One of the questions that comes back most often when people learn what I do for a living is: how do you manage not to drop your camera? Up until Saturday, I could (somewhat smugly) answer that I am being very careful and have been lucky so far.
Two days ago, I was shooting Heather Geluk and had just gotten some pretty amazing shots of the climbers with Dent du Géant in the background, when my camera decided to go for a hike on its own (I’ll keep the exact details of how the camera came to be dropped confidential for now, as I want to let the involved gear manufacturers investigate the issue first). The D700 and attached Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 II bounced around on the rock and ice slope, until the lens disappeared in a crevasse field. Amazingly, the camera stopped 150m lower and we managed to retrieve what was left of it… Sadly, the memory card was also damaged, though I have hopes of getting a specialized company to retrieve the photos from the morning.
We did finish the shoot, using a small Canon G12 and climbing the super fun Aiguilles d’Entrèves traverse. You can see the whole G12 set on facebook.
Because nothing beats broken camera porn, here is what my once dear D700 now looks like. The screen is completely gone and I cleaned the glass fragments out.
And now, the hunt for a D800 in time for some big shoots next week begins!
