Hurricane Sandy Relief: For Shore Photos

This is just one of the hundreds of photos For Shore Photos wants to reunite with its owners.

One of these days, we’ll get back to our regularly scheduled rumblings and ramblings about photography. Today’s not that day, though, since I’ve come across another photography-related initiative set up to help New Jersey residents after Hurricane Sandy, and wanted to help get the word out. This one’s a bit different, in that you don’t need to be a photographer. In fact, about all you’ll need is a sharp eye, some paper towels, ziploc bags, and wax paper.

Since you’re probably thinking, Huh? to yourself, let me explain.

Jeanne Esti, a Rhode Island-based business consultant and life coach with family ties to the shore, has started For Shore Photos, which is dedicated to rescuing and preserving photos found after the storm. In a note to project supporters, Jeanne wrote:

We escaped unscathed but our neighbors didn’t, nor did so many of our friends around the area. After cleaning up our house, I took a look around the property and truly broke down. What I had thought was debris was the remains of broken open homes and their beautiful, revered contents were strewn all over. I started to look at it and I found photo after photo and then asked the police if I could look at the properties of some of our neighbors who couldn’t make the “access day” (a new normal for many of us). They not only obliged my request, they came with me to make sure I didn’t wind up in a sink hole and helped me collect these photos. It got me thinking about what all of you might be seeing/finding.

If you’re wondering what you can do to help, For Shore Photos’ focus right now is on getting the word out so that people know to look for stray photographs and photo albums in their travels, and know what to do with them once they’ve found them. Namely, to put them in a sealable bag and mark the address where they were picked up. Drop-off points are being announced as they’re arranged, generally at Shore landmarks like Joe Leone’s locations in Point Pleasant and Sea Girt. Then, of course, begins the hard part — scanning those photos, getting them out on the web and Facebook, and helping to reunite them with the families who’ve lost them.

We’ll let Jeanne have the last word. “This is such a blend of my two backgrounds. I’m coaching and helping people through the grief. But the pit bull partnership marketer just created a partnership with a scanning company to do events for free for us and all our scanning, CNN is covering this and one of the Housewives of New Jersey, Caroline, pushed our story! The storm was tragic, but all the help and support I’ve seen since has been inspiring and so much fun! Good energy for a great reason!”

If you’d like to help or find out more, you can visit the For Shore Photos Project on the web at http://www.forshorephotos.com, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/forshorephotos#!/forshorephotos or contact Jeanne by email at info@forshorephotos.com

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