Photographer Levi Bettweiser is the man behind the Rescued Film Project, an effort to find and rescue old and undeveloped rolls of film from the far corners of the world.
He recently came across one of his biggest finds so far: 31 undeveloped rolls of film shot by a single soldier during World War II.
What would you do if you came across a fat stack of cash while doing urban exploration photography? That's what happened to Dave of Freaktography last year.
Carol Carlise was the managing editor of Popular Photography magazine for 35 years in the earlier days of the publication. When she passed away in 2011, she left behind a treasure trove of prints she had collected over the years -- photos by some of the great masters of 20th century photography. Some of those works are now being auctioned online.
About 6 months ago, I put an ad on Craigslist trying to sell a 2x12 guitar cabinet. The next day I got a response from a nice guy named PJ who was interested and the transaction was soon under way.
While at my house to pick up the equipment, PJ noticed my Canon 7D and various other camera gear sitting on my desk. He then proceeded to tell me that he too was a photographer and that he used to take a lot of photos of bands on the East Coast in the mid 70s early 80s.
GoPros exist to take quite a beating... they are action cams after all. However, as much as GoPro might put its products through the wringer to test them and ensure they’re up for anything, it’s unlikely they expect one to survive what the one in the above video did.
The functioning camera managed to survive in a riverbed for 17 months! And not only did it survive, the footage of the camera’s final moments was still safe and sound on the memory card inside.
On September 27th, 2014, Mount Ontake in Japan erupted and began spewing ash. A popular destination for tourists and beginning hikers, several hundred people were reportedly on the volcano at the time. At least 56 of them didn't make it off.
Now, in the aftermath of the disaster, damaged cameras and phones are yielding photos that offer a glimpse into what things were like on the slopes just moments before the rumbling began.
Here's a video that offers a look at the life and work of Joachim Schmid, a Berlin-based artist who is obsessed not with making photographs but with finding them.
For more than 30 years now he has been hunting for ordinary discarded photographs that catch his eye. Once discovered, these found images -- many of which were destined for landfills -- are compiled into collections that give them new purpose and meaning.
Photographer John Oliver of Film Foto Forever didn't know his grandfather-in-law, Jackson McIntosh Holliday, was a photographer until it was too late. Jack passed away on October 11th, 2013, and it was only recently, when John's wife and her family were sorting through her grandfather's things, that they found an old Leica IIIC in amazing condition and 20k plus slides of his work.
Last week, we and many others ran the story of a rather astounding collection of photographs that were supposedly discovered in a foxhole where the infamous Battle of the Bulge took place.
Allegedly found by U.S. Navy Captain Mark Anderson and accompanying historian Jean Muller, the story goes that the duo found then scanned the images in an old camera, presenting them to the world seventy years after they were captured and left behind by a soldier who had been KIA. But that, it seems, is not the truth.
Update: Turns out this story was a hoax. Head on over to our update and apology to catch up on the latest.
The Battle of the Bulge is known as one of the most deadly and influential battles of WWII. Taking place over the course of five weeks, this surprise attack by the Germans caught allied forces off-guard, causing massive casualties, especially among U.S. Troops.
Among the 89,000 casualties was a soldier named Louis J. Archambeau, a Chicago native who left behind an interesting surprise in a foxhole he had been taking refuge in during the cold weather and rough artillery fire.
While taking her usual walk along the water on Cardiff State Beach, California resident Marian Rogers came across a waterproof camera, still intact, and whose memory card still held the images of what appears to be newlyweds. A camera she is trying her best to reunite with its former owners.
This week, 24 incredible, powerful, haunting photographs will be going up on the auction block at Bonhams in New York. These are photographs that are newly-discovered, and many of them have never been seen before as they were taken with a faulty camera and never made it in front of the public eye.
They are photographs of Nagasaki, Japan, taken by celebrated Japanese military photographer Yosuke Yamahata the day after an atomic bomb was dropped on it and Hiroshima.
Update on 12/16/21: This video has been removed by its creator.
Maybe we don't give memory cards enough credit, because for all of the stories of corrupt files and irretrievable photographs, we have some astounding stories of memory cards performing above and beyond what anybody thinks they could possibly do.
I have a feeling this is something every photographer does or has done at some point in their life. Walking through a flea market or thrift shop, they look around and see an older camera. Not one they have any interest in purchasing, but one they do have interest in. Why? For what could be inside. They are in the search of film... film that isn’t theirs. They hope to find photographs from a time long gone and possibly forgotten.
I’ve done it myself and I’d put good money down that many of you have as well. Usually the cameras come up empty, and even if they don’t, oftentimes the photographs themselves are nothing special. But every so often someone hits the jackpot, and that was the case recently with Matt Ames.
Update on 12/16/21: This video has been removed by its creator.
Note to any camera thief who attempts to get rid of the camera at a pawn shop: it might be beneficial to at least know how to turn the thing on. Not only that, but when questioned about where you “found” the camera and when asked to file a missing item report, don’t run off -- I’ve heard it doesn’t help with the whole suspicion factor.
Stolen gear registration and recovery service Lenstag reached a major milestone last week when they successfully recovered and returned a stolen lens to its rightful owner!
News in the photo world isn't always uplifting -- what with all the layoffs and copyright scandals -- but once in a while you stumble onto one of those 'renew your faith in humanity' stories that just make you smile.
That's the uplifting story told by Imaging Resource Editor-in-Chief Dave Etchells, who recently lost $7,000 on a bullet train in Japan, only to have it found and returned to him with nary a piece missing.
Almost a year to date after the digging up and opening of Oklahoma City's Century Chest, researchers are getting a rare glimpse at early 20th century Oklahoma City thanks to the help of a Kodak Vest Pocket Camera and eight negatives found in "pristine condition" buried inside the time capsule.
We have a category called "Finds" here at PetaPixel, and never does it apply more literally than when we chance upon one of those long-lost-camera-shows-up-x-years-later-with-photos-still-intact stories. Today we have one of those astounding stories for you, featuring a camera lost three years ago that was fished out of Lake Tahoe just last week.
In the Spring of 1980, just a few weeks before the infamous Mount St. Helens eruption that would take his life along with 56 others, photojournalist Reid Blackburn captured the volcano as it looked before it exploded.
Almost one hundred years after a group of explorers set out across the frozen landscape of Antarctica to set up supply depots for famed explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, a box of 22 never-before-seen exposed but unprocessed negatives taken by the group's photographer has been unearthed in one of those shacks, preserved in a block of ice.
"Impossible" stories don't seem to be all that impossible where cameras are concerned. For example, you might remember the Canon compact that found its way back to its owner after drifting 6,200 miles across the ocean to Taiwan.
Today's impossible story isn't quite so international, but no less amazing. After losing $1,300 worth of camera equipment to an alligator at the Everglades Alligator Farm eight months ago, another alligator was kind enough to return amateur wildlife photographer Mario Aldecoa's gear to him last week.
Vivian Maier never saw much recognition for her work. When she passed away four years ago in 2009, her treasure trove of over 150,000 photographs had only just been discovered by accident, and didn't begin receiving critical acclaim until after she had already passed.
Called a "poet of suburbia," this nanny photographer -- "Mary Poppins with a camera" -- is now one of the most celebrated photographers of our time, and this hour-long BBC One documentary takes a closer look at her story.
About a year ago, I was sitting around narcissistically Google-ing myself when I came across the photo above of "Robert C. Paetz + Mother". It was dated 1923 and was being sold for $12 by a man named Paul in Northern California.
I quickly did the math and figured it was my 93-year-old grandfather and my great-grandmother, Matilda (who eventually lived until 102 when I was 16).
Harry and Edna Grossmann's stories ended in 1986 and 1983, respectively. A long-time married couple, they never had kids, and instead chose a life of travel and photography. But none of this was known to most of the world until 30 old boxes containing 1,100 slides of their travels made their way into Chicago-based photographer Jeff Phillips' hands.
We won't deny it: we love a good lost and found story. When a camera goes drifting out to sea or is lost in an earthquake, only to turn up months or even years later with the photos still intact, we can't help but smile and share the story.
In this case, kitesurfer Jens Knof lost his friend's brand new GoPro Hero in February of 2011. When a spearfisherman found it two and a half months later just hanging out at the bottom of the reef, Knof was both relieved and amazed.
Photographer Nick Wesson experienced the power of the Internet first hand this past weekend after he managed to track down the subject of a photo he found in a thrift store camera -- in a matter of hours.
In 2007, Lindsay Scallan of Newnan, Georgia took her camera -- complete with underwater housing -- on a trip to Hawaii. It was on that trip, during a nighttime scuba dive in Kaanapali, that Scallan lost her camera to the deep blue. Understandably, she didn't expect she would ever see it again.
But as we've seen in the past, the rule is "never say never" when it comes to finding long-lost photographs. Six years later, the Canon Powershot washed up 6,200 miles away on the beaches of Taiwan where a China Airlines employee picked it up, and began searching for the owner.
In celebration of its 125th birthday, National Geographic has launched a new Tumblr focused entirely on sharing long-lost photos buried deep within its archives. The brain-child of Nat Geo's photo archive curator William Bonner, "Found" already features 13 photos that may never have seen the light of day had it not been for this website -- with many more to come.
Snapping mirror self-portraits may have gotten a huge boost from the introduction of digital photography and smartphoneography, but it is by no means a new activity limited to our era. The photograph above was created back in 1917 -- nearly 100 years ago! It was snapped by an Australian flying ace named Thomas Baker when he was 20 years old.
A crazy story of photo survival has emerged over in New Zealand. Apparently a couple had lost their camera during the Christchurch earthquake last February. They found the demolished camera yesterday, 18 months after it got buried in silt, and were overjoyed to find that their precious photos were still readable.
Musician Lauren White recently came across a "gold mine" at a flea market in Saugus, California; she discovered 23 candid never-before-seen photographs of the Rolling Stones captured in 1965 while the band was enjoying a road trip.
UC Berkeley's library system is the fourth largest library in the United States, so it's no wonder that treasures are often forgotten and buried inside the rare collections. Case in point: a massive collection of signed prints by Ansel Adams have been discovered in one of the 32 libraries, just sitting around in a box.
Waterproof digital cameras are a great way to document adventures in and around water, but one thing you should be wary about is the fact that cameras sink. Despite being waterproof, shockproof, and a variety of other -proofs, the cameras require a separate floater strap that keep them at the surface of the water if they ever get separated from your wrist.
The video above shows why this extra strap is a good idea. Uploaded by YouTube user BackyardJim, it's the last video on the memory card of a camera found at the bottom of a plunge pool.
Swedish YouTube user AnteboyanRox received an interesting surprise after purchasing a brand new HP laptop recently. After finding the operating system already configured, he/she discovered the above video sitting inside the "My Documents" folder.
The latest photo to go viral on the web is a photo about photos. Lost photos, that is. Earlier …
Security camera clips that make the news usually show bad things, but Coke decided to “look at the world …
Last Thursday, 13-year-old Addison Logan of Wichita, Kansas found something really cool at a garage sale: an old Polaroid camera for only $1 (score!). But when Addison got it home and started looking up how to use it on the internet, what he found in the cartridge was even cooler, or maybe creepier. Inside the Polaroid camera, bought from a family they don't even know, was a picture of his uncle Scott who died some 23 years ago in a car accident:
Jack Robinson was a quiet man who mostly kept to himself, which explains why it was his boss, Dan Oppenheimer, who was left to take care of his estate when he passed. Little did Oppenheimer realize, however, that when he opened the closet in Jack Robinson's incredibly tidy apartment, he would find a collection of pristine portraits of celebrities that Robinson shot in his early days as a commercial photographer for Vogue.
A fascinating story from the art world: back in 2010, British businessman Andy Fields purchased a collection of 5 …