Help OMB Staffer Diana Mai Replace Her Stolen Photo Gear

Dear Open Media Boston community,


Last week our ace staff photographer Diana Mai had all her camera equipment (and a Dell laptop) stolen from her Mission Hill apartment. Boston Police believe the thief jimmied the old latch on her back door or simply came in one of the ground floor windows her landlord has thoughtfully refused to upgrade for the last two years.


In any case, Diana just graduated Northeastern University (yay!) and no longer has access to equipment from school; so this theft couldn't come at a worse time. She's just getting her career started, and can't do any work in a trade she's very very talented at until she gets new equipment. Plus, like most of our staff, she comes from a working class family that can't afford to just buy her new equipment.


So we're calling upon everyone who checks out OMB from week-to-week to help out. Please donate any amount that you can as fast as you can. Diana's old equipment was worth about $2,000. We'd like to raise at least $3,000 to get her the latest gear that will last her a few years. This would let us buy her a lower-level pro DSLR body and a couple of lenses.


Here are 2 ways you can donate to help Diana out:


1) Click the Donate to OMB! button on any page of this site - we'll consider any online donations we receive until the end of June to be donations to Diana.


2) Come on down to the Benefit to Replace Diana Mai's Stolen Photo Gear we're having on June 17th at 7 p.m. at encuentro 5. Sign up on our Facebook event page or just tell us you're coming atinfo@openmediaboston.org.


Also, if anyone has a used consumer or prosumer DSLR that's no more than 2-3 years old, and can donate that to Diana in the interim, that would also be much appreciated. That would allow her to shoot for OMB while we raise the money for a new camera - then we could let our interns use the camera for training purposes in the future.


Thanks very much for anything you can do to help.


Best Regards,


Jason Pramas and the entire Open Media Boston staff

Note on Used Camera Donations: Diana prefers Canon, but a decent DSLR camera from any major company would do the trick for the short-term - including Nikon, Pentax, Sony, Panasonic, or Olympus (Leicas and Hasselblads also cheerfully accepted ... lol ... photo geek joke ...). For the less camera-savvy, DSLR means "digital single lens reflex" - which for practical purposes means a digital camera that can take multiple lenses ... although the new mirrorless PEN cameras do that as well. So keep in mind that a fixed-lens "advanced point-and-shoot" (a.k.a., a point-and-shoot camera that looks like a DSLR) is not what Diana needs. It is, however, worth mentioning that she also lost 3 older SLR film cameras in addition to her DSLR. If people have good quality film cameras lying around, she could also use one of those, too. For art photography - not photojournalism. Such cameras (excepting the higher-end, mostly medium format, Leicas, Bronicas, Mamiyas, Yashicas, Rolleis and Hasselblads that have held their value) are now available for $10-$100 online. So if you're holding onto an older Canon or Nikon or Pentax because you think it's worth some money, it probably isn't. Check your film camera's model on Ebay to get a rough idea of the current street value.