh-oh. He loves this one.
The original of the day today, original number 5, is a photograph of Gary and I that we took in New York City, and I want to gift it to Gary Vaynerchuk as a thank you for everything he's done in my life. I am so excited to have you a part of the original DAO. Gary probably means as much to me as he does to everyone here. So shout out Gary v and yeah. Let's build this project.
I was about to catch on you.
How are you? I'm well, man. Hey, bro. You know when you were in Puerto Rico and you said, you want original number 5? Yes. And I kinda, like, hesitated a little bit. Yes. Because original number 5 is a picture of you and I. Fuck. And and yeah.
I swear to god. And I don't know if you heard, but I I I I am gifting it to you. I'm gifting you. On on stage, I said it. I don't know where you were.
Thank you.
Yeah. Of course. Thank you. Of course. My dog ate my passport. I know that sounds stupid, but hear me out. We were gonna go to Uganda to capture gorillas on a Polaroid, but my dog ate my passport so we couldn't go. So we're stuck in Puerto Rico trying to expedite a passport, and my friend Alec Monopoly, the world renowned artist, also lives here.
Well, I texted my other friend who has a jet. And basically, it was like, yo. Can my friend Alec paint your jet? We helicopter across the island, just Alec and I, because there was no room for videographers in this tiny little helicopter. And we're in a hangar in the middle of nowhere. Alec has his stencils and spray cans everywhere, and my man just starts painting a g 4.
That's my little paint, butter, buttercup.
I could not believe what I was seeing. This is, like, one of the most recognizable graffiti and street artists. This is hilarious. He's painting your dread. Y'all have never met. He's painting your dread. Monopoly man on the front with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies trailing off behind down the side. And so he finished and it looked great.
We get in the helicopter and leave like we didn't just tag a $30,000,000 jet. Oh, what the fuck just happened? If you ever see this thing flying through the sky with the big Alec Monopoly on the side, just know 99 originals.
That's my little peanut butter butter butter cup cup.
We're in South Africa as a pit stop because mister Beast invited Casey Neistat and I to come film a surviving 50 hours in Antarctica video with him. I've always wanted to go there, so I jumped at the opportunity. It's gonna be a long 50 hours, boys. Unfortunately, all of the scientists, I think there was, like, 12 of them in Antarctica, tested positive for COVID right when we were gonna go. So we couldn't go, and unfortunately, the trip got canceled. But I figured that I was in South Africa, and I was probably not gonna come back for a while, and I had to ditch the entire group because no one else wanted to go on the safari. But I knew that there would be amazing animals there that you only see in National Geographic and I had the opportunity to capture some amazing Polaroids. One of which you're about to see, I was literally sitting under a leopard who was just napping in his tree, full belly, capturing Polaroids.
This is absolutely insane. Obviously, we had to get the king of the jungle, the lion, in an original. And so we found a couple that were chilling in the shade. This was so cool, and I probably got way too close to them and got a little too far out the vehicle, but I had to get the shot. Look at this. So they tranquilize this elephant. It was a mother that they wanted to do, research on for, you know, whatever purposes. And so we had the opportunity to basically look at this elephant after it had been tranquilized and help put the collar on so they could do more research to benefit the elephant pride.
Oh, what? Oh my gosh. Is that healthy? The drink? No. No. I wasn't asking for me, weirdos. And then in a different area, we got to see a herd of elephants in the wild, one of which was chasing the other around to trying to mate with it. It was, a little forceful, and I think probably made the rest of the elephants uncomfortable, but, I don't know how to say this. Look at the penis on this thing. Oh my god.
That's the biggest I've seen in my life. There are so many cool things to do in Cape Town. One of which is snorkel with seals. On our way out there, I threw the Polaroid in portrait mode, which is why this particular original sunbathing is so sharp. It's it's so crisp, and it's one of my favorite photos that I captured here. Same boat ride, we rounded a corner, and there was a ship that had been there for, like, many years that had been wrecked. I don't know about this corroded metal. Feel stable.
What's the worst that could happen? And on this particular day, the water was calm enough for us to explore the shipwreck, and this was cool. Leonardo da Vinci. He drew the Vitruvian Man, a 100% pure natural beauty whose arm length is the same as their height. As an homage to him, I wanted to make the Vitruvian Woman. I happen to have a friend who was perfect for this. Her name is Casey. You also might recognize her from the Flat Earth documentary. She was my love interest in the movie, and she was down to do this photo.
A giant cutout of a circle and a square against a giant platform that Casey was able to lay on. This photo was so intricate, and there were so many details and things that had to go right. She couldn't move between the photographs, for example. She had to be completely still. Casey's enthusiasm about the whole thing was just amazing.
It's gonna get better than this. I came here for one reason, one reason only. What's he got?
I think the human body is so beautiful, and using the double exposure effect on the Polaroid made it look like the Vitruvian Man. And sure enough, 4 photos in, we got the perfect one. Casey is now officially the Vitruvian woman. Both my grandfathers passed away when I was pretty young, so I never really had that grandfather figure in my life until I met this guy, Milton Supreme. Where do I even start? He began as my boxing coach when I first went to fight KSI in 2018. We hit it off immediately. He is a character. He's got a saying for everything.
He's from Queens, so he talks like he's from New York, and he works really hard. We would travel everywhere together, and his saying when I asked him if he wanted to join me on these adventures would always be, where you go, I go. Go fucking boxing. You got a guy who's been coaching boxers for his entire life. Right? Golden Globes champions in New York, etcetera. Then all of a sudden, he meets this YouTuber at age 65, and we're fighting Floyd fucking Mayle.
We hit the stage. We're ready to race. We stutter up.
He coached me to a degree where I could survive 8 rounds. Not just survive, thrive. You could see Milton was getting pretty emotional on the walk back to the locker room and it was because I told him that he was basically like a, a grandfather figure something that I never had. I love this guy so much. And then, he got cancer. Just devastating, you know? Where where to go? So in the interim of this project, when I was not focused on my physical fitness, he got his treatment, and I think it has cleared. I think he's okay. You got this guy who's so full of life.
Even cancer couldn't stop him. But, yeah, Milton, I love you, man, and where I go, you go. It must be love, love. Also, whatever this original sells for, I'm giving Milton all the money. He wants to buy new teeth. Everyone remembers so vividly from my generation going to their local Blockbuster. They had popcorn that you could grab. You had to rewind the tapes before you returned them.
Just an incredibly nostalgic place for kids in my generation. Let's go. This was the last one in the world, you know, and there's a chance that my kids aren't gonna know what a Blockbuster is. Before the blockchain, we have Blockbuster. And I found a kid at the local grocery store. This was I don't know how we convinced a parent to let us, like, use a kid for this photo, but looked up at the Blockbuster, almost perplexed by this archaic novelty of this structure. I think this was a really special photo because a world that is changing so quickly and so many things are disappearing as new technology comes out. Blockbuster, you know, is a novelty that only a few generations will get to cherish.
The power of love, a Ford Stronger. By far, the hardest photo in this collection to take. This was the pinnacle of our light painting experiment. You saw number 50, bull's eye. You saw number 15, force and favors the bull. You saw number 9, exit my orbit. We were getting good at this, so I really wanted to test my skills and recreate the rainbow road we all know and love from Mario Kart. You could silhouette things in front of whatever you were painting, so I got cardboard cutouts of all the Mario characters.
I would leave the lens open to capture the lights on the light bar for about 60 to 80 seconds. Went on the back of the golf cart, holding the 14 foot light bar, hold it behind the figures, then drive to the very end of the street very slowly. And every time, I just wasn't happy with the photo. Took us months, and on literally my last attempt before I went insane. And honestly, I think we just got lucky this night because we had attempted Kart, Nintendo. That's why it's number 64. Rainbow Road, I'm obsessed with.
This photo doesn't make
sense. Zero gravity. You've seen it in sci fi films. There's a plane that takes you up into the air and then dive bombs, so it feels like the passengers are floating. And I wanted to go on it. Rented out the entire thing and brought along the 3,000 Polaroids that I had already taken. My goal was to throw all of them in the air when we were at the peak of the parabola, weightless, and I'd be floating around in the center of my work taking a Polaroid. And wow.
The entire plane was completely silent. We could not believe it. Legitimately levitating. It's one of those things where I can describe it as much as I want, until you experience it, there's nothing like it. This sort of unrealistic reality that has become my life, I felt captured the epitome of this project. And that's why this is number 99. A photo that on paper makes no fucking sense and shouldn't be possible, but it is. This is 99 originals.

What is Castmagic?

Castmagic is the best way to generate content from audio and video.

Full transcripts from your audio files. Theme & speaker analysis. AI-generated content ready to copy/paste. And more.