Risk Taking and LF Photography Experiences

[Frank Petronio]

Just looking for a few short tales of your riskiest adventures with large format photography...

Slipping off the edge of the Grand Canyon, getting shot at, and that sort of thing. Mixing up the Dektol with your Scotch in the darkroom doesn't count.

[Walter Calahan]

I was photographing a SuperFund site in Lousianna for an annual report on 4x5.

Was under the darkcloth, white on the outside and black on the inside, framing and focusing when the groundglass went dark.

I raised my head to see a sheriffs deputy staring at me. He was wide as he was tall, with a BIG gun belt.

He said, "Boy, don't you know this is Klan country?"

Without saying anything, I flipped the darkcloth around so it was black on the outside and white on the inside. I made sure I turned just enough white back out to frame the black.

I said, "Now I'm a nun."

The deputy smiled and walked away.

[MIke Sherck]

A group of us were photographing at Turkey Run State Park in west-central Indiana in March, a couple of years ago. The weather was changable: rain and snow during the day, below freezing at night. Half a dozen of us were trying to navigate stone stairs mid-morning, after it had warmed up well over freezing. The steps were covered with an inch of ice, now melting with a stream of water coating them, but we wisely decided that they were too dangerous to navigate.

But we still wanted to get to the bottom, so noticing a goat path at the edge of the cliff the steps traversed, we decided to use that instead. I still have no idea how we got half a dozen photographers and all their equipment down the path without injury or damage; we must have been blessed that day. When I go back there and stand at the bottom looking up, I still can't believe we were dumb enough to try that. It would have been foolish in dry weather, let alone ice covered and wet.

mjs

[Kirk Gittings]

I have been.....

shot at in a barrio in South Albuquerque while shooting architecture,

run off at gun point by locals from the Upper Morada in Abiquiu (by Georgia O'Keefe's house) while working on my NEA documentary,

eluded security police for three days shooting secure superfund sites at Los Alamos National Labratoories while on assignment for Forbes Magazine,

fallen asleep at the wheel and drove off a cliff on a Colorado mountain pass after an all night architectural shoot in Denver,

set fire to the carpeting with hot lights in the historic Kimo Theater in Albuquerque,

I may be missing a few. There have been so many.

Oh yeah. I hauled my VC and other things into the Havasupi reservation at the Grand Canyon, but the thought of hauling it all out seemed like too much so I rented a burro, the most stubborn ill tempered beast I ever met. Every chance he got he would ram my hard case into a rock or tree, finally dislodging it and my tripod. I watched the case tumble down a steep hill. The camera was ok, but when I got back to the top the burro had decided to go home with my clothes etc. I let him go and hiked out.

[C. D. Keth]

I went with my roommate, an RIT photo major (I'm a film major) to interview someone at a pretty sketchy homeless shelter in a pretty bad neighborhood in Rochester. I made the mistake of not asking where we were going first. It's called The House of Mercy and murders are pretty routine. We did the interview in the office, with only the subject and the police officer who is always on duty at the shelter in the room. We left and the next day read that about 10 minutes after we left, someone busted into the door in the office and shot a guy, who was sitting where I was sitting with the camera not ten minutes before, three times in the face.

[j.e.simmons]

I was shooting with my 8x10 in the Guana River Preserve here in Florida a couple of years ago. I spotted a fallen tree out in a prairie clearing the looked promising. As I lined up a shot, I realized it would benefit greatly from the axis lighting edge effect - sort of like Weston's shots of Charis on the dunes. That meant I had to wait a while for the sun to rise more.

As I waited, feet slowly sinking into the muck, I heard a rustling in the bushes. Out popped a wild boar. I decided to let him know I was there while he could still choose flight over fight. I grabbed my dark cloth, waved it over my head, and gave my best impression of an Arkansas Razorback fan cheering on Darren McFadden.

The hog ran, splashing his way across the prairie and into the marsh.

But my most risky adventures seem to involve police.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Taking pictures."

"Of what?"

"The marsh, trees, grass."

"Like hell you are. What are you really doing?

So far, I've succeeded in convincing them that rich folks actually buy such photographs, prompting them to say they should get out their digital cameras and take some photos of their own.
juan

[Scott Davis]

while hiking in the Pinnacles National Monument, I spied a succulent growing from a cleft in the rocks below me, and a gnarled dried tree branch around it. To take the shot, I had to balance the tripod and the camera on a rather precipitous edge of another boulder, and then point the camera DOWNWARD with a nose-heavy lens on it, then take the several-second exposure hoping that the camera would not tip over into the sixty-foot ravine below me, taking me with it as I tried to stop it plunging forward. I got the shot, and walked away. Oh, and I was also ill at the time with walking bronchitis. Fun.

Then there was the time I wanted to get a weston-esque surf shot of the waves crashing into the headlands in San Francisco. So, I dragged my Agfa/Ansco 4x5 and the JTL equivalent of a Bogen 3021 tripod along with me onto this three-foot wide ridge of dirt at the top of the cliffs at Lands End. One mis-step or even a really good gust of wind and I'd not be writing here now.

More recently, but less risky in some ways, was going hiking with a backpack full of LF gear on Black's Point next to Mono Lake, solo. I was being very careful in my search for the volcanic uplift crevices, so I didn't fall in any of them, but it would have been possible to do so, get stuck forty feet down, and not have anyone realize you were there for a couple of days.

[Pat Kearns]

I was in the Needles area of the Canyonlands and saw a reflection of a butte in small pond near the roadside late in the y. I stopped the Tahoe and the best view for the shot was from on top of the roof. There was a thunderstorm approaching fast and I was able to get one shot off of the butte and reflection before the wind kicked up the ripples on the water surface. The only thing around taller than the human lightning rod on top of the Tahoe was the butte. I was able to get down and back into the vehicle before the lightning flash.

[bdeacon]

Over Labor Day weekend I went to Sprague Lake at Rocky Mountain National Park to photograph the sunrise. After walking a short way up the lakeside trail a bull elk spotted me and quickly walked directly towards me. Right behind me jutting out into the water was a gnarled, downed tree with lots of branches sticking up and out on the sides. With the 4x5 camera pack on I walked out on the slippery and skinny log about 20 feet from the shoreline and stood there for a half-hour watching a spectacular sunrise as the elk waited patiently for me to come back so he could gore me with his huge rack. Thankfully he eventually lost interest.

[paulr]

Walking around with a big camera in the kinds of neighborhoods where I live seems pretty risky, but so far in over 10 years nothing's happened. All this good luck leads to a lack of good stories.