Do1Thing Blog

More than 100 gigs of .jpg images flowed into Do1Thing from photographers nationwide documenting homeless teens.

Did you wonder how images the photographers shot in Alaska appeared on the Do1Thing website within minutes?

Well, here’s how it worked.

Photographers shot digital images using Canon and Nikon cameras capturing the images to digital compact flash cards. They downloaded from their the images from the cards using fire wire card readers, attached to apple powerbook laptops, using fire wire card readers, pulling the images onto an external hard drive using photo mechanic software. They used fetch ftp to upload the digital images to a server that housed the images. Editors nationwide used fetch ftp software to download the images onto external hard drives.

The ingested the images with Photo Mechanic and selected the best images. They opened the images in Adobe Photoshop, resized them to 1280px at 72dpi and saved them to external hard drives. They used fetch ftp software to upload the image back to the do1thing serves. The images were then ftp’d to the flickr website where they were geotagged to the exact location they were photographed. The images were then dropped into a folder called “main site feed” that immediately fed the images, utilizing a flickr api, into the image stream on the do1thing multimedia page.

Now, back to the faces BEHIND Do1Thing - Here are two of them, Picture Editor Kelli Grant, the U.S. Director for PixPalace; a subscriber based client server solution which enables independent photography agencies to have live feeds. Kelli and many of the photographers on the project go back to her days as a picture editor at Newsweek Magazine.

Along with Kelli is MaryAnn Koopman. MaryAnn is a great photographer, picture editor and all around incredibly talented and committed colleague.

Visit their web site, drop them a note, thank them for their hours and hours and hours and hours of work to make this all happen. It was a labor of love for them. They did their 1 Thing and continue to do another 999 things to help Do1Thing shine a light on homelessness.

More editor profiles to come. Stay tuned!!!

Have you guys been watching those awesome videos on the do1thing multimedia page?

Well, here’s the man who literally spent hundreds of hours editing video interviews and helping other photographers put their videos together. He edited images, produced videos, troubleshooted technical issues and was an all around great guy always willing to help anyone.

If you ever wondered if there’s still an old fashioned good guy out there? Well, we found one. THANK YOU Curt, Penn State and all the interns across the country.

Do1Thing co-founder Najlah Feanny Hicks watches Do1Thing videos with son Mikey, 7, and a full house of Do1Thingers at Covenant House in Newark. More than 500 people showed up at Covenant House to drop off donations of food and toiletries, to take tours, meet the kids and get educated about homeless teens in America.

Alex Daley-Clark, Do1Thing Director of Photography flew in from her home in Maine to direct, edit and blog from Covenant House in Newark. Daley-Clark has spent the past three months lining up photographers in 20 different cities for today’s Do1Thing Homeless Youth campaign. Without those photographers we wouldn’t have photos. But without Alex we wouldn’t have had all those photographers.

Alex operates her own freelance photography business from Maine.

The cars started lining up outside Covenant House in Newark at 10 am, the lobby was so full with people that you couldn’t get through. Girl scouts, boy scouts and moms and dads with boxes and bags full of donated goods. All doing their 1 thing. Hours later Newark Covenant House outreach and volunteer coordinator Janette Scrozzo surveyed the room where everything was stored.

While waiting to photograph volunteers I was had a chance to take a tour of Covenant House with Eddie, one of the residents, as my guide. Eating chocolate hearts as we walked and talked, he told me about his dreams of owning a chain of restaurants someday…with chocolate confections as the crown jewel of his plan….complete with details about an intricate chocolate fountain that he wants to design. I have no doubt that he can accomplish it. Eddie was suddenly homeless two weeks before he started his senior year of high school and spent the night before sleeping on the steps waiting for the doors to open. He has college plans in the fall, complete with scholarships.

The donations kept pouring in until the volunteers finally packed away the donation table out front. Those of us in Houston would like to thank all of our subjects for allowing us to tell their stories, the hard-working staff at Covenant House, all the volunteers, and the countless Houstonians who came out to Do 1 Thing today.

Andres checks out some donated sneakers in a room that was filled to overflowing. It took three rooms like this to handle the outpouring of donations from the community. (Photo by Smiley N. Pool)

Writer Jessica Johns Pool got into the spirit of the day. (Photo by Smiley N. Pool)

To learn more about Houston’s Do1Thing team, visit these Web sites:

Dave Einsel, photographer: www.daveeinsel.com

Amina Rivera, writer: www.dailycougar.com

Robert Seale, photographer: www.robertseale.com

Todd Spoth, visual journalist: www.toddspoth.com

Jessica Johns Pool, writer: www.jjpeditorial.com

Smiley Pool, photojournalist: www.smileypool.com