Maybe you’ve been there before. You’re at a pub with some friends on a Saturday night. You’ve got your digital point-and-shoot camera in your pocket or bag, and as the beer starts to flow easier with each pint, you start snapping pictures like a twelve year old girl at a Justin Bieber concert.
But unlike the twelve year old, you’re completely obliterated. A few hours and eight tequila shots later, you stumble out onto the streets, leaving something behind on your barstool. It’s not that any of those 127 pictures you took that night are worth a damn, but still… you lost your camera and some memories of you and your friends in a drunken stupor. (Well, I guess they’re not really memories if you don’t remember them. Evidence, perhaps.)
In the past, you’d suck it up and deal with it. What else could you do but go and buy another camera? Well now, my friends, there’s hope. Two years ago, a Canadian guy, Matt Prepost, started a blog with the intention of reuniting lost cameras with their hopeless owners.
Finders of lost cameras can go to www.ifoundyourcamera.net and send in four or more photos taken from the memory card. Prepost will then upload the pictures along with details of where the camera was found in the hopes that its owner will visit the site and claim the camera.
Since its creation, the site has over 400 posts for lost cameras and has seen almost five million visitors. Cameras have been found and reported from California to Italy to Indonesia, and while only a few dozen have been claimed to this point, the site has potential to help reunite hundreds of camera owners with their long-lost photos.
Being a victim myself, I love the concept behind this site. However, my camera was stolen in Barcelona rather than being misplaced in a neighbourhood bar, so it’s highly improbable that the thief will be sending in my photos of a Cruzcampo-laden Carnival trip to Cádiz anytime soon. Jeez, come to think about it, do I even want to see those pictures, anyway?
