[stepheno]

In a thread by Flipster, j sotelo suggested a thread for photo bloopers. Well here it is. Come on, tell us your worst blooper, the one you'll never forget.......mine?

Soon after I got my 30D I was asked to shoot a soccer match which I did. Afterwards the lads came up for a bit of chimping - no images I could hardly ask them to play the match again. I got home and realised no card in the camera. A quick browse through the settings showed that I had "shoot without CF card" check as YES. Never again.

[P-E]

(sorry).

[Angela]

Mine was with an old Olympus 35mm point and shoot years ago. Shooting loads of photos on a family camping weekend, the one time in the year we all get together, and after we got home, realising there was no film in the camera

[VikingPhotography]

After just two months of photographingconcerts, it was painfully obvious that I needed a second D2x body to avoid swapping lenses in the middle of a shoot - so in Feburary '06 I went out and bought my second camera, needing it for a shoot taking place that night.

I got to the venue, assembled my cameras (17-55 on one, 70-200 on the other), switched them on and went to pre-set my aperture / shutter speed / ISO on each...

... and then I noticed that my shiny new D2X didn't have a memory card in it, with the - E - indicator on the top panel proudly highlighting my idiocy

At that point I remembered that I had stuck my other (new) 4GB card in my card reader to format it before use and, when my lift for the night arrived, I had obviously forgot to remove it from the reader before heading out

Still - swapping the card from one camera to the other was a fair bit faster than changing lenses

[Dave]

Took a friend out to specifically take some shots of her kid. Loaded the film in the Olympus OM-1 & then reverted to power winder. Got some cracking poses , went home , went to wind the film back to find it had never fully taken on the sprockets .....no shots

Had to go out for a 2nd shoot to make up for it

[VikingPhotography]

This one's not mine, but I have to share it - for the purposes of anonymity, the culprit shall be referred to as C

I was asked by my wife's boss to photograph his daughter on the day of her first communion - not the actual service itself but just some shots of her in their house, wearing her dress and with her hair nicely styled for the occasion.

Unfortunately I was booked to go on a course for the date they needed me to shoot on; the course was already paid in full and it was too late to get a refund.

Thinking laterally, I asked a good friend, C, whom was studying for his HNC in Photography if he could step in for me. "Sure", he says, "no problem".

Come the day of the shoot, I get a call on my mobile from my wife:

"Where are your cameras?"

"In the rucksack upstairs, why?"

"C has just turned up at the house, and he's forgotten his camera"

A bit of a faux pas for a photographer to leave for an assignment without his camera, don't you think? But wait.. it gets better.

I come home from the course I'd been on and have a chat with my wife, whom had accompanied C to her boss' house for the shoot - mainly since he'd never met her boss or his family before, but also to act as an assistant of sorts.

So I ask her how the shoot went; "Okay, I guess - there wasn't much light in the conservatory or in the garden, but we made the best of it I suppose"

I reach over to the camera bag and remove the CF cards, copy them into a folder on my PC, then fire up Adobe Bridge to take a look at the results.

Almost every single one of them was badly out-of-focus

Looking over the shots, my wife said - "Yeah, C said he was having trouble with the camera's autofocus system, so he switched it off and decided to manually focus"

A little alarm bell rings inside my head at hearing this; now, I must point out that at no time in the three years that we'd known C at that point had we ever seen him wearing glasses - ever.

A short phone call later establishes that C needs to wear glasses but doesn't do so because he dislikes the way they make him look. C is as camp as weekend out with the brownies and more vain than an entire Miss World pageant troupe, so it comes as no surprise that he'd value looks over necessity.

So yep - C, in an exceptionally blonde moment (as he would put it) decided that my D2X's autofocus system was out of whack and didn't for one second consider using the diopter adjustment dial to adjust for his poor eyesight.

In his partial defence, he didn't know it was there - and I'm just lucky that the shoot was being done as a favour to my wife's boss and not a paying job

[Gary Bagshawe]

covering a visit by Margaret Thatcher to Hillsborough ( for 4 national newspapers) to view the stadium after the disaster it was only when the counter on the F1s got to 38/9 that I realised I had no film in the camera
Managed to save myself by loading up film and climbing to a vantage point to get shots inside the stadium (press were not allowed) still remember doing myself a bit of a "mischief" on a fence though.

[Sonsey]

http://www.pixalo.com/community/gene...ead-12954.html

[ChrisRabior]

Took a trip and forgot my battery charger. Figured "hey, no big deal.. two batteries should last me the majority of the shooting opportunities"

Go figure, one of my two batteries was IN the charger.
Other battery was in the camera, and absolutely dead because I was silly enough to let someone else in the vehicle borrow the camera for a short while, and didn't check that they turned it off.

Since the trip included a 7.5 hour drive (each way), I figured it was worth buying a replacement. It was an expensive oops. The generic battery charger I found ended up costing like 100 dollars. At least I got to shoot. It ended up being quite a productive week, and I came home with some really great shots.

[sejanus]

This is one of my favourite stories about self destruction. It isn't my own work, I'm glad to say, but comes from the 'Photography Roundabout' column written by Kevin McDonald in 'Photography' magazine during the 1960s and 70s. This particular piece was subtitled 'Why I don't Sleep so Good at Night'...

It appears that, during the 'fifties, Mr McDonald and a journalist were on their way back to the editorial offices. Driving down Hampstead High Street in London, the journalist drew Kevin's attention to a woman leaning heavily against a lamp-post, while a man lay flat out on the pavement next to her.

"Look at the state of them," said the journalist, "and it's barely 12 O'clock."

On their arrival at the newspaper they were greeted by a frantic editor:

"Where the hell have you been? Never mind, get up to Hampstead High Street. That woman Ruth Ellis* has shot bloody David Blakely - we need you to get some shots before the police move the body."

It appears that discretion was the better part of valour and neither MacDonald nor the journalist thought to mention that not only had they had barely missed seeing the murder performed but had driven right past the scene!

*Ruth Ellis was the last woman hanged in Britain.

[Markulous]

Not quite as grisly as the last but nearly eneded in a murder: we'd had a good holiday in the Greek Islands, landed at Heathrow, picked up the car and drove back to Cardiff to arrive back at midnight. Well, let me say that the last time I distinctly remember seeing my small backpack was on the tarmac at the car park back at Heathrow! Inside: house keys (you guessed that!), paasport, wallet and camera - in fact everything!

Midnight outside your house is not a good time and place to have a major row but hey, I broke into the house without waking the neighbours! Knowing that I'd lost everything, including some good holiday pics, I gave the car park a ring the following morning, with a distinctly heavy heart. "Can you describe the contents?" Which I did. Someone had handed the pack in - nothing missing when I drove back up to Heathrow to retrieve!

Moral? I'm not sure there is one, except always plan how to break into your house in the early hours! As a follow up: went trekking to Nepal a couple of years back; airline lost all our bags (later returned), including my house keys! Had plenty of time on the journey back to plan my housebreak - which I executed flawlessly at 3:00 in the morning (despite being very, very ill with Giardia!)

[VikingPhotography]

Probably not a good thing™ to state on a public forum that you've managed to break in to your house, twice... eh, Mark? Chalk up one more blooper?

[Gary Bagshawe]

Originally Posted by VikingPhotography

Probably not a good thing™ to state on a public forum that you've managed to break in to your house, twice... eh, Mark? Chalk up one more blooper?

#

Ahahahahahaha priceless.

[Markulous]

Originally Posted by VikingPhotography

Probably not a good thing™ to state on a public forum that you've managed to break in to your house, twice... eh, Mark? Chalk up one more blooper?

LOL! Will register the good thing™ soonest.
Possibly not a great idea but probably worse if I'd explained how! And no, not explaining how I switched off alarm!
Tho' potential light finger merchants had better be sharpish - I'm moving soon!

[JMitchell]

Took my camera all the way to brighton, with lenses and flash and stuff, didn't take any shots, come back to unblinking orange light on battery charger. The charge most certiainly had finished....