New York: More than a City

Hello, fellow nomads!

We are Leah Stacy and Pete Wayner, a team specializing in immersion travel. We tell stories by actually experiencing them in a style similar to Nellie Bly and Hunter S. Thompson.

If you’re from New York, people picture the bustling city of 8 million. For our video, we wanted to show a different side: upstate, where dairy farms flourish and autumn is the most beautiful season. And though we grew up here, there are some skills we don’t have… So we decided to try ‘em on for size.

We’ve never made a film before, only short videos. We use a Canon Rebel T2i and videography basics we learned in Syracuse University grad classes. We both present, shoot and edit.

In September, we drove 5,000 miles from Rochester, NY to Austin, TX as “The Bly Project.” We asked more than 50 people to share personal versions of the American dream on video. We ate regional foods, stayed in our first Airbnb and searched for rattlesnakes in Texas. We met locals. We got lost on back roads.

Filming in Rio would bring us closer to our goal of producing travel media full-time.

We believe immersing ourselves is the best way to tell a story and we’d be honored to do that with World Nomads.