OPR on the Photojojo blog

[pixelesh]

It's just a short mention, but Photojojo reaches all sorts of people who love photography:

http://content.photojojo.com/websites/how-to-use-photography-in-natural-disasters-operation-photo-rescue/

Margie/Pat -> OPR's volunteer page indicates we are closed to new helpers, is this still the case? If not, I'd like to clarify that for the good folks over at Photojojo

~Leslie

[Mhayes]

Hi Leslie,

Yes, we knew about Photojojo and then we had another site do an article on us. Because of that we had over 200 new registrations. We had to close it off in order to get caught up. Also, at this point we are getting a greater ratio of volunteers to photos. It takes time to set up new volunteers and also to see how they do on their test photo. Pat (and Mike) was up til 2 am working on all the new registrations. If we had one big open gallery with thousands of photos it might be nice to have thousands of volunteers requesting a photos all at once, but that is not how we operate. It takes time for the distributors to view each returning photo for quality and also time for Quality Control to go over the photos before they are sent off to be printed. When we are ready for new volunteers the registration will open again. Lizabeth,Photojo's editor, knew that we got swamped and why we were closing our registration as we corresponded back and forth.

I would also like to add that after Adobe put out that OPR needed volunteers (last November), we got close to a 1,000 responding. Then NAPP put out a call we needed volunteers and another huge response. We are setting good right now for volunteers. If you get too many volunteers and not enough photos, then you you lose volunteers.

Thanks,

Margie

[Sloop]

Margie,

Since we have no way of knowing how many photos and/or active volunteers there are, is there a 'polite' number of photos we should be choosing? 

Should we only request one or two per copy run to make sure there are enough to go around?

Marti

[Mhayes]

Marti,

I'm somewhat confused by your question:

Since we have no way of knowing how many photos and/or active volunteers there are, is there a 'polite' number of photos we should be choosing? 

After each run we announce the number of photos we had on the copy run. Off the top of my head for New Jersey I'm thinking close to 800. As to active volunteers, that changes day to day. We have long time volunteers who finish one and on to the next. We might have 150 that are very active and others not so active, but they still request photos. We have volunteers that wait for photos that match their skill level and that determines how often they request. I don't understand the "polite" number of photos you should be choosing? You finish a restore and you make another request if you want one. We ask that you make a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd choice (all within one Distributor's Gallery at a time) to increase your chance of getting a photo.

We have plenty of photos in the wings and as soon as a distributor gets a family close to being done, more photos will be released. No! You should not feel that you are only allowed one or two requests per copy run to make sure there are enough to go around. You may do that if you only want to work that many. I see where you are coming from when there are few photos in the galleries, but that is more done to get a family's photos done and back to them. If a distributor was to carry 100 photos in her gallery which might mean five different  families, it would take longer to get each family's photos back as the best would be selected and the hard ones would linger and not get done.

I do understand why it seems like there aren't enough photos to go around and to a certain extent that is true when we get a huge increase in volunteers. However, once things settle down it becomes easier to get a photo to work on. Yes, it might be nice to have more galleries and distributors, but that could cause problems also. We want to be able to work photo we get on a copy run back to the owners within 6 months. Right now we are getting them back within 3 to 4 months. Once those are done, we are ready to do another copy run. Copy runs cost money and we depend on donations, so we have to space them out to where we can afford them. This year we have done two copy runs almost back to back--New York and New Jersey. Both of these were the result of Hurricane Sandy. Now we are looking towards helping Moore, OK.

We are grateful for all the new volunteers coming in and value our long time volunteers. Photos are coming back in good time and the Forum is active. We want a balance for everyone who wants to be active to be able to do so and that is why it is important for us to try and maintain a good balance of volunteers to photos.

Hope that helps.

Margie

[pixelesh]

Hi Margie - thanks for your reply. I knew we had gotten quite a few new volunteers after the NAAP call-to-arms, but hadn't realized the numbers were that high, and then compounded by subsequent notices about volunteers --> :wow:

And I can certainly understand the amount of time that each part of the process takes, being on the copy run gave me a better appreciation of what goes on behind the scenes.

:)
Leslie