Eloquent Images by Gary Hart
Insight, information, and inspiration for the inquisitive nature photographer
Breaking Murphy’s Law
Rain Curtain Lightning, Lipan Point, Grand CanyonSony a7RIV
Sony 24-105 G
1/8 second
F/9
ISO 160
Things go wrong. Or, as more succinctly attributed to 20th century aerospace engineer Edward Murphy, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”
In my previous post I wrote about some of the physical hardships nature photographers endure while chasing their shots. This got me thinking about all the things that can go wrong for a photographer, in the field for sure, but also at home, in the office, and on the road. I’m talking about lost, stolen, or broken gear, computer crashes, failed memory cards, and so on. I’ve personally experienced my share of these crises, and in workshops have witnessed firsthand the mishaps of others, ranging from amusing, to frustrating, to devastating.
In Iceland four photographers who believed they were being cautious lost cameras and lenses to a sneaker wave. In my most recent Yosemite workshop, a woman dropped her telephoto lens and cracked its body, then a little while later (in a completely unrelated mishap) discovered that none of the data on her memory card was readable. I’ve had workshop students lose cameras and computers to theft, and have a friend who drove off with his camera bag on top of his car and when he returned just a couple of minutes later, it was gone. I once had a memory card with an entire workshop’s worth of images somehow slip from my pocket while I was on a walk near home. The one thing each of the victims in these mishaps had in common was none of us believed anything would go wrong when we set out that day.
But yes, things do in fact go wrong. My trademark move seems to be leaving gear behind. I’ve done it several times, usually when I’ve set something down while working with a group, then forgetting about it when it’s time to move to the next location. My most recent such offense occurred on last May’s Grand Canyon raft trip, but there have been others before that. I usually rationalize this carelessness by playing the “I was distracted by my workshop group” card, but how then do I explain the time I reached into the trunk of my Lyft and realized I’d left my entire camera bag on the sidewalk in front of the Las Vegas Marriott?
Another source of trauma inflicted on our expensive gear is our own fumble-fingers. Here I don’t think I’m any better or worse than the average photographer—drops happen. In my many decades as a photographer, I’ve had a couple of drops that cost me a body and lens, but nothing that compares to the trauma I witnessed in a Yosemite workshop a few years ago.
This was during the peak of a record-breaking spring runoff, when every river and creek in the park flowed savagely high and fast. We were at Bridalveil Creek, beneath Bridalveil Fall. Normally this is a fairly benign creek, with photogenic cascades that tumble musically between reflective pools. But on this morning the creek was a roaring white torrent, higher than I’ve ever seen it, with no distinct cascades or pools—just a frothing churn.
In typical springs my groups leave the trail and wander upstream and down among the cascades, but this morning each person had safely set up somewhere along the paved trail. I was on the middle of three stone bridges that span the creek, and could feel the water’s vibration in my legs, something I’d never imagined was possible. About 15 feet to my left was one of my workshop students, a recent college graduate in the midst of a cross-country photo trip with his dad. He’d set up near the spot where the creek accelerated and disappeared beneath the bridge.
While marveling at the scene, I became aware of sudden movement on my left and looked just in time to see my student’s tripod, camera, and lens tip into the water (I learned later it had been an inadvertent hip-check as he bent for his bag) and get sucked faster than a flushing toilet under the bridge to downstream points unknown. I could see by his forward lean and the flex in his knees that his first reflex was to leap after his gear, a decision that very likely would have been fatal. He came to his senses before I could reach him or even call out, and instead let out the most pained wail I think I’ve ever heard. For the next 30 minutes he was literally inconsolable as he processed the loss of his camera, favorite lens, only tripod, and memory card containing I don’t know how many days worth of images, not to mention the ramifications of all this loss on his trip with his dad.
I’m sharing all this not to frighten you, but to remind you that being careful is only half the equation, and that you can act now to minimize the trauma of the inevitable unexpected equipment loss or failure. We all tend to get excited enough about a trip, or distracted by a scene, that our judgement suffers—we skip steps, leave things out, underestimate risks, and so on. And sometimes technology simply fails.
I have enough experience, both my own and witnessing others, to feel comfortable offering practical suggestions for preserve not just the wellbeing of your gear and images, but more importantly, your own mental wellbeing. Below are some of the things I do to keep myself sane when the unexpected tries to ruin my day:
- Insure your gear: I’ve lost track of the number of times someone in one of my groups has damaged or lost a piece of equipment in one of my workshops, and told me it’s not insured. At the very least, add your equipment to your homeowner’s insurance policy. Better still, get a completely separate policy, so when you file a camera gear claim, your entire homeowner’s premium doesn’t go up. For 20 years my gear has been insured through my membership in NANPA (North American Nature Photography Association)—the premiums are reasonable, the claims service is fantastic, and (because it’s a group policy) my claims don’t affect my rate. They even insure my computers. One time I lost a lens in the middle of a trip (set it down at a location and it somehow walked away before I returned—sigh)—I filed a claim right on the spot, ordered a new lens that was delivered the next day, and my check was waiting for me when I got home.
- Backup gearCamera: If you’re serious about photography, you really should have more than one camera body. For those photographers whose work is close to home and not time critical, I suppose if something breaks you could just go home and wait for it to be fixed, or for its replacement to arrive. But most of us shoot in situations where being without a camera for even a few hours or minutes means missing opportunities that will never come again. Full frame shooters on a budget should consider an APS-C (cropped sensor) backup body. They’re less expensive, more compact, and give you 50% more reach on all your lenses. I’ve been known to set down a full frame body in favor of my APS-C backup camera to make the moon as big as possible.
- Lens: Duplicating every lens in your bag is a luxury few can afford, but no matter how convenient that 18-300 lens is, you should never go on an important photo trip with only one lens.
- Tripod: If you’re as obsessive about using the tripod as I am, you’ll have more than one (I’m embarrassed to say how many I own). It’s a luxury I can’t afford when I fly, but when I drive to a location I always have a second tripod in my car. For workshops I don’t have to fly to, I also bring a loaner tripod and have lost track of the number of times someone has needed to borrow it.
- Image management—backup, backup, backup. And then backup some more. Below is my own image management workflow—I’m not saying you need to do what I do, I’m just saying that your image management needs to be organized, regular, and redundant.Because all my cameras take two cards (something I highly recommend), my image backups start with each click. I know there are several options for handling these extra cards, but I don’t think any is as important as insuring against data loss. Cards do fail (see above), and as rare as that might seem, cards go missing too (see above). When I lost my card, my reaction was, “Oh crap, I need to buy a new card,” not, “OH CRAP! I’VE LOST AN ENTIRE WORKSHOP WORTH OF IMAGES!”
- When I travel to a shoot, I try to import my images every day (and always when I think I’ve captured something special, but during a workshop I sometimes don’t have the time or energy at the end of the day). Because I like the option of processing on either of my two computers, my import destination is a 4TB SSD drive that lives in my computer bag. And even if I have imported my images, I never delete my cards until I get home. Those times I’m especially excited about what I’ve captured, before flying home I take the time to copy my images to a second SSD drive that stays in my suitcase. That means for the duration of my trip, I have two copies of my images in my camera (which lives in my camera bag), one copy on an SSD drive in my computer bag, and one copy on an SSD in my suitcase. Having them in so many locations while I travel makes it very unlikely I’d lose every copy.
- As soon as I’m home, I copy all of the trip’s images to a 10TB spinning drive that lives on my desk and is automatically backed up to the cloud using Backblaze. And finally, I also copy those images to a RAID 6 NAS (network attached storage) that lives in my office.
About this image
Rain Curtain Lightning, Lipan Point, Grand Canyon
I captured this lightning strike during the same storm that produced the thunderhead in the image I shared last week. It came nearly 40 minutes later, when the sun was near the horizon and the light was noticeably warmer. The rain curtain that’s so visible here was just starting to form in the earlier image, but once it did form it remained pretty stationary and continued to dump like this for at least 45 minutes—no doubt generating flash floods up the canyon.
Something I’ve learned when photographing lightning is to keep my eye on the sky. There’s so much waiting, long lulls where nothing happens, that it’s easy to get distracted by the view, fellow photographers, or a smartphone. As much as I try to advise everyone in my groups to keep watching, attention usually wanes until one or two people exclaim excitedly about a bolt—but by the time the rest of the group looks up (no matter how fast they are), it’s too late. By staying vigilant, you get a good idea of where your camera should be aimed, when the activity is waining, the direction the cell is moving, and whether activity is picking up elsewhere.
One of the cool things about photographing lightning at the Grand Canyon is the breadth of the view, which often provides multiple active cells to choose between. While this cell remained active for quite a while, most of its lightning was behind the rain and we were only aware of it when it registered in our lighting app (usually within a minute or two after the strike).
There were actually a couple of cells delivering more visible lightning, but one was more distant, and the other was out over the Painted Desert and away from the best view. So I stayed zeroed in on this cell, hoping to capture a bolt against the rain curtain. I got a couple that were close, but this is the only one to pierce the rain curtain during its peak.
I had one more realization while watching this intense downpour—anyone fortuitously positioned on the North Rim, perhaps somewhere around Roosevelt Point, would be enjoying an absolutely epic rainbow. All you need for a rainbow is direct, low-angle sunlight directly behind you as you look toward airborne water droplets. I had two out of three—low-angle sun striking airborne water droplets (you can clearly see the sunlight illuminating the falling rain)—but I was in the wrong place. Oh well.
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Lots of Lightning
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Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 
amazing photos and thank you so much for the tips. I have have had cards fail and dropped and scratched a lens . That poor guy losing his camera in the current- I could feel that pain.
Thanks for this honest blog about making mistakes. I hope to become more vigilant and forgiving of myself. Looking forward to the Grand Canyon. Keep me posted on discount code for the Lightening trigger. Cathy
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Thanks for sharing your suggestions for trying to avoid some “mistakes”! I’m very excited about coming to the Grand Canyon to try to catch some lightning bolts. See you then!
You were not in the wrong place , you were w me and Steve and Leila and Jesus and the rest of the crew experiencing this amazing few moments. Enjoy what we saw and forget about what you couldn’t control. For me this was an epic moment in time and one that was not expected from the forecasts. Got one of my favorite pics at that moment. Thx G for leading us to that spot!!