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 nutekk
      
Location: Central NJ
Gender: Male
 |  |  | Photo clues lead to camera's owner
< on 1/27/2008 11:21 AM >
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By BRIAN BERGSTEIN, AP Technology Writer Fri Jan 25, 5:46 PM ET
At dusk on New Year's Eve, Erika Gunderson got into a taxi in New York City and entered a digital-age mystery.
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Sitting on the back seat was a nice Canon digital camera. Gunderson asked the driver which previous passenger might have left it, but the cabbie didn't seem to care. So Gunderson brought it home and showed it to her fiance, Brian Ascher. They decided that the only right thing to do was to find the owner.
But how? The only clues were the pictures on the camera: typical tourist snapshots, complete with a visit to the Statue of Liberty. How could they find a stranger among the huddled masses?
Gunderson is busy in finance for Bear Stearns Cos., so the detective quest fell to Ascher, a 26-year-old law student at New York University. He was on winter break and eager to put off writing a paper about climate change treaties.
He checked whether anyone had reported a matching missing camera to the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission. No dice. He placed ads in lost-and-found sections of Craigslist but got just one response — from a couple in Brazil who had lost a camera in a cab on Oct. 12, not Dec. 31.
"I guess they thought their camera had been riding around in a taxi for two months," Ascher recalls now, chuckling at the notion that such a thing would be possible in New York.
The 350 pictures and two videos on the camera showed several adults, an older woman and three children. Half put them at New York sites like the Empire State Building. The other half had the group enjoying warm weather and frolicking at kid-friendly theme parks.
Ascher easily pinpointed Florida. The group had stood in front of a sign indicating Clearwater, Fla., and posed at Bob Heilman's Beachcomber Restaurant there.
They also took a pirate-themed boat ride where the kids got mustaches painted on their faces. Ascher zoomed in on the group to see name tags on their shirts. He spotted an Alan, an Eileen, a male Noel and a female Noelle, plus a Ciarnan. Under their names was written "IRE."
When Ascher checked the videos, he saw nothing telling, just the children dancing and swimming. But in the background, he heard Irish accents.
OK, Ascher figured, the camera's owner is from Ireland.
Ascher called Canon's Ireland division to see if anyone had registered the $500 camera's serial number. No such luck. He posted ads on Irish Web sites. Nothing.
He checked the date stamp on the photos from Bob Heilman's and called to inquire whether anyone remembered serving a big Irish group that day. Without the diners' last names, there was no way to check. It's a nice thing you're trying, the manager told Ascher, but you probably just found yourself a new camera.
Enter some fresh eyes. Ascher's mother, Nancy, and sister, Emily Rann, scoured the pictures for clues he might have missed. Nancy was particularly confident, having reunited people with their lost belongings before. She once found a California woman's wallet in a cab in Florence, Italy, and spent all day on her trail before making a handover at an American Express office.
"I thought, with all this data in the camera, there's no way we're not going to get it back to them," Nancy Ascher says now. "I was hoping it wasn't going to take a trip to Ireland, flashing their pictures everywhere."
Ascher's mother and his sister noticed that one of the pictures showed a doorman helping someone into a New York taxi. Zooming tight on the doorman's uniform, they made out the logo of the Radisson Hotel.
After several phone calls and a visit to the hotel to show the pictures around, Nancy Ascher persuaded an employee to search the Radisson's guest records by first name and country of residence. Indeed, a Noel from Ireland had stayed there on the date stamped on the photo. Nancy Ascher charmed the hotel employee into sharing the guest's e-mail address.
Wonderful.
Except that when Noel responded to Brian Ascher, he said he hadn't lost a camera.
By now, school was resuming, and Ascher was prepared to give the camera to his mom so she could take over. She had figured out the name of the Florida pirate-boat cruise and was trying to reach its operator.
But first Ascher took a final look at the photographs.
He pored over some from Dec. 30 that didn't include the children. The photos showed signs for bars in Manhattan's East Village: The Thirsty Scholar, Telephone Bar, Burp Castle. There also were multiple interior shots of a tavern, but they didn't seem to fit with what Ascher knew of those other three bars.
Then he stopped on another picture, showing two people outside an apartment building. Seemingly accidentally included in the picture was something Ascher had missed the first time: an awning in the background that read "Standings." Aha! Standings is a bar next to Burp Castle. Ascher checked its Web site, and the interior matched the pictures on the camera.
Ascher found Standings' owner, who reached the bartender who had worked Dec. 30. Yes, he recalled an Irish group. Especially because one of the women was a big tipper and said she worked at another New York City bar, Playwrights. The Standings bartender called Playwrights to ask which employees had been in his bar.
Ascher soon got an e-mail from a woman named Sarah Casey, whose sister Jeanette works at Playwrights. Suddenly everything Ascher had seen on the camera came to life.
The Caseys recently had hosted relatives and friends from Ireland. The group included their friend Alan Murphy, who had journeyed to Florida with family before heading to New York, where the clan stayed at the Radisson. (Their Noel was not the Noel whom Ascher e-mailed.) Murphy ended the trip kicking himself for leaving his camera in a cab in the twilight on New Year's Eve.
Sarah Casey agreed to send it to him. It didn't go to Ireland but to Sydney, Australia, where Murphy lives now.
Murphy, an insurance underwriter, had been devastated to lose the pictures from a trip he had planned for years. It was Jan. 10 — his 34th birthday — when he heard he would be getting the photos back. "I was over the moon," he says now. "Best present ever."
"I owe you one," he wrote to Ascher. "It's good to know there are some honest people left in the world."
cheers !
" Take only pictures, leave only footprints" |
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shellyl
 
Location: Lenoir NC
Gender: Female
I have learned not sweat the petty things and not to pet the sweaty things.
| | Re: Photo clues lead to camera's owner
<Reply # 1 on 1/27/2008 1:19 PM >
| | | | What a great story. Thanks for sharing.
A mirage is not an optical illusion. It is a real phenomenon, and one can take photographs of it. The interpretation of the image, however, is up to the fantasy of the human mind.
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argonian
Location: Toronto, ON
Gender: Female
"Now with added cats!"
| | Re: Photo clues lead to camera's owner
<Reply # 2 on 1/27/2008 4:00 PM >
| | | | People mock me for labeling my ipod, but I maintain most people would return it if they found it. I haven't labeled my cameras, but I think I should get on that.
Que pasa, baby? |
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nutekk
Location: Central NJ
Gender: Male
| | | Re: Photo clues lead to camera's owner
<Reply # 3 on 1/27/2008 4:21 PM >
| | | | insurance helps too ...
cheers !
" Take only pictures, leave only footprints" |
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Hawkwind
Location: largo, Florida 33771...
Gender: Male
In Search Of Space
| | Re: Photo clues lead to camera's owner
<Reply # 4 on 1/27/2008 5:40 PM >
| | | | I tried to return 5 reels of 8mm home movies that I found at the town dump. I was able to ID the family and I had someone who went to school with one of the sons ask them if they wanted them back.
They wanted them back, a sister had thrown them away by mistake. To my surprise the guy who contacted the son was then told to forget it because I'm probably expecting a huge reward.
I'm going to donate them to the towns Historical Society...
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bonnie&clyde
Location: 510 & 415
Cleverly disguised as responsible adults
| | Re: Photo clues lead to camera's owner
<Reply # 5 on 1/27/2008 5:48 PM >
| | | | Great story. Next time he will keep it on a leash.
The question is not when are we gonna stop, It's who's gonna stop us?
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Wiccan
Location: Hamilton Ontario
Gender: Female
| | Re: Photo clues lead to camera's owner
<Reply # 6 on 1/27/2008 7:52 PM >
| | | | Funny you posted this. Just last night my sister found a cellphone on the ground while I was in a store. After trying to call the number that said 'home' with no answer,we took it across the street to a Tim Hortons. We were sitting there speculating who might own the phone (leather case and anime screensaver),we concluded that it must have been a teenager.
Soon enough,we saw a teenaged guy frantically searching the area around the store. We got up to go across the street to him when then he ducked into a payphone at the corner. He called the cell number and nervously asked whether we'd give it back to him. We told him where we were and he was really happy to get his quite expensive phone back and offered my sister a reward, which she of course wouldn't take.
Just a small thing,but he said he appreciated her honesty,blahblahblah. Hopefully his faith in humanity has been temporarily restored and this concludes my warm fuzzies story. 
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blackhawk
This member has been banned. See the banlist for more information.
Location: Mission Control
UER newbie
| | | Re: Photo clues lead to camera's owner
<Reply # 7 on 1/27/2008 8:20 PM >
| | | | Yeah nice story.
Nice that no only were they honest, but went out of their way to help a stranger.
-benefiting by some other's misfortune isn't luck, it's greed-
Just when I thought I was out... they pulled me back in.
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blackhawk
This member has been banned. See the banlist for more information.
Location: Mission Control
UER newbie
| | | Re: Photo clues lead to camera's owner
<Reply # 9 on 1/27/2008 8:36 PM >
| | | | Posted by junkyard
Not true in all cases, I call it business.
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Your thinking diving savage rights... cabs don't count unless submerged.
Just when I thought I was out... they pulled me back in.
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Blah1514
Location: Michigan
Gender: Male
Dammit BOB!
| |  | Re: Photo clues lead to camera's owner
<Reply # 10 on 1/27/2008 8:39 PM >
| | | | Deductive Logic triumphs once more!
Michigan Winters really suck |
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RochesterUE
Gender: Male
I'm a piggie!
| | Re: Photo clues lead to camera's owner
<Reply # 11 on 1/27/2008 8:59 PM >
| | | | Posted by blackhawk
Your thinking diving savage rights... cabs don't count unless submerged.
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Oh diving salvage rights...
Screw that!
http://cat.org.au/~predator/approach.txt
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop... |
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junkyard
Location: LaCrosse, WI
Gender: Male
Strategic Beer Command where the metal hits the meat.
| | | Re: Photo clues lead to camera's owner
<Reply # 12 on 1/27/2008 8:59 PM >
| | | | I'm thinking when your car takes a giant shit and you need someone with a cape and tights to get you going again, I'm your man, but I ain't cheap. You should see the cleaning bill for the cape and tights.
I drink gasoline for breakfeast and beer for dinner!
Any problem can be licked with a case of beer and a few sticks of dynamite.
Strategic Beer Command ruling the desert since 1995 http://www.strategic-beer-command.com |
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everybodyknows
Location: Ithaca, NY
bacon is meat candy
| | | Re: Photo clues lead to camera's owner
<Reply # 13 on 1/28/2008 12:13 AM >
| | | | i had a camera stolen from me once. a film camera. i left it on top of a pay phone at the public library and realized i had forgotten it about 10 minutes later and it was gone. and i only had 1 or 2 more exposures left on the roll of film. it made me sad because some of those images can never be replaced. the camera was important to me too, but much more easily replaced (i had gotten it for slightly less than $100 from ebay with a ton of accessories).
so in addition to name and address, it's a good idea to include something like "reward if found. no questions asked." because they probably pawned it off for like $20 or something and i'd be willing to pay that to get it back.
"Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today." ~James Dean
"People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts." ~Neil Gaiman |
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keti
Moderator
Location: Providence, RI
Gender: Female
#EA98DE
| | | Re: Photo clues lead to camera's owner
<Reply # 14 on 1/29/2008 4:44 AM >
| | | | That's the coolest story ever.
I recently found a cell phone on the floor in the mall I work at. The phone book had only 2 or 3 names, no number listed as "home" or "mom" or something similar, so I waited. Eventually it rang and I answered. The guy on the other end was pissed, saying "Who the fuck is this. Give my girl back her phone you mother fucker". I told him where I found it, then told him where I was so they could come get it. I figured he and his "girl" would just pop in grab the phone and [maybe] say thanks... instead I get a posse of thugs in my face threatening to fuck me up if I don't give it back. I had security escort me to my car because they still thought I had stolen it and said that they'd "wait outside for me". whatever.
When I was 14 I found a wallet in a parking garage outside a different mall while I was on a break. No cash, but lots of credit cards even the guy's social security card. I brought it to the customer service desk, no big deal. Soon after, Two cops arrived at my work place to question me! They said there was a lot of cash in the wallet, and had me empty my pockets and my purse and went through my jacket... at my fucking job!! They even asked the manager if he had noticed me with "a wad of cash". They asked me to "produce proof" of when I bought the gameboy that was in my purse... what a bunch of shit that was.
I'm sure most people have happy tales of giving things back and getting a warm fuzzy feeling inside, but I just seem to get shit for it. I'll still give things back when I find them, but probably through another person or as anonymous as possible.
[23:38:31] <metawaffle> I'm surprised the NE forum doesn't fall off UER from the weight of thread locks
uer.ca is like / being in the mob / basically, a / ninja mob. - Aleksandar |
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blackhawk
This member has been banned. See the banlist for more information.
Location: Mission Control
UER newbie
| | | Re: Photo clues lead to camera's owner
<Reply # 15 on 1/29/2008 4:55 AM >
| | | | Posted by keti
That's the coolest story ever.
I recently found a cell phone on the floor in the mall I work at. The phone book had only 2 or 3 names, no number listed as "home" or "mom" or something similar, so I waited. Eventually it rang and I answered. The guy on the other end was pissed, saying "Who the fuck is this. Give my girl back her phone you mother fucker". I told him where I found it, then told him where I was so they could come get it. I figured he and his "girl" would just pop in grab the phone and [maybe] say thanks... instead I get a posse of thugs in my face threatening to fuck me up if I don't give it back. I had security escort me to my car because they still thought I had stolen it and said that they'd "wait outside for me". whatever.
When I was 14 I found a wallet in a parking garage outside a different mall while I was on a break. No cash, but lots of credit cards even the guy's social security card. I brought it to the customer service desk, no big deal. Soon after, Two cops arrived at my work place to question me! They said there was a lot of cash in the wallet, and had me empty my pockets and my purse and went through my jacket... at my fucking job!! They even asked the manager if he had noticed me with "a wad of cash". They asked me to "produce proof" of when I bought the gameboy that was in my purse... what a bunch of shit that was.
I'm sure most people have happy tales of giving things back and getting a warm fuzzy feeling inside, but I just seem to get shit for it. I'll still give things back when I find them, but probably through another person or as anonymous as possible.
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Nasty. Anytime someone lays into you like that... well now you know.
Never bring strangers home unless they're real sweeties... with no ted bundy fantasies.
Be glad you didn't find their stolen car
Just when I thought I was out... they pulled me back in.
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tron_2.0
Location: Ohio
Gender: Male
| | | | Re: Photo clues lead to camera's owner
<Reply # 16 on 1/29/2008 2:10 PM >
| | | | Thats great. One time, when I was probably 10 or 11, I lost my wallet on a beach in Florida. Inside the wallet was money that I was supposed to use on my trip back to buy food (I was traveling only with my brother).
A few months later, I get it in the mail and +$5 dollars...what a nice family.
[quote][i]Posted by yokes[/i]
I find your lack of coziness.... disturbing.
[/quote] |
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Marko Kovacevic
This member has been banned. See the banlist for more information.
| | | Re: Photo clues lead to camera's owner
<Reply # 17 on 1/29/2008 3:32 PM >
| | | | Posted by argonian
People mock me for labeling my ipod, but I maintain most people would return it if they found it. I haven't labeled my cameras, but I think I should get on that.
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You could put your info in the contacts section. Edit: I once lost my 60GB ipod [then $500] in school and someone retuned it to me!
[last edit 1/29/2008 3:35 PM by Marko Kovacevic - edited 1 times]
www.youtube.com/Markok765
Markokovacevicphotography.blogspot.com |
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Debi
Location: Worcester County, MA
Gender: Female
| | Re: Photo clues lead to camera's owner
<Reply # 18 on 1/29/2008 3:57 PM >
| | | | After Christmas shopping this year I got a call on my phone while I was loading my purchases into my car. I got distracted and stupidly left my purse in the carriage, out in the parking lot.
I didn't realize it until I got home (about 20 minutes later) and figured it was long gone. It was a Louis Vuitton purse (worth about $300.00) with credit cards and about $200 of cash inside.
I called the store to see if anyone happened to turn it in and to my amazement, it was there. Not a dime missing.
I posted a thank you note in our local newspaper. I certainly hope the person who returned my purse was able to see it.
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atomx
Location: Brighton, ON
Gender: Male
| | | Re: Photo clues lead to camera's owner
<Reply # 19 on 1/29/2008 4:57 PM >
| | | | I've lost my memory stick once.
Didn't realize it was missing until a guy phoned my house and asked if I lost one. He went through the resumes on the stick an found our phone number.
When we picked it up my wife said I hope there wasn't anything to racey on there.
Heh. I think he thought we were freaks cause this was on there.
He didn't want a reward. Not even a coffee.
On the way home from Cobourg one night, my wife and I picked up two girls walking on the way to a party. They were going to get into a truck filled with drunk guys, well. Took them to the party and a couple days later found a cell phone in the car. Battery dying. We couldn't get to the number listing fast enough before the phone died. Went around to all the cell shops just to use their chargers, "No luck for that phone" they'd all say. We tried to give it one more shot at getting into the listings faster and just as we saw the number it died.
We called her Home number and her mom came to pick up the phone. She asked us where we found it. I think we said on the side of the road. I saw the girl in the car and she looked worried. I don't think that she wanted her mom to know that she was hitch hiking to a party late at night, so I spared her the trauma.
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Richard Cook |
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