Blips: Photographic Memory

Source: The Great and Secret Gaming Photographer
Author: Evan Amos
Site: Unwinnable

You're probably familiar with Evan Amos' photography, but you're probably never heard his name before. Amos' current passion project is documenting video game hardware with clean, high resolution images, and making them publicly accessible and royalty-free. He's already taken quite a few pictures and uploaded them to Wikimedia's database, replacing the small, low-quality images that were there before. Because of their immaculate quality and the ease of access to them, Amos' images show up everywhere. I myself used them when I was putting images together to make joking comparisons between consoles and characters from Game of Thrones. Amos' photos are hands-down the best images of video game hardware available online, and the exciting news is that he's looking to expand his collection.

I'm not in the habit of promoting Kickstarter projects, but this one is different; it's educational. Amos is documenting historical objects and releasing his work for free, and he's even donating all of the consoles he buys to NYU's Game Center after he's finished taking pictures of them. At a time when video game companies themselves seem to be dismissing their own past when it comes to preservation, it's great to see someone stepping up to tackle at least one archival aspect of gaming history. My only regret is that I didn't know about this Kickstarter before I used Amos' photos, otherwise all the people who saw that post would have known about the story behind the pictures. Even if you don't want to donate to the project, it's worth knowing that someone has taken up this task. Kudos to you, Evan Amos, and best of luck!