Lost in the Real World, Found via Cyberspace

This picture, taken outside of Aberdeen, Scotland, was among those found in a camera and used to track down its owners.

By BRAD STONE
NYT

Rhonda Surman and her husband were hiking around some Bronze Age ruins in western Scotland last year when they glimpsed sunlight reflecting off burnished metal. It was an Olympus digital camera, lying on the ground.

The couple turned the camera over to the local police, but eight weeks later it was returned to them, unclaimed.

Ms. Surman, who lives in northern Scotland, did not give up. There were 600 pictures on the camera’s memory card, including some from a wedding and a couple’s European travels. Ms. Surman posted several of them on the Internet and, in the next few months, organized a group of amateur detectives who traced clues in the photos, leading them back to the camera’s stunned and delighted owner.

“I don’t think I’m nicer than anyone else,” she said, “but I thought the pictures showed a honeymoon. That was the bit that made me try harder.”

(More here.)