9-11 + Digital Photography

[sasa]

There's a really interesting feature story (several, actually) on photographers who covered the collapse of the WTC on Sept. 11 in the latest edition of American Photo magazine.

It's the one with a dusty, demolished looking Canon D30 on the front... really simple cover, yet so powerful, almost haunting.

Inside, there's a story about the one professional photographer who was killed as the towers collapsed. He was carrying several film cameras and one D30. The backs were blown off the film cameras, destroying any shots he took... but the D30 was described as 'pristine' inside (the outside & lens was a mess). In fact, they pulled out the Compact Flash card and using the pics and the exif data, reconstructed the photographer's last moments.

Unfortunately, they don't seem to actually show any of these pictures in the magazine... maybe someone else has already bought the rights.

s.

[gerry]

Here's a photo we got as we were docking at Liberty Island this summer.

The flag was not inserted, as some have suggested. But the unfurling of the flat in a patriotic sense had yet to take place in the U.S. so the relevance was not appreciated when the photo was captured.

http://home.elp.rr.com/neumanns/images/wtc.jpg

[gandini]

I think you'll find this story:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/639271.asp?cp1=1

contains the images recovered from Bill Biggart's D-30. Click on the image icon to the right of the photo of his wife with the recovered camera.

Horrible, scary, amazing and memorable!

philip

sasa wrote:
There's a really interesting feature story (several, actually) on photographers who covered the collapse of the WTC on Sept. 11 in the latest edition of American Photo magazine.

It's the one with a dusty, demolished looking Canon D30 on the front... really simple cover, yet so powerful, almost haunting.

Inside, there's a story about the one professional photographer who was killed as the towers collapsed. He was carrying several film cameras and one D30. The backs were blown off the film cameras, destroying any shots he took... but the D30 was described as 'pristine' inside (the outside & lens was a mess). In fact, they pulled out the Compact Flash card and using the pics and the exif data, reconstructed the photographer's last moments.

Unfortunately, they don't seem to actually show any of these pictures in the magazine... maybe someone else has already bought the rights.

s.

[nitwit3]

Wow Phil,
Thanks.
LM

[darrell]

Very sad article. It hits home a little closer than usual bacause I can picture myself doing something like that. It says that they recovered 150+ images from him, hopefully someone will put a memorial book together with them and publish it.

[sasa]

Actually, when you read about all the other pro photograhers who rushed to the buildings, it's amazing more of them weren't hurt.

I guess it puts the lie to that feeling you get when you're looking through a viewfinder... the feeling that you're somehow just an observer, immune to what's happening on the other side of the camera.

s.