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Photography Disasters
I was shooting my first NCAA basketball game. Shot the first and second quarters without a hitch. Minutes into the third quarter, my camera flashed an ERR message at me and promptly shut down. I did not have a second body. I was so embarrassed. Never got work from that university again. I’ve photographed about 700 games since – all with back up body. Do you have a photography disaster story? Jun 21 18 06:19 am Link Yes! Jun 21 18 08:12 am Link On my first shoot in the desert, I made the mistake of trying to use the optical triggers on the speedlights which would not work (Nikon CLS...bleah!). Took me a while to figure out what was wrong with them (Blinded by the light!) as they worked indoors earlier on. Had to resort to flash-on-camera until I got some wireless triggers. Jun 21 18 08:35 am Link Hasn't happened to me, but a friend was at a photo seminar given by the late Galen Rowell. They were on the shores of Mono Lake(California). Rowell had set up a tripod with his camera on it. As I said they were on the shores of the lake. Anyway, Rowell was gesturing with his arms, and knocked the camera into the lake. My friend said that Rowell never missed a beat, and went on with what he was talking about. Jun 21 18 08:59 am Link My flash failed because of the battery on an indoor shot. The image turned to be very good. No disaster! Jun 21 18 08:59 am Link The time I swore I'd never use an "escort" on a shoot again was when I asked the bf of the model I was working with if he could hold a light stand while I ran back to my car to get something. Not 10 seconds after I turned around I heard a loud crash. The "escort" let go of the light, wind grabbed the soft box, and over it went, destroying the light and the soft box in the process. My worst one though was I was booked to shoot a wedding six months in advance. A month after I was booked, they had to change the wedding date moving it up two weeks, and I forgot to update my calendar. Months go by and my wife and I take an impromptu vacation to Disneyland on the weekend of this wedding, which I thought wasn't for two more weeks. My wife and I were literally in line for the Matterhorn when the bride called me to ask me when they were to expect me as the wedding was going to start in 30 minutes. I told her I'd call her right back and I had a small panic attack. I called her back, was completely honest with her and told her I'd figure something out and I'd call her back in 5 minutes. I started calling every photographer I knew and low and behold, I got in touch with a friend who just so happened to be leaving her studio with all hear gear to go home and she was less than 5 minutes away from where the wedding was taking place. Long story short, my friend was able to go shoot the wedding, the client was super happy with her, and to make it up to them I made a very expensive wedding album for them. I still get Christmas cards from them every year and since then, I've changed the method on how I update my calendar. Jun 21 18 06:21 pm Link I once shot for half an hour before I realized I didn't have film in my camera. I quietly went to my camera bag, loaded a roll, and asked, "Can we take a few shots over?" Once shot the lower falls at Yellowstone. 127 steps doesn't sound like a lot, until you have to walk back up. After reaching the top some time later, red faced and out of breath, sweat pouring off my face, the back of my medium format camera popped open and exposed the film to the world. Thankfully only a few frames were destroyed. At a balloon festival, I was shooting with two cameras around my neck. I wasn't paying attention to a balloon which had broken loose and was careening towards me with half a dozen people on tether screaming for me to duck! I lunged into a near-by ditch, only having time to save one camera. The second camera's lens snapped clean off at the mount as I hit the ground. Was taking photos in Washington D.C. of the landscape when a group of protesters crossed our path. They were protesting the practice of circumcision. I was so stunned that I forgot to take a picture. Jun 22 18 11:28 am Link Mine was a championship team group shot after the competition was over (this was big time event, not a peewee championship). After the shots, clicked the preview and noticed all the shots were cropped off. Stupid Nikon design, the FX switch to DX can be done accidentally without even knowing it. Luckily that I realized that before all the athletes disperse. I was able to ask them to retake those shots. So mine wasn't exactly a disaster, but it was close. A good learning lesson for sure. Jun 22 18 11:39 am Link FFantastique wrote: If it makes you feel any better, I did the same dang thing. Jun 22 18 02:21 pm Link Some years back I was shooting with a friend, just for fun, with a 120mm film camera. I guess that I didn't get the receiver spool set in the slot correctly because after shooting a roll I opened up the back to remove it, it popped right out and we both watched that spool unroll across the floor until it ended up right at her feet. Jun 22 18 02:33 pm Link On a recent beach shoot the display screen on my T3 quit working unexpectedly. Not sure if maybe moisture had somehow gotten in or what but that caused the shoot to end right then & there. I ordered a used T3 body & the day it arrived the one that quit mysteriously started working normally again! Now I got two cameras to work with Jun 23 18 12:04 pm Link I shot a wedding, RB67, Metz CT1 flash. All shots with the 65mm were heavily underexposed. The flash synchro button had moved from X to M. I did not notice that, A/V settings were left the same, so I did not look at the lens anymore. Luckily I worked with 2 bodies and didn't lose much. After that: one more point to check in the routine. Jun 24 18 07:11 am Link Back in my film days, I shot a wedding. Took almost 250 shots. I delivered the proofs for the happy couple to choose from. While they were doing that, my wife tossed all of the negatives and put the trash out at the curb. 2 days later, the couple had decided on their pictures for the album, but I couldn't find the negatives anywhere. I had to get creative and ended up photographing the proof prints and printing them up that way. They weren't as sharp as I liked, but the couple was happy with the results. My wife never had any explanation for throwing out the negatives, but she was addicted to prescription pain killers at the time (unbeknownst to me) and that probably had something to do with it. The pills eventually ended up killing her. Jun 24 18 10:08 am Link Every shoot has obstacles to overcome. Some of them are as small as setting your alarm clock correctly. When my career was just starting I was getting a fair number of bar mitzvahs. One beautiful Saturday morning I woke to my roommate knocking on my door to tell me I had a phone call. I immediately had that "Oh shit" feeling. I had overslept and now a mother who had booked me for her son's bar mitzvah was calling to ask where the heck I was. I missed the ceremony completely and only made it to the after party. As you can probably guess, my name was mud in the Jewish community after that and I never received another bar mitzvah gig in that town. The takeaway: if you have a morning gig, set two alarm clocks!!!! Your career may depend on it. Jun 24 18 07:15 pm Link Just recalled another early career screw-up... I was shooting a group shot of a church choir, four lines deep. Forgot to change my settings and shot the group at f2.8. Only one line of people was in focus. Too embarrassed to tell them I screwed up, I told them the file was corrupt and unusable. I re-shot it correctly the next weekend. Lesson: Do not shoot group shots at 2.8. LOL! Jun 24 18 11:58 pm Link car broke down on the way to a shoot in the forest in the middle of peak mosquito season. managed to rent a car but the one thing that failed to transfer first to the tow truck then to the rental was....bug spray  it wasnt a nude shoot so at least some of the model's skin was covered and didnt need massive post processing Jun 25 18 09:18 am Link Keith Moody wrote: yip, more than one. Jun 25 18 09:58 am Link AVD AlphaDuctions wrote: My models would be fine regardless; I seem to be a human "mosquito-magnet". Jun 25 18 11:19 am Link 
Model Posts: 6638 MacMurdo - permanent station of the US, Sector claimed by New Zealand, Antarctica I married a photographer once. It was a disaster.  Jun 25 18 11:24 am Link How many pages can we take? Jun 26 18 12:51 am Link MoRina wrote: I wondered what happened to him. Jun 26 18 12:54 am Link MoRina wrote: Jerry Nemeth wrote: Did they ever find the body? Jun 26 18 02:11 pm Link I dropped my camera shooting formals at a wedding I was to shoot. Strap caught a pew, and it ripped out of my hand, shearing off my 24.70L lens at the lens mount. Jun 27 18 03:45 am Link Many, many many moons ago when I was in college (now retired) I did weddings to make money. In season, about one a week. This was in the early days of strobe -- think lead acid batteries. My camera was a "Practica" which was an East German copy of something, I don't know what. The connection to the camera was a cord that ended, on the camera end, with two prongs which were inserted in two holes in the camera body. The two were not connected, each one had to be plugged in separately. So, I was doing a really nice wedding, at the point where the bride feeds a piece of cake to the groom. They were half-way through the act, I was plugging in the two prongs, and W H A M, by mistake I touched the two prongs together in my hand. I have no idea what amps that battery put out, but it was enough to knock me on my ass. Literally. There I was, on the floor, a little dizzy, in front of the whole wedding party with the bride and groom all ready to do the feeding bit. I did recover to my feet and got the shot, but "embarrassed" isn't even close to how I felt. Jun 27 18 09:34 am Link I shot the best model EVER at the SALK institute ( they dont allow models there any more) then Blacks Beach which is a massive hike on foot on many steps with your lighting .... The found ALL the images were corrupted for some unknown reason Argghhhh! Jul 06 18 11:22 pm Link I had a (genuine) nikon battery grip. Opted for the AA batteries instead of using a couple of the same batteries as the camera... The grip gave you the option with a AA adapter tray. For some reason with (yes, fresh new) AA batteries, the focus using the 80-200 2.8AFD was off by a few inches. On a good 90% of the photos. I verified the problem after the shoot--as well as by looking closely at some other pix with the same setup (and some other new batteries) I had not yet reviewed. Dunno why this happened, and never was able to find anyone else post something similar on the intarwebs. Get those old screw drives need full juice. Jul 09 18 09:12 pm Link FFantastique wrote: Opened exposed film in broad daylight😡 Jul 09 18 11:12 pm Link My business partner and I were just talking about a disaster I was hoping to forget. We were doing a shoot for a MAJOR Fortune 500 company. It was an event for about 5,000 people. Four of us were shooting a morning session where two of us were shooting their main keynote speaker, one was shooting backstage, and another was shooting a breakout session. After the shoot, I collected all the cards from everyone and put them in a card wallet so I could start processing them the next day. I get home, grab my camera case and a few other things from my car and I noticed that I didn't have the case on me. I tear apart my car looking for it and even woke my wife up to come help me look. I was in a total panic and at 11 o'clock at night, I drove back to the hotel (30 minutes) and while driving, I called Security and informed them that maybe I dropped it out of my pocket. Nobody had turned anything like that in but they would go look in the conference center. When I arrived, I looked around where I was parked, walked back and forth to the convention center with two security guards...nothing. I went back to the hotel the next day to talk to employees of the convention area and nobody found anything and lost-and-found had nothing. I was devastated. That afternoon, we told the client what happened and needless to say, they were pretty pissed. That night, I get a call from the hotel. Turns out one of the security guards decided to investigate a bit further and pulled all the security footage from when I told them I was there. Turns out he got footage of me walking from the convention center all the way to the parking garage. Then he caught it...a 3-person team of pickpockets got me in the elevator. 2 women and a man. One distracted me and the other picked my pocket, thinking it was a wallet. He tracked the pick pockets to a remote location in the casino where they went back inside to see what they got and when they realized they just got some stupid CF cards, they chucked the card wallet behind a garbage bin. They sent a security guard to go look for it and low and behold it was found. I flew back to the hotel and not one card was missing. Needless to say the client was SUPER happy but let me tell you, what a super amount of stress!!!! Jul 10 18 12:10 am Link Shot By Adam wrote: Interesting Jul 10 18 12:17 am Link I was assisting my friend on a shoot in Malibu. We were in a private house that was very posh. After our first set we kept hearing a helicopter above us with a mega phone. The neighbor called the sheriff on us. We found out that in Malibu there is only a 10 day a month shoot allowed in the houses unless a special permit is filed. The homeowner already used up his 10 days. They sent several sheriff cars to kick us out of the location. It wasn't a great day but us poor assistants got paid out of the photographers pocket. I don't think he got a kill fee. Jul 10 18 01:07 am Link Flash meets concrete 7/8/2018 followed by a crash course refresher in shooting with available light. always bag Your lightstands folks... Jul 10 18 02:38 am Link Garry k wrote: In casinos, there are a million cameras running 24/7 in every conceivable angle. HOWEVER, not all of them are as detailed as you'd think. On the table games its common to have three movable cameras fixed tight on the game to where you can actually read players cards when turned up on a blackjack table. A camera covering a wide area of a casino from an escalator to the parking garage, not so much. If I were walking in a crowd, I was told that there was little chance they could find me in the footage as the camera that got me was 25 feet up and covering a very wide area. However, it was just me and 2 other people walking with me in a big open area, so we were a lot easier to spot. Then he was able to track me from camera to camera over to the elevator which had a much tighter shot. Jul 10 18 08:12 am Link working for a small weekly newspaper..I was out shooting a neighborhood 4th of July parade..mostly kids in wagons..stuff like that... and I had decided to use my Leica M2 and the just installed quick load kit..so I'm happily taking pix until I realize that I'm way past 36 shots... I hadn't loaded the film in the QL thing correctly missed nearly the whole parade #1 I from then on always looked at the two red dots on the take up knob to see if it rotates when advancing the film #2 never use a piece of equipment for the first time on the job to this day... I live with the faces of all those kids ..hopeful that they might appear in the next edition Jul 10 18 08:15 am Link oh year..recently..after a studio shoot.. I went to the grocery store first before going home for some beer hahahha - hey..it was hot apparently..when I opened my wallet to get the customer rewards card out.. both memory cards from the shoot dropped out (I usually put the cards in my wallet for 'safe keeping' - HA!) I go home.. can't find the cards I go to the studio..nope I go to the store and no one found anything gone..whelp..at least I shot film so I start process that two days later I go back to the store.... and on a whim..I ask if they might have found the cards and BINGO there they were AMAZING Jul 10 18 08:23 am Link When I was just a puppy I got job working for the local daily paper. Most the time, they sent me to shoot grip and grins and the like... But one Saturday afternoon I find out there is a big wildfire fire in a proposed state park area--- so off I go. I know a few of the firemen, so they let me catch a ride back into the fire area on the back of a jeep. I was getting some great stuff. Nice tight shots of guys working the fire line, and a GREAT series of a fire retardant bomber coming right at us... including the release. I was PUMPED.... so pumped that I was cranking on the film advance lever like a madman... and ripped the sprocket holes of the film..... didnt notice for a while... but you get a feel for 36 frames...and when 40+ came and went.... I got nervous... I got about the first 5 frames on the roll.... the rest all went on the 6th frame.... Yeah, I replaced the roll and shot on....but I knew I had the good stuff on the first roll..... Jul 11 18 12:59 pm Link I actually wrote a blog post about one of near my disasters a few months ago. https://www.barrykidd.com/reputation-slipping/ Jul 12 18 12:37 pm Link Shot By Adam wrote: Nicely done... that's the mark of a professional. Jul 15 18 03:22 pm Link |
