Photography Culture

Thief Steals Photographer’s Computer, Makes Images Artistically Better

Chris Gampat
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04/22/2013
1 Min read

Last Updated on 04/22/2013 by Chris Gampat

Macbook Pro Retina w/WD Thunderbolt Duo

The Huffington Post is running an interesting story right now on photographer Melanie Willhide. Willhide had her computer stolen along with the backup drive. After reporting the theft, police found her machine in the back of a car they pulled over. It was then returned to Willhide and she began the process of trying to recover the images after the thief did some minor work to wipe the hard drive.

Amazingly, Willhide’s images were actually made artistically better and similar to things (Like Andy Warhol’s Eight Elvises) that one would see in a MoMA exhibit. And now, Willhide wishes she had him as a student.

So how did this happen? When one tries to recover images sometimes, the files can be corrupted and not totally in their original state. Plus it depends on how the software you were using went about trying to recover and piece the data back together. My feeling (after recovering data cards for years) is that the images are also nowhere near full resolution. And Willhide is simply just embracing a technical glitch as art. Go figure.

Andy Warhol computer corruption images Melanie Willhide thief
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.