A Pictorial Guide to avoiding Camera Loss

Have you lost your cam­era recently? Mis­laid it some­where in a national park? Left it in a taxi? Dropped it in the gorilla pit? Any­one can be a vic­tim of the thought­less­ness and/or sleepi­ness that can lead to Cam­era Loss.

How can I pre­vent Cam­era Loss?’ I hear you ask, wish­ing I’d get to the point. Well, you can’t pre­vent cam­eras from get­ting lost, but you can do some­thing so your cam­era can be found very soon after it has vanished.

All you have to do is take some pho­tos – which you never delete from your cam­era – so when some­one finds your cam­era at the bot­tom of the gorilla pit they are able to locate you and return the lost prop­erty to its right­ful owner.

To illus­trate just how you can safe­guard your cam­era from the crip­pling effects of Cam­era Loss, here are the pics that I always keep on my camera.

Hello

You-Must-Have-Found-My-Came

thankyou

Unless

But-I'll-Assume

I-Probably

Like-on-a-Train

Or-At-The-Post-Office

Or-In-My-Dog

Well-Probably

I-don't-even

Nothing

Anyway,-Thanks

We-Have-Such

One-Time

Bath

Sorry

Anyways-Can-you-email

I-Will-Be-Relived

And-Will-Probably-Hug

Unless-You-Have-Personal

Or-You-Are-Remembering

In-Which-Case

OK-Go-Email-Me

And-I-Will-Go-Wait



247 Comments

Matches Malone

Inge­nious!!! But only if it works.…

mary

Very amus­ing and, actu­ally, not a bad idea.

P.S. Haunted by bath photo.

Ooh, I want to find your cam­era! Hurry up and lose it.

Does Num­ber One know what you’ve been up to with her shower cap?

Also, great post. You could totally be a mime with those facial expressions.

esther

dis­cus­sion at booked out re this post has found that this would be more effec­tive if you have the sequence avail­able in a min­i­mum of 7 lan­guages as you are most likely to lose your cam­era overseas.

esther

p.s. with an index card at the start — for man­darin, see pho­tos 281–306 etc etc

That. Was. Brilliant.

@Esther– that would be a lot of pics…you’d only have about 7 slots in which to take ACTUAL pho­tos :D

cara

LOLBRILLIANT!!!
now to test your theory…

Elise

Fun­ni­est one yet.

Oh my eyes… my poor, burn­ing eyes #bath­photo :D

This is awe­some. I almost snorted cof­fee through my nose.

Sean O'Beirne

You make Bob Dylan seem just not enough fun.

jon

You should do all your blogs through your cam­era. It’s like a lol­cats story board.

Andrew

Who do you think you are? Bob MCDon­ald? Andrew Dylan?

It’s all a bit obscura…

very funny, Mr Mac. The bath pic ref­er­ences Jimmy Rab­bitte too. Nice ref­er­ences all round.

lucy

you have a lovely smile.

anon

Reminds me of a cam­era recently handed in to lost prop­erty at work. Con­ve­niently had a photo with the owner’s name near the start enabling me to eas­ily track down the owner. No hugs though.

Also, I’m intrigued by your mixed use of ser­ifs on the let­ter I.

Ang

Haha, very well done! Totally lov­ing the bath tub photo.. Lit­tle ducky was a per­fect prop.

Love it! I am gig­gling at my desk (and get­ting strange looks from my coworkers).

Anon, the ser­ifs are only on the let­ter I if it’s a cap­i­tal (start of sen­tence or the word ‘I’). They’re like SUPER CAPITAL LETTERS!

steph

HAHAHAHA that’s really funny and clever :P

Hey thanks every­one for your kind comments.

I do now feel sorry for the per­son who ACTUALLY loses their cam­era, googles the prob­lem in pan­icked grief and winds up here. To that per­son: sorry!

Tatiana

Are you a show-man? I mean in the finest sense of the word.
Very-well done!
I have a strong feel­ing that I saw your cam­era some­where here, in Rus­sia..
:)

LostInBrittany

I’m not sure it would work.

I tried some­thing sim­i­lar, I had a card with my name and address inside the cam­era bag.

I lost my cam­era a month ago, and the ######## who found it, with the card inside the bag, never con­tacted me…

:(

Patrick

You might want to make the email address a lit­tle clearer– most peo­ple can prob­a­bly guess the full domain etc even with lack of clar­ity, but doesn’t hurt to be careful!

Other than that, fan­tas­tic :)

Fan­tas­tic IDEA!! I might have to do the exact same thing :-)

Great idea! But if you never for­mat your mem­ory card you will soon have trou­ble whit it.You can have data errors and cor­rup­tions. But, GREAT idea…

That’s very cre­ative dude, I LOVED it :)

astrid

Super idea! Even your shower pic­ture. Your like the ideal “son in law” Hand­som and smart!!

Johnny

Hah­h­haha that was hilar­i­ous :D More!

I lost my cam­era eight years ago. My wife and I had just returned from a Vegas vaca­tion and I had over 100 pho­tos on my mem­ory cards. The cam­era was at the bot­tom of our back­pack but due to a water spill was moved to the top. We’re pretty sure that some­one took it out of the back­pack dur­ing a flight change while I was in the bath­room and my wife was dis­tracted (on her cell phone talk­ing to her par­ents). Police were no help. They were only will­ing to fill out a report for insur­ance pur­poses. Insur­ance did pay for a new cam­era, so I wasn’t really upset about that. It’s the lost pho­tos that I still miss.

Now we keep our mem­ory cards sep­a­rate from the cam­era when we travel. So if the cam­era is stolen, they don’t get our pho­tos. It might be handy to put these pho­tos on a spe­cial “trav­el­ing” mem­ory card. This way, they will stick with the cam­era if it gets lost/stolen, but any used/filled mem­ory cards will be safe in a secure location.

captainobvious

why not stick a small ‘if found, con­tact: fubar@foo.com’ dymo label under the cam­era or am i miss­ing something?

Chris

Bril­liant!
Actu­ally my Olym­pus allows you to change the start-up screen to a photo, so I wrote my details up in marker on a sheet and photo’d that for the start up screen … but I have a sin­gle shot at the start of each of my dig­i­tal mem­ory cards for the same rea­son (plus a “readme.txt” in case the mem­ory card is read in a com­puter which is the same as on my USB mem­ory sticks basi­cally say­ing
“please send me the con­tents of this mem­ory card/stick, and feel free to keep the card as a reward, or send me the card and I’ll send you some­thing back as a thankyou!”) … need to update it to say “if you find this in a cam­era, PDA or com­puter, I’d like that back, please!”

Don’t the images get erased every time you for­mat the CF card?

klang

I will do this, using my 2 and a half year old as the white­board holder .. play on that soft spot in the heart of the per­son “find­ing” my cam­era :-)

Kamal

Alright, that was amaz­ing!
The blank one in the mid­dle got me ROFL

Amaz­ing and Cre­ative Idea! :)
Very Funny too! :D

Hey! I know that rub­ber duckie! That’s one well-traveled duck, you know.

here, take a look:

http://littleredtent.net/LRTblog/?p=364

Any­way, what a great idea–thanks for the laughs and the good idea.

All the best!

Scott

If you lost your cam­era how’d ya take all those pic­tures? hmm?

Scott

What is your pc were stolen too? USB? :-)

Debra Ulrich

OMG!, you’re not just bril­liant. You’re adorable too! ;)

Katy

This is delight­ful beyond words!

I would absolutely return your cam­era to you if I found it. PROMISE.

Looks like you’re in dan­ger of all the hot chicks steal­ing your cam­era just so they can return it and claim hugs, man ;-)

You’re on to some­thing, you dog! :D

adf

JUST DON’T LOSE YOUR CAMERA!!!

Sim­ple..

This is absolutely bril­liant. Thank you for mak­ing my day :) Greets from Berlin/Germany

Jason

Great stuff! Very funny.

John Woods

Wow dude that is quite impres­sive. I like it.

RT
http://www.anonymous-web.cz.tc

sohojinks

I laughed out loud! funny stuff. I’d return the camera.

Grammar Nazi

Every­body on the planet stop saying/writing “any­ways.” It’s “anyway.”

You wouldn’t say “at any rates,” or “any­hows” or “in any cases” or “in any events” would you?

In case you would say any of those, stop doing that as well!

As you were.

GM

What if the cam­era is lost in a non eng­lish speak­ing country?Like France, Kaza­khstan…
For info some cam­era have a lit­tle mem­ory inside.

Love it!

Great piece of work — thanks for sharing!

Jason

Great piece. Its really funny bc this actu­ally hap­pened to me on the beach in Barcelona this past April. My cam­era fell out of my pocket and I had given up on find­ing it-I was really bummed bc I lost many pho­tos that were impor­tant to me and irre­place­able. . The next day, after much sulk­ing, I got an email from a stranger via Face­book. Some kind soul found my cam­era, looked through the hun­dreds of pics and saw a photo I took in the Philip­pines in Nov ’07. I was stay­ing at a lit­tle “resort” in an inlet that was beau­ti­ful and so cheap that I took a pic of the bill that had my name on it. The guy who found my cam­era saw my name and looked me up on Face­book and then he shipped the cam­era back to me in NJ. A very nice per­son and an expe­ri­ence that taught me to spread kind­ness every­where regard­less to whom.

Tracy

I wish I had seen this post before I lost my cam­era :( But I’m hop­ing this craigslist ad I cre­ated will help me find my cam­era and the fan­tas­tic, yet humil­i­at­ing pho­tos on the mem­ory card…
http://stlouis.craigslist.org/laf/1511732041.html

Wow. I wish that I’d thought of this when I lost my camera…

How’d you ensure that the per­son return­ing it doesn’t try to steal (or mis­place) you too?

Great idea, but I’d setup a Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail address expressly for the pur­pose instead, and for­ward email from the “lost cam­era” account to my main email account.

I wouldn’t want to give away too much info in the mes­sage. As it is, chances are the finder/stealer would already have access to oodles and oodles of my per­sonal info stored in the camera/card/item!

You have such a cute smile!

Patrik

Very cool, love this play­ful approach and unless your cam­era is stolen I am sure it will find way back home to you :)
PJ

Really great. The bath­room photo is hilarious

marmotte6025

Very funny!
It is not just about the cam­era, isn’t it?
Do you have a sec­ond shower cap to share the bath?

Brad

What if you shoot film? You would have to have the good for­tune of some­one find­ing your cam­era that would pay for the film to be devel­oped. Very amus­ing and truly use­ful! Good on ya.

this is awesome!!!

bril­liant idea…! hope­fully you get your cam­era back soon if you haven’t already :)

Ana

Lol! I would return your camera.

Turned your pho­tos into a gif on my blog. Hope you approve!

Rob

Great idea. I found a cam­era recently, and went through the 100 or so pho­tos to see if I could find some way to con­tact the owner. I found pho­tos of a new born baby and its birth cer­tifi­cate with its name, but I googled a bunch and couldn’t find any ref­er­ences to the baby and/or its par­ents online! I put it on lost & found on craigslist, but I have yet to get any responses.

If it were a really nice cam­era, I might not be going through so much trou­ble to find the owner :)

Awe­some idea, and I love your sense of humor with the whole thing. :-)

Julian

I actu­ally took a pic­ture of some text: “If you found this cam­era, please send it back to me (address), and I will be grate­ful”. Or so. It cer­tainly takes up less card space. The guy’s idea is cute and all, but I fear a thief might just for­mat the whole card anyway…

conrick

Amusing,good luck !
A more real­is­tic one it would be:

Lucky you,you just got your­self a cam­era!
just to keep your con­science clean please
send me the mem­ory card to this address
****** ** ** **** Enjoy it !
but if you send the cam­era, you’ll earn a spot
in heaven.

Emily Suzanne

I think the idea of it per­son­al­izes the finder/thief to the right­ful owner.. mak­ing them feel guilty not return­ing it.

and it gives them the oppor­tu­nity to return it blamelessly.

Its a cute idea, I hope it works!

Michelle

Love it! Too funny!

this is so won­der­ful.
but wot if they are blind?
or deaf?
there are a lot of things to con­sider these days.
what if they are mute?
i think you have a good thing going tho.

xo.eternal
restartist.

gtm

You bet­ter add this one too… for thieves and keepers.

OR you can keep the cam­era but at least upload the pic­tures to Flickr or Pho­to­bucket and mail me the link. I don’t want to loose my hol­i­day photos”

lol this one is seri­ously funny! i feel like tak­ing a bunch of shots like this and sav­ing it in mhy cam­era memory

Seri­ously Genius. And it prob­a­bly will work too! Finally at the same time you prob­a­bly will make someone’s day when they find your cam­era, or steal it.

joshua

You left your cam­era in a national park? It’s not yours any­more. It’s lit­ter. The min­i­mum fine for lit­ter­ing in Cal­i­for­nia is $100.

Henry in Melbourne, AUS.

I found a Minolta Capios 115 (SN:-01523657) at a tram stop. I waited and the owner never returned. I devel­oped the film and the own­ers or their Japan­ese? friends were stand­ing in front of a hotel. The prints were date stamped. The hotel refused to help and Minolta also refused as they pre­ferred the insur­ance com­pany replace a lost cam­era rather than reunite the own­ers with their lost cam­era. Good Luck.

Henry in Melbourne, AUS.

Fur­ther to the above post, I’ve also posted here:- http://forums.photographyreview.com/showthread.php?p=395284#post395284

Colin Graves

Fan­tas­tic. Bril­liant! I am envi­ous of you for think­ing this up! Your pic­tures a perfect!

Stand­ing ova­tion from me!

Sin­cerely;
Colin Graves

AweMan

I engraved “Not for sale or Pawn” on mine with an elec­tric pen­cil I also included my name, address and Ph#.
If you find mine you can have both the pics and the mem card and i‘ll even give you a mod­est reward, just send back the $800.00 cam­era!
There are some hon­est peo­ple out there, But there are some real thugs too! Need­less to say, when trav­el­ing I have it securely around my neck! I never take the cam­era bag off unless I am in a vehi­cle or a room Even then if I leave the vehi­cle or room the bag and cam goes with! I fig­ure if the IDIOTS will steal a bro­ken igloo cooler with Mold inside out of the back of my pickup truck. They wouldn‘t hes­i­tate to break a win­dow to get a Nice camera!

erdal

i think there is top secret pho­tos in this mangy camera

almassy

Great idea! i dont have ur cam­era, but now i have your web­site! thanks for shar­ing it.
:D

Matt

Bril­liant AND hilar­i­ous ! 20 thumbs up dude!( bor­row­ing from 4 ppl above me .. thats right .. do the math! )

Shaun Tollerton

Nice, but I just have a few of my busi­ness cards in my cam­era bag. If my large cam­era isn’t round my neck it’s in the bag anyway.

bril­liant! this is an idea worth aping.….*:0)

Dude that was so freak­ing hilar­i­ous !!
what a great idea !!

:)
Thank you!

koopz

*golf clap*

Anne Holman

That is so good. My phone left itself (acci­dently by me in real­ity) in a taxi in Sin­ga­pore in September(never to be seen by me again). It cost me lots of $ to replace and I still have prob­lems trust­ing myself with any portable items of value. I so should have had a plan like yours. Well done!!!

MJ

Very clever, thanks for the chuckle.

ANYWAYS, this post is cur­rently show­ing up as one of the most-faved items in Google Reader. Cheers!

You are hilar­i­ous! Thanks for shar­ing — I really enjoyed this post! =)

reality-check

I can only assume this is humourous.…because nobody is going to find a cam­era and return it. The only thing u might find, is a virus email to ur email address, with a kid teach­ing u a les­son by being so dumb that he wipes ur entire com­puter, thus u have no pic­tures at all!

Next, ur gonna make a post about mak­ing a label with ur full address inside ur mobile phone incase that gets lost.…

But as i read my reply, i can only assume, u made this blog to see how many dumbass’s would actu­ally do it.…that would be humouress

Very good tuto­r­ial, but your tip is not very con­ve­nient for my 4x5” camera.

Wongtong

Haha­ha­haha. :D

Great and funny idea!

Only thing: your email address is writ­ten far too small (and it is way too long and com­pli­cated, too).

And I really love that pic­ture that I don’t remem­ber. It had a rub­ber ducky inside, I think ;)

bee

Soooo great, love it!

I laughed, I cried, I wee’d a lit­tle bit! <3

Nice idea.. but that will only work if who­ever find it didn’t for­mat the mem­ory card.

Joe B

But what good would it be hav­ing this Andrew’s picts on my dig­i­tal camera !!!!?!?!?!?

Really cre­ative Andrew !!!

this is so clever and very funny.

…Oh…i FOUND it…i’ll be right over…

Eugene

It is per­sonal and cute. I think prob­a­bil­ity, that a per­son would return a cam­era to it’s owner with such mes­sage, increases sig­nif­i­cantly. Well, jeal­ous as I am of this great idea and imple­men­ta­tion, I need to find some­thing about what I can com­plain. The title , “A Pic­to­r­ial Guide to avoid­ing Cam­era Loss”, is not accu­rate. You can not avoid a cam­era loss with this guide. But you might get it back.

Alex

Awe­some !!!

Ha great pic­to­r­ial post. I just found you on friend feed. Good stuff. I sub­scribed to your rss feed as well. Keep up the good work.

ziggygirl

YOU DIDN’T LOST YOUR CAMERA RIGHT?!other way how did you take the pic­tures above very funny =))

Thanks for this. I enjoyed it.

Tess

Silly. Inane. Ego­tis­ti­cal.
Typ­i­cal of today’s “young people.”

Why not just take a photo of your busi­ness card that has all the con­tact points?

Oh, I for­got. Today’s young peo­ple have no busi­ness cards, no busi­ness sense, no business.

This totally made my day!

Morgan R / Seattle, WA

Very well done!

A sense of humor goes a long way. Most peo­ple will return a found object if they have a way to do so. This is a really cute way to make that pos­si­ble. And because it is so funny, folks will prob­a­bly go the extra mile (even some who oth­er­wise might not have).

For all those who com­mented and wor­ried that a thief would learn to much about you … you worry too much, get a life ;-) The mes­sage is aimed at some­one who finds the cam­era, not at a thief.

When you pre­sume that most peo­ple are basi­cally well inten­tioned, you’ll find out that your trust is usu­ally rewarded. Thanks for pro­vid­ing a funny way to encour­age this approach to life!

@kickstand:
“Don’t the images get erased every time you for­mat the CF card?”

Why are you for­mat­ting your CF card “every time”? You only ever need to do that once, then you never do it again. I think you’re doing it wrong.

Camilla

For any­one who finds a cam­era or mem­ory card, there’s always this site: http://ifoundyourcamera.blogspot.com/

I love this idea though — hilar­i­ous! :D

@Tess:

Actu­ally I do have busi­ness cards. I made them out of old per­fume cards.

http://www.andrewmcdonald.net.au/sweet-smelling-business-cards/

ROCCO

hahah, Andrew thanks for the laughs, I enjoyed it, my wife enjoyed it, even my dogs enjoyed it.…now please send me $250 via Pay­Pal and you’ll get your phone back.
Sin­cerely,
ROCCO

Kaye

I love it. You’re a genius!

I like the idea! but i think you have to go straight, it’s too much chit-chat.

Joanna

Good plan, endear­ing your­self to the finder of your cam­era by telling a story. Those are some social smarts!

Bril­liant — thanks for a good laugh in this time of stress!

Maja

That’s soooooo awesome…i guess u’ve got great sense of humour!:)Greetings from PL, take care!:)

Hey ‘Ver­sace’,
You really are quite a twisted fel­low. :)
I am going to try out the busi­ness card idea…At the next Small Busi­ness “Event”…Hopefully some­one will have an allergy and really remem­ber me!
Andrea

PARKER

great idea, I’m off to make some sim­il­iar pics now ; )

Big T

Dude, you need to clean your tub

LOL, I love it!! I’m for­ward­ing this to my Mother-in-Law who is con­stantly los­ing cam­eras :-p

Errrrrrrrrr

But you didnt include your email address!!!

Well done! I will be imple­ment­ing this strat­egy ASAP.

Savannah Spivey

You are hilar­i­ous. Can we meet in a future life? Or this one? Merry Christ­mas my friend :)

This is such a great resource that you are pro­vid­ing and you give it away for free. I love see­ing web­sites that under­stand the value of pro­vid­ing a qual­ity resource for free. It?s the old what goes around comes around rou­tine. Did you acquired lots of links and I see lots of trackbacks??

Gopi krishna

Actu­ally we have 2 cameras.Before 2 years in My Home Some THiefs are stolen. we can taken some Pho­tos with that camera..how can i recover the 2 cam­eras Now.. Plz Tell me the Solution.…

Shirubya

I didn’t found your cam­era, but I think you’re really hot! XD

Awe­somely excel­lent idea!

Ben

How did you take those pic­tures if you lost your camera?

Ben

Never mind, I rarely read ahead of time. Just like look­ing at pictures.

When my girl­friend at the time was study­ing at the dance acad­emy, they shared chang­ing room with those there for week­end courses. And some­one stole her danc­ing shoes!

I sug­gested she put up a sign “You that by mis­take got my shoes with you, please put them back, I would appre­ci­ate it”. Next week­end, no. But the one after that, they were back ;)

So this “might” work some­times, if the one steal­ing them actu­ally have a con­science :)

djuro

I would return your cam­era in a heartbeat!

Even if I have stolen it from you.

(Which I would never do.)

Veevers

I hope you lose that cam­era and I find it– I’d be down with get­ting a free hug from a hot funny stranger.

this is the first time i’ve seen your blog and i think i just want to squeeze you because you’re really frig­gin adorable. alright, that’s all.

Tiffany

this absolutely made my bad day not so bad a day. =D
…I’m scarred for life because of the bath photo, but other than that…

elise hurst

Yay!! My fave post :-) Nice work Andrew!

:) So cool! Great idea!
Inci­den­tally, I have a sim­i­lar paint­ing with the ducks:)

http://digital-drawings.blogspot.com/2009/09/duck.html

Raul Delosier

Only want to say your arti­cle is awe­some. The clar­ity in your post is sim­ply impres­sive and i can take for granted you are an expert on this field. Well with your per­mis­sion allow me to grab your rss feed to keep up to date with suc­ceed­ing post. Thanks a mil­lion and please keep up the respectable work

Arek

I wish I had your cam­era after this pic­to­r­ial so that I could give it back. Hope you find/get it back! Great work!

To clar­ify, if I had your cam­era it’d be because I found it, not stole it. ;)

i think this is just won­der­ful! Love your photography!

muhammad dadu

Geniouse work :D ironic though.

bselter

oh great…where was this blog 2 months ago…just before I lost my camera?

Thats a very cre­ative idea and would melt the heart of some­one who finds it. I hope you never lose your cam­era though.

Déborah

Lmao! Love it! A hug from Brazil! xoxo

Andrea

Saw this on tv in Sacramento,Ca. great idea.

SMiGL

excel­lent facial expressions

Funny :-)

margarita

I loved it. I am always los­ing my cam­era as well and it does have pho­tos of me and what I have been doing. But It think the best is to put your name, tele­phone num­ber and reward if it found. It works.

WhitePineLane

Love it! What a mind, to come up with that! Too funny!

EB

Wow. I’d not only return your cam­era, I’d buy a plane ticket and return it in per­son over cock­tails and a can­dlelit din­ner at a chic restau­rant where despite the haute cui­sine the wait­ers pre­tend not to notice our cheap shoes and cater to our every whim. I don’t know that you’d put out, but per­haps you’d pick up the tab?

Hilar­i­ous! You can lose your cam­era in my pan­niers and I’ll get it back to you!

why do you not have a digg but­ton on this article…that is priceless!!

This was pretty funny. I enjoyed read­ing it, and seems like it could be effec­tive too!

Fol­low me on twit­ter! http://www.twitter.com/obrienstudios

Rie

You are soooooo funny and cute!!
And a great actor, too.
domo ari­gato (thank you)!
you made my day.

This idea is so full of WIN! Thanks for sharing.

Esther Devonshire

Sup, just found your site on yahoo. You have some great posts.

Mme

Best. Idea. Ever.
Silent Media is not yet dead. Thanks for the laugh.

M. Currie

This is a great idea. I once found a dig­i­tal cam­era on the side of the road, with a bunch of pic­tures in it. None were local, and none showed any land­marks I could iden­tify, so I had no way of find­ing who owned it. Any ID would have got­ten some­one back his cam­era and his snapshots.

Itai

Bril­liant! Won­der­ful facial expres­sions. Reminds me a bit of Dr. Seuss…

Derek

Great idea, but I took the easy route and shot a photo with my con­tact info on it for the flash screen that comes on when turn­ing on the camera.

andrew peter collins

I’ll get in the bath with you Andrew. Cheers Andrew.

Stum­bled across your blog while search­ing through google. I read the begin­ning and its fan­tas­tic! I do not have time to read it all now, but I have book­marked this site and will read the rest tonight. I also like the theme, where did you find it? : )

SUPERB!! I like the idea..

this will be use­ful if the one who found it or stole it has inter­est in the pho­tos you took, unless they’ll just sell it before check­ing whats kept inside..

Jordan

How did you take all these pic­tures if you don’t have a camera?

Roberto

Fan­tas­tica idea, yo lo pon­dre en prac­tica en mi camara, en este momento, fabuloso,

Todd Doubleu

It’s also pos­si­ble that you might lose just a mem­ory card so per­haps you extend and test this idea fur­ther. For a small invest­ment (mem­ory is get­ting cheaper,) you could inten­tion­ally lose sev­eral cards with your photo mon­tage pre-loaded. The num­ber of returned cards might give you a sense of the odds of your cam­era com­ing back should you ever lose it. If money is no object, you could buy a bunch of cam­eras and lose them instead.

this is bet­ter than lojack

Brad

If you lose your cam­era in Thai­land, you will need only one photo, which says, “Bye-bye”

anna

Bril­liant! Thank you for the chuckle.

CJ

Andrew,
Per­haps you might offer to trade your cam­era for a razor.

Des

Superb, had some crap days lately and this made me laugh so hard — well done mate, I will be show­ing this to a few friends — may have to cen­sor the bath pic as no one should have to suf­fer that one ;-) lol.

absolutely bril­liant! your post and your smile :)

Stephen

Bril­liant! :D

youcantfindme

If you ever want to see your pre­cious cam­era again, you bet­ter not pull any funny moves. I want $2,000 plus a bot­tle of Absinthe (It bet­ter be top shit my boy!) left at a secret loca­tion in a green duf­fle bag. I have left an assort­ment of clues to find­ing the loca­tion of our meet­ing place out­side of your home. This is the first one:
The yon­der bee is blonder than the sum­mer leaves of autumn trees.
If you can’t under­stand what i’m say­ing, tough shit.
You have approx­i­mately 12 hours to retrieve your cam­era or I’m pee­ing on it.

Alan (Santa)

Good one mate… If I found cam­era I may kept it haha­hah very goos expres­sion!
Cheers

Mark

Great laugh really! You can also try post­ing on http://www.camerafound.com

But I give you 10 points for orig­i­nal­ity man!

Joshua Doubleyou

Great arti­cle! I will be doing that when I get home. :)

Denis

very funny ;-)

Deborah

This is fab­u­lous. I really enjoyed the humour you injected into a great prac­ti­cal idea, and at the risk of sound­ing repet­i­tive you do do have a great smile! :D

Oh — and for the peo­ple won­der­ing about the pho­tos “stay­ing” on the mem­ory card — quite a few cam­eras allow you to mark a few pho­tos as “favourites” these don’t get deleted when you down­load the rest of the pic­tures. ( Obvi­ously this is only use­ful if you have asked the comp to delete the rest of the pho­tos after down­load­ing them!)

sooo funny! i like the bath photo, nice idea :)

I’d prob­a­bly keep your cam­era and post these pic­tures to a Flickr page I would cre­ate as soon as I found these pic­tures on the camera.

I am still crack­ing up.

Excel­lent.. Very creative!

Jackie Brown

Amaz­ing! I actu­ally laughed out loud at work ;)

P.S. I wish I found your cam­era! I would love a hug… you are a total cutie.

I found your cam­era! http://twitpic.com/uznot ;-)

(or sim­ply click my name to see the pic twist)

That’s hilar­i­ous!

I don’t even have a dog!” I love your facial expres­sions through­out these shots. This is a great idea, and maybe even a fun way to update my blog (white­board + marker + me + some­one oper­at­ing the cam­era = fun blog post in pictures)!

This is so great…thanks for the smile :)

Thanks for the laugh! Awesome!

donna flores

THAT’S THE BOMB lol yeah that’s the bomb ;-p

samar

so funny.…very creative…i think i’ll try it too…kkk… bye bye from Brazil!!

This is so amusing!

And I love the blank board shot (goes near sec­ond to the bath­room shot XD).

PS. That “or in my dog” shot? Made my jaw drop.

DG

cute. a vid is bet­ter. too many pics to save and x out from uploading.

I’ve never posted on a blog with close to 200 com­ments before so for­give me. What with that and the whole bath­tub thing I may need a minute…contrary to pop­u­lar thought, we Amer­i­cans are a sen­si­tive lot some­times. heehee

Fun­tas­tic!

Hmm, but I’m still not gonna e-mail you! HAHA loser.

I Loved it!!!

-=Nikki=-

Holy balls, that cracked me up. Can we please go on a date? Maybe a white­board date via email cuz I’m in the states… we can go back and forth with pho­tos like this. Hmm, still not con­vinced? Erm, well, i’m hot and not under­age? I swear on my awe­some ass. That’s all I got, did it work? kbye

Tom

Funny…
A cou­ple of thoughts:

1. It’s not really a good tuto­r­ial unless it’s actu­ally worked at least once,(Has it?) and…
2. I won­der how many of the “he’s cute” com­ment posters are female…:)

haha

that pwns.

GUGAW

such a cute idea!!

How could some­one NOT want to return a cam­era after that?

The Best idea ever!!! :P :P

Bwa­haha.

Very funny, and absolutely clever. To those cyn­ics who insist on dis­parag­ing this or who seem to believe that “no one would ever return a cam­era,” (yes, reality-check, I’m look­ing at you), you might want to recon­sider your world­view, since I rou­tinely return lost objects and have on sev­eral occa­sions had lost objects returned to me. You might also want to check your karma, and your sense of basic human decency.

As for @Tess– Wow. You might want to up the dosage on your Meta­mu­cil. I’m guess­ing you’re some­one who hasn’t received a phone call from the kids or grand­kids in a long time (gee, I won­der why?) and have decided to take your unhap­pi­ness out on those who are younger than you. The rea­son he’s doing this instead of “tak­ing a pic­ture of his busi­ness cards” (which are, in the 21st cen­tury, com­pletely waste­ful landfill-fillers and forest-defoliators) is because any­body with even a min­i­mal under­stand­ing of human psy­chol­ogy (yep, that’s what my very adult degree is in) real­izes that a per­sonal appeal and sense of humor will increase a person’s chances of being helped ten­fold over a com­pletely imper­sonal set of fac­tual infor­ma­tion. It’s one thing to be sour, but the human impulse to spread one’s dis­sat­is­fac­tion around con­tin­ues to appall me.

Andrew: I hope, should you ever decide to upgrade your cam­era, you will leave this one out to see if some­one returns it. I’m sure we all want to know whether this is suc­cess­ful or not– I have a feel­ing it will be.

Very, very cute. I love it!
I hope you get your cam­era back.

LOL!

Although if you hadn’t already posted your bath pic­ture and you lost your cam­era and you get an email that says

Hi, I have a pic­ture of you in the bath. How much will you give me to NOT share the con­tents of this cam­era with the rest of the world?”

it would most prob­a­bly be me. :D

Ray

Great idea. The only hard part is delet­ing all pic­tures except the one with the address. On mine, it’s eas­ier to delete them all and then copy the address pic­ture back to the camera.

Great idea :D

my favourites:
“unless you stole it…“
“i don’t even have a dog“
” “
thanks for this! made me gig­gle :)

Bril­liant idea won­der­fully exe­cuted. Good job!

Clever and very funny. Let me know how it works out for you :) If any­thing it will help you get back your lost CF card.

Jo

soooo funny :lol: funny — ‘unless you have per­sonal space issues’ (issues as in Kath n Kim Issues :) )

linz

That’s actu­ally a good idea. My Canon DSLRs have my con­tact info embed­ded into all the exif but how many peo­ple would be able to find that?

BTW, how many emails have you received from peo­ple claim­ing to have found your cam­era since you posted this? ;-)

Great idea.

And with this funny pic­tures an extra. ;)

Lets see if I can come up with some­thing like this for my own…

stephanie

I’ll prob­a­bly hug you out of grate­ful­ness… unless you have per­sonal space issues.” That was hilar­i­ous! Has this actu­ally worked before when/if you lost your camera?

Kate

Oh my good­ness, I loved it. I will have to do that, some­thing is always hap­pen­ing to my cam­era. Not los­ing it, but I have had one stolen, and one ruined by a small child. Thank you. It was a great start to my day.

Shelby

Oh, this enter­tained me, my room­mate, and soon my entire floor.

Well done, love the hilar­i­ous expres­sions and the “respect­ful dis­tance” part. Plus, the shower-cap and duckie were priceless.

Jerick

I lost my cam­eras THREE times last year (dropped it in a river, lost in air­port, then our house got robbed and 3 of my cam­eras were stolen)

I should have seen this when I lost the first one, tough luck but wouldn’t be help­ful unless a fish comes and brought it back.

Funny, extremely funny. Great one.

Hellofacey

I just apol­o­gized to the love of my life that I found the man I want to marry (unless you are already taken of course). And to those who say it wont work, I say blas­phemy! Too adorable you and that cam­era not to want to return it to you.

Seri­ously the great­est idea ever. But per­haps even more impor­tantly you are so cute. If I wasn’t already very mar­ried I’d want to marry you.
I know… get in line!
Thanks for the really ter­rific idea though! I’m going to check out the rest of your blog now.

…awe­some, :)

antisocial95

Con­grats, I saw this on b3ta! Via the Bored Ninja, which linked here. :)

You are a genius with a sense of humor. Loved it! This will help so many peo­ple.
Bless­ings to you
Debby

I found This Blog while I was search­ing bing on key term dig­i­tal. I like con­tent posted. Keep up the good work.Thanks for sharing!

Jordan

My friend just sent this to me after learn­ing that I lost my cam­era. It made me laugh and not feel so sad any­more. Thanks! By the way, when I get my new cam­era I am going to do this just in case.

Laine

You are…just awesome.

FLEJ Stenton

Dear Gram­mar Nazi,
It takes a smart man to com­mu­ni­cate with any­one at any level, you might find you have some trou­ble with this.

Dear Andrew, I think you a are very funny man, I love your work!

ANYWAYS!!!!!!!! Cheers, always FLEJ!!! xxx

Ps, Glit­ter Berry is sooooo right you do have a cute smile.

Doris R

You are too clever for words…or is that pic­tures? Any­way, love the idea, and it sure made me smile.

sure thing

Now if i was to find a cam­era that was worth about 8,000 dol­lars i am not sure i would return it, i dont care about your pic­tures, now think about it.

anon

Sim­i­lar to the Dymo, I stick a return mail sticker (which has my phone num­ber) on the bot­tom of my cam­era and other sim­i­lar things. I pro­tect it with a piece of “Magic” tape. I had some­one call about a pair of pre­scrip­tion glasses. And it’s help retrieve things left behind in hotels.

I also try to put a text file with con­tact info on my SD cards. But as some­one already pointed out, if (when) you refor­mat the card after down­load­ing all the pho­tos, you delete whatever’s on the card. But then many of us are just fil­ing the cards when done as they’ve become cheap enough, at least if we don’t take thou­sands of photos.

But I love the humor of the idea pre­sented. It will nudge the finder to do the right thing. Offer­ing a reward or 15 sec­onds of fame on your blog may help too. But humor’s the best.

This author claims that after drop­ping 200 wal­lets, he had an 88% return rate (w/ con­tents intact) if the wal­let con­tained a photo of a baby. You’re cute Andrew, but I’d sug­gest you beg, bor­row or steal an infant to improve your odds.

John Frum

I was referred here from another site, so I’m not a fan, as the major­ity of com­menters here appear to be, and I didn’t quite react the way they did. My imme­di­ate thoughts were more along the lines of, “If I found a cam­era, and it had pic­tures like these on it, I wouldn’t return it and give the owner another chance to repeat the performance.”

Sorry. Not try­ing to be neg­a­tive here. Just try­ing to express a point of view you might want to con­sider, and can use. After all, how likely is the per­son who finds your cam­era to already be a fan?

I’ve done a sim­i­lar thing, but it is short and to the point, and doesn’t involve any cutesi­ness. We’d have to con­duct an exper­i­ment to deter­mine which approach is more effec­tive. My expe­ri­ence indi­cates that it’s gen­er­ally best to be direct.

I liked the approach! but per­haps only 3 frames are needed?

allie

don’t for­get to have a baby hold­ing those signs: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6681923.ece

it looks like some sort of per­sonal approach does often work bet­ter than an imper­sonal direct one.

Kris

Great post, very funny pictures.

In case you are seri­ously wor­ried about los­ing your cam­era, here’s an even bet­ter way to tell the finder what to do with it:

https://code-no.com/shop/konzept.php
(switch to eng­lish lan­guage at top right of website)

and here’s the solu­tion for your cam­eras, cell phones, iPods, note­books:
https://code-no.com/shop/index.php?language=en&cat=c1_Label.html

cheers

Kris

Bernard Smyth

I just took a photo of my busi­ness card and I leave it as the first frame in the hope that some­one find­ing the cam­era will get in touch

Autumn

This is
#1 — Com­pletely awe­some,
and
#2 — Not going to work if your cam­era uses actual film.

Awe­some. But I wish I dis­cov­ered this post and it was the post was from from the per­son that found it, and not you.

If I found it, I’d post all the pho­tos and talk about what a genius you are. Then i’d steal the idea.

:)

Rock on.

olofson

hilar­i­ous… but some­one have to wipe of the cof­fee from my mon­i­tor now. The best thing so far this year.… i hope you got your cam­era back.

I’ve found your cam­era. So as soon as you’re out of the bath, come on over and fetch it! ;-)

Please oh please, if some­one stole it, let them make one of these in return explain­ing how they’re hold­ing the cam­era hostage, or at least never giv­ing it back because the cam­era grew tired of Andrew and hav­ing to watch him take baths (among other things), with­out ever feel­ing suf­fi­ciently appre­ci­ated in return. :D

Sanja

LoL :D you made me smile so much with your pho­tos, awe­some idea, and I really love your sense of humor but hun..your bath­tub needs some seri­ous wash­ing with chlo­rine hehehe Hugiesss :*

vanessa

hey hehehe good idea just lov it!!!!! u may not have your cam­era back …but i’m sure that u make some friends and had a good laugh about it!!!!!congrats from Brazil!!!!!

After a pretty crappy week so far, this was a real high­light *lol* I mean the post of course *cough cough*
Thanks!

Hilar­i­ous!!!

really funny… period…

Casey

Haaaa, this is cir­cu­lat­ing all around the inter­net, and for good reason.

You’re super awe­some man.

mum

Andrew, I will be round with my scrub­bing brush after see­ing your bath pic.…..those tiles look filthy!.…;)..you naughty boy!

van

I find your cam­era and now that I see your email and refuse to return it is this con­sid­ered theft?