Brandon Stanton lost his job trading bonds in Chicago, and immediately came to New York neglecting the fact that he had no career. He absolutely loved taking photos and at this point, he had about 600 portraits of people and began creating his own blog. His blog, Humans of New York, began in the summer of 2010. Stanton takes these sensational photographs that people will find stunning, but the same people of New York walk by it every single day and don’t notice. He was inspired by the occasional and aimless activity that occurred all over the metropolitan area.

He set an objective to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers and lay the photos on a map. Stanton was an organized man, he created an organized blog by categorizing each photo by neighborhoods so his viewers could see where each person was from within New York. Somewhere along the way Humans of New York began to take a different toll. On that occasion, Stanton couldn’t follow his own guideline and started aimlessly taking photos of different people strolling through New York and posting him on his blog that evening.

The longer Stanton was blogging, the longer the conversations would get after he would ask for their photo. He began to collect quotes and short stories from the people Stanton met. His ultimate goal now was to add charm to the photo by including an intimate comment that was significant to the individual. Thereafter, Stanton’s portraits and unique captions become a trendy, dynamic blog.

Reaching over four million followers on Instagram and over 16 million on Facebook, Humans of New York now has achieved an international audience that find enjoyment in reading the daily anecdotes of the lives of the strangers in New York City. As of Feb. 1, 2015, Humans of New York had spent 29 weeks on the New York Times Bestsellers list. Due to Humans of New York, Inspiration has developed all over the world and now hundreds of ‘Humans of’ blogs have evolved. Today, Stanton has taken portraits of strangers in almost 20 different countries, including Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan. On Jan. 2015, Stanton interviewed President Obama in the Oval Office. Once again, Stanton goes abroad to Europe to cover and share the stories of the refugees fleeing the chaos in parts of the Middle East. He hopes his viewers will be touched by these astonishing stories, and engage in an emotional experience.