When I saw this alligator sculpture on the sidewalk, I had to loop back around with my car and take this photo of me phooning on it.

This makes sense to those familiar with phooning and the Phoons.com web site. Whatever the setting, whatever the cause, the uniting element of the thousands of photos there, from different cultures and countries, is the Phoon pose.

But why on earth? There's a bit of history behind it...

In 1980, I sneaked a particular pose into a family photo and my loving mother tolerated my doing the same pose in many more of that summer's family vacation photos. I nicknamed it the Phoon (pronounced "foon").

On one evening of a 1999 business trip, I was strolling through an upscale mall. Something reminded me of the Phoon photos from nearly 20 years earlier and I thought it would be fun to do the Phoon in another photo, for old times' sake.

I put the old and new pictures on a web page and invited friends to send photos of them doing the Phoon wherever they were.

To my surprise, I was soon receiving Phoon pictures from around the world from people I did not know.

Is it travel photography? Artistic expression? Rebellion? Celebration of life events? Demonstration of skill? It varies from picture to picture, thanks to the continued creativity of contributors. Where will the Phoon appear next? What beautiful or strange location will viewers get to enjoy? That's what makes it a fun project for everyone (well, perhaps everyone but those whose photos are rejected for not doing the pose right, but hey, not everyone "gets it"!).

This submission has been viewed 6402 times.