Operation Photo Rescue saving photographic victims of Hurricane Sandy
When Hurricane Sandy hit America it destroyed homes, business and memories. Now some memories can be rescued. Operation Photo Rescue, a US non-profit organization consisting of a worldwide network of volunteers will be in New York on the 2nd-3rd of February.
Operation Photo Rescue will evaluate and potentially restore photographs of the hurricane victims. Photos will be repaired with state of the art digital technology and mailed back to the owners free of charge. Anybody who was affected by Sandy can bring up to 20 photographs to be evaluated. All photos need to be dry and extracted from frames. If they are still in the frame they may be able to be restored but quality may suffer.
If the photos are stuck together soaking the image may allow the image to be separated. I would recommend reading this link for extra information about rescuing damaged photos.
I think this is great news, photographs of loved ones and pets are the most cherished possessions for some people. I feel sorry for many younger people who may not be able to take advantage of this operation as they are more likely to have kept their pictures digitally. We think about digital images being safe on the sd cards or hard drives but the greatest threat to these is mother nature herself. I hope that if you are a victim of Hurricane Sandy you are able to take advantage of this opportunity.
New Portrait of Barack Obama
If you didn’t know Barack Obama won the 2012 American election. To go with winning the election you get to live in a big white house and rule the largest country in the “Free World”. Oh and you also get your portrait taken.
Why this news, well, the portrait is a really interesting one. The White House uses Flikr and you are able to download the image direct from the site. The image also includes all the Exif information. The portrait from the looks of it was shot using two light boxes either side the President, to create the classic Rembrandt lighting. The image was shot on a Canon MKII at 200iso, using 85mm/F2.8 lens. Pete Souza shot the image at 1/125 of a second at F7.1. The settings allowed for the president to be in focus from the hands to the tip of your ears allowing for the back ground to drop out of focus.
A great picture and a great advertisement showing that you don’t need a lot of fancy equipment to make a good portrait.
Flickr Commons Celebrates its five year anniversary
Flickr Commons is five years old and to celebrate it has created galleries of the most viewed images. Flickr Commons was launched in 2008 in association with the US Library of Congress with two main objectives; firstly to increase access to publicly held photography collections and secondly to provide a way for the public to contribute information and knowledge.
In the last five years as more partners have become involved in the project the number of images has grown from 1500 to 250,000. Flickr says that there have been over 2 million tags added to the images as well as 650,000 comments.
I like the fact that governments are making it easier for public images to be more accessible. Photographs are a great way to teach and to discover our past. With the added ability for people to be able to give, primary source historical comments, in turn creating historical context and a better understanding of our modern history.
If you have any comments about these stories, I would love to hear them.
Aperture64 