Photo sessions are a pretty crappy time for things to go wrong. It’s embarassing, and stressful, and just the thought of mishaps can give you nightmares.
But half of the battle is knowing that things will probably go wrong at some point. As weird as that sounds, if you are prepared for that eventuality, it won’t be quite as terrifying if it does happen. The other half of the solution is being as prepared as you can. With that in mind, let’s jump right in to the reason you are reading this article: hearing my embarassing stories!
1. Camera/Lens Breaking
We were shooting our very first destination wedding in Mexico. It was the day-after session, and we were all playing on the beach, taking some fun shots. I noticed my shutter was sounding a bit funny. A few frames later, and it just went “CLUNK” and stopped working. I tried turning it on and off, removing the lens and putting it back on, throwing in a new battery—nothing was working. I took a few moments to silently PANIC, and then walked over to our camera bag, grabbed the backup camera, and went right back to shooting. I don’t think our clients ever knew that we had a technical malfunction (until, perhaps, right now if they read this.)
Another time I had handed my camera over to Rob to hold on to as we were standing in the parking lot outside the reception venue. The details are fuzzy, but somehow he managed to drop it right onto the concrete. And my favourite lens just happened to be on the camera. I can only imagine the look he got from me at that moment—I don’t think it was a very nice one. My camera was ok, thankfully. But only because my favourite lens took the majority of the force, and was now completely broken. Time to switch to the backup lens!
So long story short, you can pretty much expect your camera gear to break at some point in your career. Chances are it will be during a shoot. You absolutely, positively must have backup gear, especially at a wedding. Even if you only shoot portraits, you’ll still want to seriously consider having some backup. It definitely won’t look good if you have to cancel in the middle of a session because your camera goes down.
2. Pants Ripping
The classic blunder. I was shooting in my photographer crouch position, stood up, and heard a pop. My zipper had just decided it didn’t want to stay closed any longer, and was now completely open and broken. Awesome.
This, of course, happened during the receiving line, when everyone is hanging around right after the ceremony. I awkwardly walked over to Rob, with my camera held ever so carefully to conceal the problem. He immediately hustled off to the car and grabbed my spare pair of pants out of the trunk.
That’s right—I had a spare change of clothes in the trunk for just such an emergency. It’s an absolute must for wedding photographers. That very small bit of preparation saved me a whole lot of embarassment for the rest of the day!
3. Kneecap Dislocating
Yep, my kneecap once popped right out during a session!! No warning—it had never happened before. I was lying on the ground shooting, went to get up, and BAM! Kneecap is no longer where it should be! I fell back to the ground, put my hand on my knee, and, well, put it back in place. After a couple seconds of intense pain, and everyone staring at me, I said I was ok, shakily got to my feet, and kept going with the session.
Now, the lesson here is that you can get hurt during a shoot—you might get sick, or injure yourself. It’s not a fun thing to think about, but you need to be prepared. Some Gravol and Tylenol in your bag is a good start if the issue is relatively minor. If it’s a major problem though, and you’re shooting something like a wedding where you can’t just reschedule, you need to have a backup plan in place. This usually consists of having the phone numbers of local photographers in a file, so you can call around to find a last minute replacement in an emergency.
So, the big takeaway from these lovely stories is that the more you can be prepared for possible problems, the easier it will be to bounce back, and keep on taking amazing photos!
Have you had anything crazy happen to you during a shoot? How did you handle it? Share with us in the comments now!
Kaylee says
Haha just stumbled across this post…
Made me happy I am not alone in my bad luck…
I broke my foot walking to meet a client for her maternity shoot….spent the rest of the session limping around trying my best to conceal the pain!
…had my first wedding 3 weeks later…the day after the wedding was a bucket full of joy…(note sarcasm here)
Lauren Lim says
Oh my goodness Kaylee that is very bad luck!! Glad you survived, you’re a trooper!
Catherine says
OUCH! I feel your pain! I had the dislocated kneecap on a trip to London in November 2013. I had just finished a shoot at the top of Hampstead Heath and as I was packing my gear away I dropped a lens cap on the ground. As I bent down to pick it up…pop…It’s happened before but as it was cold and dark and I couldn’t be bothered anymore I just shoved it straight back in. I then sat down on a bench beside my mother and promptly blacked out – that has never happened before! Gave my poor mother the fright of her life. All my lens caps are now fitted with retaining cords so I don’t drop them!
Carys says
Last fall I was shooting a wedding on the beach and as we went down the boardwalk, a drunk Jack Sparrow impersonator hijacked my shoot for a good ten minutes and ordered everyone around and I, being the too-shy photographer, didn’t know what to do and just took the pictures. But hey it makes for a good story!
ChloeClik says
Oh my gosh, there are some awful stories here but funny ones too. I guess I have that to look forward too.
My worst camera story happened last week. I had the camera in my bag by the couch while I looked through my photos on the laptop. Arran, my cat, always wants to sit on my knee whenever I do that (she’s asleep on my knee right now so I have to work over here stretching my arms to the limit :P ) She suddenly became fed up that I was focused on the laptop and not her, jumped up onto the table and knocked the entire contents of a glass of ribena off the table and right into my camera bag! There was a frenzied panic as I dried off all the lens, luckily the bag and carpet took the brunt of it and everything was ok…but wow, I was panicking.
After all these stories definitely packing spare trousers, shoes, and getting a back up camera :)
Sarah says
Ha ha! Just got my first PAID SOLO wedding photography job (I’ve done paid sports photography solo, as well as a wedding and first birthday, but I had my boss at the latter two, so even though he was filming, I wasn’t really alone). Freaking out a bit so I googled “I just got my first paid wedding photography job help” and found this!
No awful wedding stories yet. But at the only paid wedding (I’ve shot at friends’ weddings, but that was before I wanted to do this, so it was just coz I loved taking photos – I wasn’t THE photographer or anything) I did I didn’t have a tripod. Not my fault, coz my boss provided all the equipment, but he wanted me to do some filming without a tripod. Not easy. The photography went fine that time though.
Not so much at my other paid jobs.
My first ever paid photography job was a national hockey tournament on minimum wage (i.e. not enough to make me go out and get spare gear). I turned up to the second day, was putting my battery in, and dropped it. My camera wouldn’t turn on no matter how much I begged or charged the battery (I had checked it the night before though, so knew that wasn’t likely to be the issue). My boss wasn’t there yet, so I told her colleagues that my camera wasn’t working and that it was hopefully just the battery, so I would go and buy a new one. I got lost on the way to the nearest electronic store, pulled over to check thew map book, and my (sister’s) car wouldn’t start. I had to call my boss, who offered to buy me a battery, while I walked back to the tournament. Fortunately because I had become lost I had actually wound up really close to where I had started! My boss couldn’t find a battery, so I walked back to the car, got it started and drove home, to dump the car and bus to get a battery. The car broke down again getting onto the motorway, but two women stopped and helped me get the car started so that I could get off at the next exit and take the long road through the back streets home (I did NOT want to break down on the motorway, but couldn’t turn around on the one-way on ramp). I got a new battery and my camera was fine.
Then at a first birthday (working for the same boss as I did for the wedding) the flash batteries started dying just as the parents were blowing out the candles. I had been told to change the batteries if the flash started taking ages to load, but after changing the batteries it was even worse! It meant that I ended up getting heaps of dark or grainy (when I upped the ISO and reduced the aperture) images and I was never asked to work for him again!
But now I’ve got a wedding for March, so I’ve got plenty of time to iron out the creases! (yes – I’m going to have a back up camera and battery, pants, memory cards, shoes and lens!)
Thank you to everyone for calming me down with your stories!