Reveal your true-life photographic disasters!

[Ian]

I'm unashamedly pinching this idea from our Olympus UK E-System User Group forum - basically, do you have a story about a disastrous event in your photography that you can now look back on and even laugh at?

I have several anecdotes. To start with back when I was a teenager, I had borrowed my friend's 90-230 f/4.5 zoom lens for the Minolta SRT-101 SLR I was also borrowing from him. I managed to leave it on tube train and never saw it again. That alone was bad enough but many years later I offered to get the same person's honeymoon photos developed on my way to work in London. I got them processed and even had a look at them. The bad move was to take them on a train again. I fell asleep, woke up suddenly just as I was arriving at my station and disembarked in a panic, without the photos. They, too, were never seen again. But I'm pleased to say that another 20 years or so on, we're still best of friends!

Ian

[Fast Eddie]

Re: Reveal your true-life photographic disasters!

I don't think anyone can top that! Does anyone lend you things any more?

I was taking photos at a gig in the Old Fruitmarket in Glasgow (purely for fun), went to put my camera back in the shoulder bag when my 50mm f1.8 bounced across the floor and split in half. At least it was the cheapest lens i have that bit the dust, not the other one i had with me (70-200mm).

Gayle had the same happen to her 60mm macro when we were exploring St Peters Seminary in Cardross but luckily it bounced, took some time to realise anything was a miss, and a camera shop in Edinburgh (Cameratiks) fixed it quickly and cheaply.

[David M]

Re: Reveal your true-life photographic disasters!

So do you want me to add mine here? It seems nobody on the E-System user group wants to add their stories.

I've got a few more than the ones already posted. And I've got a few amusing ones with little or no equipment damage.

[Ian]

Re: Reveal your true-life photographic disasters!

So do you want me to add mine here? It seems nobody on the E-System user group wants to add their stories.

I've got a few more than the ones already posted. And I've got a few amusing ones with little or no equipment damage.

Anything you like David

Ian

[Pol]

Re: Reveal your true-life photographic disasters!

Not a huge disaster as we had all the negatives stored safely but we used to keep all the prints in boxes and albums. One afternoon our young sons had found the largest box, opened it and tipped out all the prints. They'd been happily cutting out bits, favourite features and people etc from the pics.

The floor was littered with huge piles of photographic confetti. I was furious at the time, it took ages to clean up the mess.

Pol

[David M]

Re: Reveal your true-life photographic disasters!

Here's one with NO equipment damage for a change. Saskatchewan, 1998.

There's an annual spring birding event called the Wadena Shorebirds Festival centred around Wadena, Saskatchewan, Canada. It was an area where I used do a lot of photography when I was living out there so one spring I decided to tag along on some of the trips to check out potential photo spots that I may not know about.

Sunday morning I went to one of my spots before heading off to meet up with everyone else. I was 3 miles down a one way track and probably 6 miles from the nearest farm and I end up locking myself out of my truck. I decided I may as well try breaking into the truck, you see people do it all the time on TV so how hard can it be?

There was an old broken down barbed wire fence nearby so I went and broke a piece of wire of it and striped the bards off. Just as I’m sliding it down the door window to try and pop the lock a bus load of birders from the festival turn up. Actually there are more birders than will fit on the bus so there is another six or so loaded vehicles following behind. Everyone's watching me trying to break into this truck parked in the middle of nowhere. It took me about 5 seconds to pop the lock. Considering I’d never even tried to do it before it was really easy but it must have made me look like a professional car thief to everyone watching.

Then things take a turn for the worse. Everyone loads up back on to the bus and their vehicles and head off for lunch apart from me who carried on further down the track to where it ends at a creek that joins 2 lakes together. I start to turn the truck round to park when the passenger side front wheel of the truck disappears into a Muskrat hole. I’m now 6 miles from the nearest road (and that doesn’t get much traffic) and 9 miles from the nearest farm. The front of the truck is so far down the drivers side rear wheel is about a foot off the ground so there's no way I’m just reversing out of the hole. I try jacking the front of the truck up but the jack sinks into the ground rather than lift the truck so then I try digging the dirt away from behind the wheel, no luck doing that either. Then I start hauling rocks from the lake shore and stacking them in the back of the pick up truck to get it down on the ground. So I kept digging dirt away and stacking rocks until I’m able to reverse out, by which time I’m filthy and it’s to late to catch up with the group for their afternoon trip so I eat my lunch and head for home.

[Ian]

Re: Reveal your true-life photographic disasters!

You're on a trip of a life time - a helicopter ride to the Grand Canyon. Everything is going well:



Great view over the Hoover Dam...

You land on a ledge below the rim of the canyon, get out and take great awe-inspiring photos of an awe-inspiring place, er, like this:



Yes, the camera refused to work properly and over-exposed everything while we were on the ground

I suspect it was a sticking aperture iris, but - you guessed it, after we left the canyon the camera was right as rain again

Ian

[Ian]

Re: Reveal your true-life photographic disasters!

Great story, David - are these pictures you took inbetween moments?

Ian

[David M]

Re: Reveal your true-life photographic disasters!

Great story, David - are these pictures you took inbetween moments?

Ian

I should have said both photos were taken where the truck sank into the Muskrat burrow.

[David M]

Re: Reveal your true-life photographic disasters!

Minor equipment damage in this one.

France, 1981.

I'm at the Le Mans 24 hour bike race photographing a British team in their first endurance race. In the early hours of the morning I'm in the gallery above the pits photographing a pit stop when I drop my OM1 body into the pit below as I swap my 50mm to my OM2. One of the pit crew throws the body back up to me.

The base plate is bent stopping the film back opening and closing. So I go to the camp site I'm on, pull the tool kit from under the seat of my bike and use pliers and a screw driver to bend the base plate away from the back so I can open and close it. I continued to use it unrepaired for years until getting a new base plate off a scrap body via my camera repairer.

[Ian]

Re: Reveal your true-life photographic disasters!

I should have said both photos were taken where the truck sank into the Muskrat burrow.

There you go, there was a bit of good luck in there after all

If you hadn't been bogged down, we'd never be able to enjoy these photos

Ian

[olestoepoke]

Re: Reveal your true-life photographic disasters!

well i dont have any photos as such to go with this story, as I threw them away, however I'll tell it anyway.

Back on a family holiday about 10 years ago, I took a large number of photos, of the grand canyon, las vegas etc. I thought the pictures looked fantastic when taking them and would look really good when I got them home on the computer. So anyway, spent 2 weeks thinking I was doing a great job and then got home...

95% of the photos I took, had come out all wrong. most of them my finger was over partially, or completely over the lens. I was gutted, but felt a fool as I'd taken 3x the amount of photos on the holiday then anyone else and spent the time bragging about how awesome they would be on my brand new awesome camera.

Everyone elses photos, funnily enough...were fine and looked far better.

[Ian]

Re: Reveal your true-life photographic disasters!

well i dont have any photos as such to go with this story, as I threw them away, however I'll tell it anyway.

Back on a family holiday about 10 years ago, I took a large number of photos, of the grand canyon, las vegas etc. I thought the pictures looked fantastic when taking them and would look really good when I got them home on the computer. So anyway, spent 2 weeks thinking I was doing a great job and then got home...

95% of the photos I took, had come out all wrong. most of them my finger was over partially, or completely over the lens. I was gutted, but felt a fool as I'd taken 3x the amount of photos on the holiday then anyone else and spent the time bragging about how awesome they would be on my brand new awesome camera.

Everyone elses photos, funnily enough...were fine and looked far better.

I guess this was pre-digital I still get pictures with fingers in the way - honest!

Ian

[olestoepoke]

Re: Reveal your true-life photographic disasters!

yeh it was pre-digital i believe. I remember going down to boots and got them processed. gutting experience!