How musk risk / danger have you taken for a photograph or access to shoot?

[Heroique]

Sure, war photographers dodge bullets, landscapers risk face-to-face encounters w/ ferocious beasts, and portraitists brave haughty subjects, but let’s not forget about our intrepid architecture shooters – they’re often just one step away from certain injury or death. (Say, that looks like Norman McGrath wobbling up there, from Photographing Buildings Inside and Out.)

[Vaughn]

At least he has a LF camera to break his fall! I have gone up a ladder like that to photograph a church with a roll film camera...was not enjoyable!

[polyglot]

I think I nearly got my shoes wet once. Does that count?

[alexn]

I have walked 23miles through snake infested bushland to get to a waterfall, some of the trail is only 1ft wide with a good 100ft sheer drop off on the left and a cliff wall on the right.. when you're carrying 40lbs on your back.. that is dangerous!!

[Vaughn]

I have walked 23miles through snake infested bushland to get to a waterfall, some of the trail is only 1ft wide with a good 100ft sheer drop off on the left and a cliff wall on the right.. when you're carrying 40lbs on your back.. that is dangerous!!

Dangerous? I thought that was considered fairly normal for Oz.

No crocs?

[C. D. Keth]

Think about it—most of the images from WW-II were done by some GI with a Speed Grafic. Is that dangerous enough?

You've done that?

[Ed Bray]

I haven't actually taken the image yet that I have put my life in danger to take, but when my wife finds out that yesterday on a whim I spent circa £800 on a 8x10 camera, reducing back and 4x 8x10 film holders I may well not survive the sh*tstorm that is about to hit.

[Michael E]

I once photographed an abandoned ball room from a very dark balcony. As I waited during the five minute exposure, I looked around in the darkness and found out that the floor had collapsed about two feet away from my tripod.

In 1999, I photographed in remote areas of Croatia. Abandoned villages, bullet-ridden houses, turned over buses, burned-out tanks, bullet casings - an exciting and beautiful place to photograph. But the local folks confirmed my suspicion that there were a lot of undetected land mines left over from the war that ended only four years earlier. I always made sure I'd check the ground for every step, keeping on paved roads or solid rock.

Michael

[rich815]

I once photographed an abandoned ball room from a very dark balcony. As I waited during the five minute exposure, I looked around in the darkness and found out that the floor had collapsed about two feet away from my tripod.

In 1999, I photographed in remote areas of Croatia. Abandoned villages, bullet-ridden houses, turned over buses, burned-out tanks, bullet casings - an exciting and beautiful place to photograph. But the local folks confirmed my suspicion that there were a lot of undetected land mines left over from the war that ended only four years earlier. I always made sure I'd check the ground for every step, keeping on paved roads or solid rock.

Michael

Can we see the image of the abandoned ball room?

[Don Dudenbostel]

Part of what I do is documentary photography. I completed an exhibition that is touring museums with 94 B&W images of the vanishing culture in Appalachia. I've shot during cock fights, with a moonshiner photographing the making of illegal whiskey with the stills being heated with high pressure automotive gasoline an propane running through rubber hoses and the burners teetering on a stack of stones where one wrong step would be catastrophic. Actually disaster struck one and a half hours after leaving the still house. The funeral failed and the entire shack was destroyed when fire engulfed it and ignited 250 gallons of gasoline, seven cylinders of propane and 1800 gallons of high proof whiskey.

Another topic in the show is serpent handling in church services. I've been to about forty five of these and on one occasion was standing in the middle of three men handling rattlers. They were three to four feet away with six foot rattlesnakes in their hands. I watched as the man to my right lowered the snake from above his head and stroked it's belly. Like a bolt of lightning the rattler bit his left hand. Within seconds I watched his breathing become labored and his life drain from him. I was easy within striking distance of two of the rattlers.

On one other occasion in a serpent hanging church my sound engineer kept me from ring bitten in the face by a copperhead. I was a little too close and the snake started to strike as I was found a close shot. It came quite close to getting me in the face.

I've been to five KKK rallies and one nazi rally as the only outsider allowed in. You never know what might happen at these.

You can see some of these on my website under the documentary section.

www.x-rayarts.com