I Have a Meme: Disaster Girl

Almost four years ago, one dreary January Saturday morning, the kids and I were hanging out at home, watching TV and waiting for springtime, when Jennifer came home and said "I can't believe you're not up the street at that huge fire."

Huge fire? We gotta go see that, so we grabbed the camera and the kids and took of up the street to check it out. Two blocks away was a single-family home that was fully engulfed in flames. The Mebane Fire Department was already on the scene, but not really doing anything, other than wishing they could drive up and down the street with their sirens on some more. . . but I digress. It appeared that this house was donated to the fire department for training, as no one really seemed very intent on extinguishing it. They were even letting kids hold the firehose and point the spray at the house.

Regardless, it made for some great photos. I shot what was a bunch for me at the time, probably 20 or 30, including a couple of the kids with the fire in the background. Most noteworthy of those was this one of Zoe, that I call "Firestarter"

It got a lot of positive attention on Zooomr, where it was originally hosted, even earning some kudos from photographers I admire, like Daniel Krieger, Thomas Hawk, Jeremy Brooks, and others. That was posted in early 2007 and I didn't give it much thought for about a year.

I was checking out JPG Magazine, which publishes a full-color glossy magazine of user-submitted photos. They had a theme at the time called "Emotion Capture." I thought this shot may be appropriate, so I uploaded it, and submitted to the magazine. Lo and behold, the picture was selected for publication! I got my picture in a national magazine, a free subscription, and a hundred bucks! This photography stuff is fun! The picture on the JPG Magazine website got a lot of positive attention, views, and kudos. JPG had me shoot another photo of Zoe, holding her copy of JPG Magazine, and used that picture in a blog post.

Once again, I didn't think too much about it, until Ben Dan Hawks, a contact over at Zooomr let me know that my picture was on digg.com and reddit.com in various caption and photoshop contests. From there it made it to Fark.com and then more places than I could keep up with. My picture on the JPG Magazine site is now up over 95,000 views.

The fun part are the photoshopped revisions of the original photo, crediting Zoe with whatever disaster is pictured

There's even a history of "Disaster Girl," Forest Gump-style at many important events through history.

And a video!

JPG Magazine has done a follow-up blog post on the image's Internet meme status.

I've had people, so-called "image experts" e-mail me and inquire about the photo, and what alterations I've done to it, whether is was photoshopped or not. They have these tremendous theories about the alterations I've made, but the truth is, this shot is straight out of the camera, no processing whatsoever. Take that, image experts! And as far as getting Zoe to pose like that with that subtle smirk. . .just dumb luck. I wish I could say the whole thing was masterfully skillful on my part, but it really wasn't. If you take enough pictures, you're bound to get a few keepers, regardless of your skill level.

All the while, Zoe, who did not start that fire, is mildly amused.

And now you know the true story of Disaster Girl.

UPDATE: 12/29/2008

Disaster Girl was featured on an episode of Rocketboom


Update, June 27, 2009

You can now buy your own officially licensed copy of the Disaster Girl photo from Redbubble, with a part of the proceeds going to Zoe herself. Just follow this link

http://www.redbubble.com/people/travelingroths/art/3326855-3-the-original-disaster-girl