ASHEVILLE, N.C. (CITIZEN TIMES) -- Waldo, a company that uses facial recognition software to help identify subjects in photographs, is making it easier for parents to get a glimpse of life at area summer camps.
The premise is simple, said Waldo Photos CEO Rodney Rice. Camps working with Waldo will give parents a private code to sign up. Parents upload a headshot or selfie of their child to Waldo's system. When photos of campers are uploaded to camp websites, Waldo’s facial recognition software scans for matches to the uploaded headshots. Parents then receive pictures of their children as a text message, Rice said.
In Western North Carolina, three summer camps are incorporating the technology: Camp Rockmont in Black Mountain, and Falling Creek Camp and Camp Greystone in Tuxedo.
“Parents go through this dilemma of wanting to see their kids, wanting to see if they’re safe and having fun and making friends, but they also don’t want to sacrifice hours of their time doing so. Waldo lets you pull your needle from the haystack.”
Camp Rockmont was one of four summer camps across the nation that worked with Waldo last summer. Now, there are over 100 summer camps across the country enrolled.
Josh Drexler, associate director at Camp Rockmont, said roughly 30 veteran camp families participated in a trial version of the program in 2017 and expressed mainly positive feedback.
This summer, Rockmont families can choose to subscribe to the Waldo service or continue to look through photo galleries the old-fashioned way, Drexler said. So far, the camp has hosted about a thousand of the 1,600 overnight campers that will attend Rockmont, and of those who have attended, roughly half have chosen to opt into Waldo.
"Photography of the campers has been around for years and is not a big care of the campers — they just are having fun and enjoying being at camp," Drexler said. "But it definitely helps speed the process up for the parents wanting to see their kids."
Reid Wittliff has sent his 16-year-old son to Camp Rockmont for several years now, and his 11-year-old daughter attends Camp Greystone. He participated in Waldo’s pilot program at Rockmont and found that it saved hours of his time.
“When I was growing up there was no digital age and no pictures taken for parents at camp,” he said. “Now, all the camps have photographers and you can go to the camp websites to see them, but there are often hundreds or thousands to go through. You’re desperate to see your child but there are just so many pictures to sort through.
Wittliff’s experience using Waldo at Rockmont was so positive that at the end of the summer, he called Camp Greystone and told them they should use the program, too.
“To me, it’s a total no-brainer,” Wittliff said. “It saves so much time and it’s fun and exciting to get a text and know that it’s a picture of your kid having fun.”
Waldo offers a win-win solution for camps, Rice said. Besides delivering a product that makes parents of campers happy, it also can be used as a marketing tool: when parents share photos from Waldo on social media, the camp can put a brand filter on the photo and use hashtags to generate visibility for future customers.
Additionally, camps are given analytic software that assesses how many times campers are being photographed, Rice said, allowing photographers to get shots of every child attending camp.
Half of the proceeds from a Waldo subscription go back to the camp to create scholarships to make summer camp accessible to everyone, Rice said.
There is no monetary goal that Camp Rockmont hopes to raise through Waldo subscriptions, Drexler said, as every dollar that is raised directly helps children who may not be able to afford it attend and experience camp.
Frank Tindall, associate director at Falling Creek Camp for Boys, said that on the closing day of the first camp session he spoke with several parents who seemed to really like getting the photos sent to their phones.
Falling Creek Camp has 312 campers during each session, he said, and the camp tends to post between 600 and 800 photos of campers each day.
“We’re still working some bugs out on our end and learning how to utilize it and educating camp families on it, but so far it seems very accurate,” Tindall said. “Parents seem amazed that the software can pick their child out of a crowd, and I’m sure their technology will keep getting better in the future.”
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