Image courtesy of Teeratas at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
On my first non-Snapshot Sunday in a while, I’m not straying far from the topic of photographs—in fact, not straying at all. It’s just that they’re not my photos today, but pictures from the other side of the world and the technology and skill that could save them.
There are places on the web that I like to browse from time to time, for no reason other than to see what might be interesting today. One of those interesting places is the home to TED talks, a site with a tag line of “ideas worth spreading”. You never know what you might find there, and it’s a fun place to spend a little time.
So it was that I was browsing there on a lazy Sunday evening and came across a talk from last summer. It’s all about photos that were damaged during the horrific tsunami in Japan a couple of years ago. Damaged, recovered, and restored. There’s nothing necessarily earth-shattering about this particular talk; it’s just the experience of one woman trying to do a little something to help total strangers as they dealt with a disaster that destroyed countless lives. I think it’s encouraging and uplifting to hear these tales, when people try to do what they can to make the world a little bit better. The fact that this particular tale is also about a subject that is near and dear to my heart—the importance of photos—just makes it that much better for me.
So, if you’ve got about ten minutes, listen to this story of the photographs and those who tried to save them. And, when you’ve got even more time to spend, wander through the TED talks and see what inspires you.
