Never, Never, Never Do This....!

[Andrew O'Neill]

Hi eveyone! I picked up a really cheap parasol with a bracket which allows you to attach to the back of your chair or whatever....anyways, I thought it would be nice to attach it to my tripod to keep the pounding sun off of me and my camera. Worked real well...until a horrific gust of wind came along! My 8x10 and tripod actually lifted a good metre off the ground! Luckily I was able to grab the tripod by a leg, preventing a major disaster. I guess I should have gotten the regular 8x10 Canham rather than the light weight version! Anybody else have a humorous blunder they'd like to share?

[Deniz]

holy moly.. Don't break that thing before i get to play with it!!

I was thinking about an exact same idea but i guess its not that good of one..

I am glad you cought it. Last thing we need is a man in tears..

btw.. E-mail me and we shall get together for some shooting already!! (if you dont mind the 39degrees celcius forecest temp)

cheers

[N Dhananjay]

Actually that is a pretty good way to deal with the wind. If you angle the umbrella right, you can keep most of the wind off the bellows. Cheers, DJ

[Andrew O'Neill]

Hey you're right, DJ! But with my luck the wind'll change direction on me and off my camera goes again! Okay, Deniz I'll email you. I'm going to Cathedral Lakes Provincial park on the 23rd 'til the 26th. It sure is damn humid today, eh?

[otzi]

If you had one of those long air bulb releases you might try for some ariel shots while it's up there. :~D

[Diane Maher]

I can just imagine what you would say when you went to make a claim on your insurance. "The wind picked up my tripod and camera and when it put them down, it wasn't gentle..."

You were lucky!

[Ralph Barker]

Whew! Good catch, Andrew.

It might be better, however, to hire a member of the Swedish Bikini Team to act as an assistant to hold the parasol. ;-)

[austin granger]

Humerous blunders? Yes, many; the most recent being leaving my light meter (and a good one too) in a cave out at Point Reyes. Miraculously, some blessed soul found it and hiked about six miles back to the visitor center to turn it in!

I sent him a print of the image I made in the cave.

Also, a caution to anyone who might foolishly attempt to mix certain, um, illicit substances with large format photography; don't. You might think your vision has expanded, but it probably hasn't. In fact, you might just get back a bunch of identical negs of a clump of dirt. ("Man, just what the heck did I think I was looking at?") Or you might expose a bunch of color sheet film through an orange filter. These are just hypotheticals, of course... Eh-hem...

[Ryan Spencer]

Yikes! I just purchased a clip on umbrella to clip on my tripod while shooting under dripping cliffs and misty conditions. My 4x5 weighs close to or less than 4 lbs, thanks for the warning, I'll be more aware because of it.

[Pat Kearns]

Andrew, do like the surfers, attached a cord to the tripod and the other to your ankle. :~)