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WIRED's own Community Director, Eric Steuer, has been getting up every night at 3 a.m. This is because a brand-new, tiny person that Steuer helped create now shares his bedroom with him and his wife. And this little person would very much like it if Steuer would get up in the middle of the night and hold him please.
To cope with the forced insomnia, Steuer has been commissioning artwork made from tired-looking selfies he takes in the wee morning hours.
“I think the third or fourth time I got up I happened to pass by a mirror and was like, ‘Holy shit, I don’t think I’ve ever looked worse,’” Steuer says. “I thought it would be funny to capture that moment by taking a selfie.”
After taking a photo, and before going back to bed, Steuer finds an artist on the website fiverr.com to create a piece of art based off of it for $5. The results are pretty great, making it our new favorite among high-quality dad photo projects like The Reluctant Father and several time-lapse videos that show kids growing up.
Unlike these other projects, Steuer’s images concentrate on himself instead of his kid. But he says he’s not trying to show what a good dad he is. He’s just trying to have fun, and document moments in his life that are already disappearing as his son, Franklin, becomes a better sleeper.
“My impulse originally was to get through this time at night as quickly as possible, so it’s been nice to slow down and enjoy the intimacy of being with my son,” he says. “I know I’ll look back on it fondly and I hope he does as well. I also really hope he finds it funny.”
The original plan was to roll the photos out on his Instagram as pure selfies. But he’d heard about fivver.com, where all kinds of different artists offer their services for $5 a pop, and decided to try it one night while he was up.
Using the site’s app on his iPhone, he scrolled through the portrait artist’s profile pages, chose one, and sent the picture off. He did it again the next night, and the next, etc. Originally he was concerned the service might not work very well because it’s so cheap. But Steuer says every single artist delivered beautiful work on time.
All told, he commissioned 30 portraits on fiverr.com and worked with artists from more than a dozen countries. Over time, choosing the artists became part of the fun. He enjoyed communicating with people across the world at 3 a.m. and liked watching how technology facilitated the process.
“It was great to see how this artist and I could collaborate to make something that was really ugly into this collection of things that are beautiful and fun,” he says.
To keep the series consistent, he tried to set a couple ground rules. He wanted all the portraits to be in color, he only used the most basic five-dollar service (many artists offer more extravagant options for more money), he used a different artist every time, and he tried not to sweat his artist choice too much because he was doing it at 3 a.m. and each one only put him back a couple bucks.
“It was important to not drill down too much,” he says. “I liked leaving it up to chance.”
In addition to posting the portraits to his Instagram feed, Steuer also started a Tumblr called Noctural Commissions. He has more than 5,000 followers because Tumblr highlighted is as a featured blog.
From here Steur says he wants to keep making photos and getting them turned into drawn or painted projects. But instead of snapping selfies at 3 a.m., he wants to start making family portraits that include Franklin and his wife. He’ll be rolling these out hopefully once a week on Instagram and Tumblr.
“The project will continue and transition,” he says.
