It happened to me! What Disasters or Near-misses have you had while Shooting?

[BrianShaw]

Once I was standing in a graveyard on an early winter morning, brand new Hasselblad in my hand. The ground was covered with snow and unbeknownst to me the pavement covered with ice. I became aware of the ice when my feet lost grip and I ended up flat on my back... and a Hasselblad buried in my chest. Oh, how glad I was when I realized that the camera never hit the ground. Oh, how sad I was was I nursed a sore head, back, and bottom.

[EdC]

Here goes, in the same vein as what happened to Brian.......

Back in my 35mm days, I was up in the Rockies near an abandoned silver mine. I saw some possibilities around a small creek down a short embankment. I saw that there were some old wooden steps that conveniently led down to the creekside. 'Well, this is a lucky break!', I figured. So, I'm taking the steps down to the creek, planning my shots, while clutching a Nikon F2S in my hand. Being a little OCD about certain things, I did not have a camera strap. I didn't want to take a chance that the connecting rings on the end of the strap would scratch the finish. Of course, the steps weren't as sturdy as I thought. Of course, I fell to one side. Of course, I began to roll over (several times). While getting some vocabulary exercise as I fell, all that I could think about was finding some way to avoid damaging the camera. Somehow, I extended my arm over my head as I rolled over several times before I stopped. (Short of the creek, thankfully!) As I lay there, a bit on the sore side, I could at least say that the camera never touched the ground, or anything else. Couldn't say the same for me!

FWIW..........

[Bertha DeCool]

I freelanced several AMA road races (motorcycle) a year for American Road Racing Magazine in the '90s; didn't make a lot from it but I ride so I was in heaven.
I was working the Daytona 200, first and biggest race of the year but a pain because it required rental of a (roughly $10K) 600mm. Outside of a left-hand corner, sitting on a hay bale with my own 300mm next to me, a Japanese rider last name Mori lost the front-end under braking and the bike was sliding straight at me fast. Squeezed off two shots and rolled backwards before it whomped into the hay bale just next to where I'd been sitting. Where my 300mm WAS sitting.
One of the corner workers picked my lens off the front wheel, tossed it to me and said "Did you get the shot?" I said "I got two." The lens was fine.

[jnantz]

I was doing a research project on Coal Gasification and using the last remaining gas holder house ( and the remnants of the coal gas plant it belonged to ) as a microcosm for the pre 1870s industry in Boston and its surrounding cities/towns. I had gotten permission to document the building and its "feature system" .. eventually I wanted a birds eye view of the site, so I contacted the Buildings/Grounds department of the tallest building in the area. I got permission to photograph off of the roof, but the parapet was about 7feet tall and well, I'm not .. so I mimed with the employee who didn't understand a word I was saying and I didn't understand a word he said but he laughed and pointed to a ladder that was coat-hangered to an HVAC system. It was cold and I figured I was "safe" so I climbed up with my camera and lay down and began when the HVAC system kicked on and scared the ... well lets say, I made it down from 35 storys up intact, and nowadays I don't scale HVAC systems. Few years earlier I was accosted at IDK 2am at a local Somerville MA late night eatery where off duty cops, nightowl students cabbies and inebriated all co-mingle. I had been photographing the night life there for months and was a known element.. this guy "decker" who was on the ree-raw (you know 3 sheets to the wind and all that ) decided to grab the apparatus out of my hands and as top heavy as he was claimed he was gonna stick it someplace I'd rather not say. .. thankfully the cashier lady said I was her stepbrother and to leave me alone & give me back the camera, the guy was dallying with the black bottle and so confused and gave me back the camera (I miss that place, good times! ) ... lastly I bid on a job photographing from a helicopter years ago ( Steve Grimes was going to custom make me a sheet metal bellows sleeve if I got the job so the bellows wouldn't' be pushed in to obstruct the image projection from the downdraft ) and I would have been hanging out of a whirlybird (strapped in of course ) and probably would have dropped my film holders and grafmatic backs. THAT one never happen so I guess it was a near miss

[Drew Bedo]

OK, and now a prank:

In the mid 1990s the Houston Camera Show was going strong. I belonged to the local club that sponsored/promoted the show and had a table. At the height of action on Sat afternoon, I spotted an acquaintance on the next isle talking to another guy, and slipped out of my space for a quick visit.

They were talking in the chaos and hubub of the crowd. My friend was holding a large Nikon telephoto. The lens was whatever the-lens-to-have was at the time; cutting edge, high-end and expensive. In the middle of saying something to the other guy, he turned to me and said something like, "hey guess how much I had to pay for this!", and held it out to me while turning to continue with the other guy.

I reached out my hand and as soon as I had barely touched it he LET IT GO. It hit the floor and came apart in three lartge pieces that rolled in different directions. I nearly soiled my pants! Still in shock, I looked up to find them both laughing hard. . . .at me. Seems they were doing this to everyone with this previously totally ruined junker.

[Vaughn]

We were setting up a rented 8x10 for a workshop demo (Friends of Photography years ago). I handed a fellow the camera back and as he but it on the camera, the part holding the GG fell off and shattering the GG, of course.

That moment of silence afterwards is always interesting to experience.

[Alan Gales]

My very first large format camera was a used Cambo SC 4x5 monorail that I found on eBay. All excited, I set the camera up in my living room to play around with and learn how it worked. I decided to swap the standard bellows to a bag bellows so I pressed the button and slid the slider switch on top of the front standard. Unfortunately, I slid it the wrong way. The lens and lens board fell off and I caught the lens right before it hit the floor.

From then on, I knew which way to slide the switch.

[Robert Opheim]

I was working for an architect and shooting a fraternity building that the firm had designed. I mounted the camera on a quick release (an old Bogen one) and started to level the camera and find where the best shot of the front of the building was. The camera fell off of the tripod and broke and bent parts of the camera. Very fortunately the lens was not damaged. I ordered replacement parts for the camera. I went back later and photographed the building.

[Rick A]

A couple of years back,Karen and I were at Kinzua Bridge. It was a rainy blustery November day, the rain had let up so we hiked the trail to the small observation deck under the bridge, where I set up my B&J Press on a substantial tripod, and hung my back pack under the pod. I managed to get one exposure just before the wind ripped through and lifted the whole affair into the air. I caught it just before it sailed over the railing.

[John Layton]

Lots of these but I'll share three - One: as a student at U. of Rochester in the early '70's - instructing my friend in his big GTO to do a close drive-by as I photographed with my 20mm on my Nikon-F. Well, true to the "objects are closer than they appear" - the side of his car skimmed the nuckles on my right hand as he drove by - lucky for me that the rearview mirror didn't take me out! Two: While still in high school I'd been hired by a local newspaper to photograph sports...and while covering a Dartmouth hockey game - leaning out over the ice - the temperature was cool enough to thicken the lube in my Pentax Spotmatics screw-mount lens so that instead of focussing, the lens itself unscrewed right off of the camera on onto the ice...where - you guessed it - a couple of players momentarily went after it as if it were the puck! And three: After having photographed a group of business executives at their cocktail party using my 4x5 Crown Graphic, the execs eagerly left to get back to their reveries - with the exception of one gent who was curious about my camera. He must have made me nervous, because I then proceeded to pull the holder out of the camera without first having re-inserted the dark slide! When I noticed this I quickly, and very foolishly, placed the holder under my armpit - as if I could save the film! At any rate, the curious gent then asked me - "do you think it will be OK?" The most difficult thing was then getting the execs to assemble yet again for the re-take!