Photographers Needed - Flood Damage Photo Restoration

[jimcoffey62]

After Hurricane Katrina there were several new charities that were set up. One of these was Operation Photo Rescue - a world wide group of photoshop professionals who volunteer to fix flood damaged family photo's. http://www.operationphotorescue.org/

We need local Houston/Galveston photographers to make copies of the damaged prints so we can send digital files to PhotoRescue. See below for details.

Please let me know if you might be willing to help with this process for one Saturday in November or December.

Here's how the process works.

1. Local photographers (that's me and my photoclub friends) find a location, pick a date, and set up a copy stand in a local church, library, or other building. A copy stand is an easel to hold the photo, a tripod to hold the camera, and a couple of flashes to provide consistent light. We take a photo of the damaged print (and eventually upload it to the internet) - much faster than a scanner.

2. Operation photorescue.org will send a media press release telling people where they can bring their damaged photos.

3. People show up - we take a picture of their picture, burn the images to DVD, and send the DVD to the photorescue people.

4. The world wide photoshop experts fix the photo's and email the repaired digital image back to the owner.

I'm working to find a location and suggest a good day? My suggestion for Clear Lake would be the Clear Creek Community Church student loft area and the date some weekend in November so we have time to prepare. We'll need a location in Galveston also.

I can find the photographers.
The PhotoRescue people have the release forms for people to fill out so we can track the process and get the photos back to the proper owners (with liability releases so they can't sue if something goes wrong).

DETAILS
1. We will limit this service to X photo's per family. In Biloxi the limit was 20 photos. In Katrina the limit was 5 photos ... it depends on how many photographer and other volunteers we can obtain.

2. We do not take possession of the pictures. People stand in line with their photos, fill out the forms, we make the copies, and they go home with their originals.

3. We need administrative volunteers with laptops connected to the internet to help people fill out the online forms.

4. The photo's may have mold on them. We'll tell the people to clean the pics with a dry cloth before they enter the building. Our volunteers, the people with pictures, and everyone who enters the building will sign a medical release that they may come into contact with mold or other contaminants on the photos.

5. The founder of PhotoRescue is Dave Ellis - a newspaper photographer in Virginia. I talked to him on the phone this afternoon and he explained the process to me. He is sending me more details via email (forms, paperwork, legal liability details, suggestions on how to manage the flow of images so they can keep track and get the repaired version back to the owner, etc).

COPY STAND DETAILS (notes for photographers)
1. take a photo of the printed form people fill out
2. For small photo's include the owner's email on a post-it in the frame with the photo.
3. For large photo's take two pictures - one with the email and one without so we have enough megapixels for the retouchers to work with.
4. Prefer DSLR camera's with pro lenses and 14 megapixels if possible
5. Houston Photo.org and strobist have plenty of photographers with good cameras.
6. Setting up a copy stand takes about 20 minutes to get the camera and the easel alligned and the lights adjusted.
7. I can take about 40-80 pictures per hour using my copy stand at home. Working with other people will slow the process but talking to them and hearing their story is the most rewarding part of the deal for the photographer.
8. As part of the release form I want people to promise to send a thank you email to the retouchers (Dave said they they only get about 7% thank you notes from people).
9. I'm going to suggest to Dave that the retoucher send an email to the photo owner when he starts working on the photo's. This way we can create a person to person contact - much more humane.