Confession time - your most embarrassing or humiliating photographic moment

I left my Nikon SP 2005 and 50/1.4 on a book shelf at a small bar in Shinjuku, Tokyo one time. On the train on the way home after the effect of the whisky had worn off a bit I realised my bag felt lighter than it should, so I opened it to check and sure enough there was an empty space where the camera should have been. I called the bar and they found it still on the shelf. When I went back two days later to pick it up it was nicely wrapped up in a plastic bag. The lady who works at the bar now remembers me as the foreigner who forgot his expensive Nikon camera :D
 
jonmanjiro said:
I left my Nikon SP 2005 and 50/1.4 on a book shelf at a small bar in Shinjuku, Tokyo one time. On the train on the way home after the effect of the whisky had worn off a bit I realised my bag felt lighter than it should, so I opened it to check and sure enough there was an empty space where the camera should have been. I called the bar and they found it still on the shelf. When I went back two days later to pick it up it was nicely wrapped up in a plastic bag. The lady who works at the bar now remembers me as the foreigner who forgot his expensive Nikon camera :D
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This is why I love Japan and have the highest respect for the Japanese people.
 
Cant say I can remember anything horrible like a lot of the stories so far, but earlier today, I loading a roll of 120 and a roll of 35 into my tank and only put 18oz of liquid in it. I realized about 60 before the end of the developing time. I was mortified. No one was around to witness it, but still.... First time Ive ever done that.

Surprisingly both rolls came out ok though. I agitated the crap out of the tank for that last 60 seconds :D
 
Haven't annoyed any royalty yet, but my worst moment ever was smacking that CV Ultron 35 on the hard, hard granite floor in downtown Cologne while swapping lenses. I can still hear that sound today and it gives me the shivers.

The lens was repaired and used for quite a while afterwards; I was astonished that the glass survived the impact intact...
 
Years ago. When I first got interested in photography I bought a Nikonos 5 (being a scuba diver too). I bought it duty free when I was planning a tip overseas and under the rules then in operation could not open the duty free sealed parcel till I left Australia. I set out on a 3 week holiday around the Pacific diving and sailing. When I got back I had about 25 rolls of slide film I sent to be developed. All came back.............. blank. I had not loaded the film correctly once resulting in three weeks of missed shots. Still, it convinced my wife we needed to do it again next year and this time I learned my lesson.

Eventually got some shots --that's me with the parrot http://www.tallshipstales.de/80s/Eye_of_the_Wind_pictures.php
 
The second paid gig I got shooting a gallery opening:

After the official opening I was walking through the crowd outside the gallery, M8 in one hand and a glass of shiraz in the other, and walked straight into one of the square knee high concrete seating blocks that were dotted around the area. I managed to not go arse over head by some miracle but the entire contents of my glass of wine shot up into the air and came down all over me and the Leica. :eek: :eek: :eek:
 
i like snapping discretely on
the plane, it is very challenging
as the light is usually quite contrasty,
and the subject is moving
about.

i was one the plane from
DXB to SG, and i spotted
this lady with pigtails.

pigtails.jpg

(m2 with 35cron, tri-x pushed)

just after i took this, she
turned around and looked
at me, about 1.3m away,
i was very embarrassed being
caught but i acted nonchalantly.
and she looked away.

*phew*

raytoei
 
Was loading a film onto the spiral (an operation I'd carried out hundreds of times) but just couldn't get the leader to catch on. Was getting more and more irritated. Then had a sudden revelation that it would be much easier if I could see what I was doing--so I turned the light on! It was far better! I could see everything! Why hadn't I done this before? With great ease I duly wound the whole of the film onto the spiral, before my brain woke up and I realised...

Regards,
D.
 
Like most of us I have some beautiful shots from the inside of the lens cap and/or dark slide too.


Euh...embarrassing? I don't think I've suffered anything worse then when the hot shoe flash circuit failed halfway through a wedding ceremony. Luckily the R-D1 did quite well at 1600 ISO with f/1.7 of the Ultron.

I did humiliate a friend once. He thought he was telling everyone a great joke after I took his picture and he said "Come on, show us the photo on the camera's display!", knowing full well I shoot film a most of the time.
So I pulled the instant film from the polaroid back and....
Well, we all laughed.
 
when assisting a friend on a photo shoot that was a first for me as the model was without clothes. Was having a great time getting great shoots, thinking this is brilliant, why have I never done this before. But then her boyfriend came to pick her up and brought a gun.......

(when they got the film they loved the shots and wanted to do some more, we declined)
 
I was shooting through my dim rangefinder camera. Somebody popped into the frame, and I yelled at him "Out of the way Mr!". He was a police officer!
 
Keith said:
The second paid gig I got shooting a gallery opening:

After the official opening I was walking through the crowd outside the gallery, M8 in one hand and a glass of shiraz in the other, and walked straight into one of the square knee high concrete seating blocks that were dotted around the area. I managed to not go arse over head by some miracle but the entire contents of my glass of wine shot up into the air and came down all over me and the Leica. :eek: :eek: :eek:
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Drinking is a full contact sport.

It's probably best to leave your camera out of the equation (as others whose posts contain the phrase "...one night I got drunk and..." can testify). ;)
 
This happened last year when I got my Bronica. I'd been used to loading a Holga and had only loaded the new Bronica once or twice.

My colleague and I were doing some landscape shots. When I finished the roll, I found I'd loaded it backwards (paper facing out, not the film.) When I found out, I proceeded to load the second roll... and did it wrong again. D'oh!

It was a valuable experience. Now I mentally walk through the steps for the Bronica every time before and during loading.
 
Step 1. Spend 2 minutes trying to put a film on the spool.
Step 2. Develop
Step 3. Realize it was 2 rolls of 36 unexposed film. (Bulk load)
 
With my early OM-1, shot a couple of rolls with flash at a wedding (I was not the hired photographer, just a guest thank goodness.) Didn't notice the flash sync lever was at 'FP', not 'X', result, two rolls of badly underexposed color film.
 
I just came to this thread to post that I just figured out I had misloaded my Bronica with no fewer than 4 rolls recently. I guess that's the price I pay for (1) not paying attention to the manual and (2) not processing my film promptly.

bjornkeizers said:
This happened last year when I got my Bronica. I'd been used to loading a Holga and had only loaded the new Bronica once or twice.

My colleague and I were doing some landscape shots. When I finished the roll, I found I'd loaded it backwards (paper facing out, not the film.) When I found out, I proceeded to load the second roll... and did it wrong again. D'oh!

It was a valuable experience. Now I mentally walk through the steps for the Bronica every time before and during loading.
Click to expand...
 
It was only a couple of years ago and shooting digital. I was shooting a cover shot for a trade magazine I work at. Thought I pulled it off pretty well, but when I got to work on them, I noticed that when I changed lenses, I accidentally placed my other lens on the counter, in the shot.

Fortunately I had others which worked just as well, but talk about embarrassing.
 
I don't have the time to list them all, and without listing them all, it would be hard to say which was the stupidest. With 47 years' practice you can both invent new screw-ups and repeat a few old favourites. I reckon I've made at least 90% of the mistakes listed above, plus (when I first worked as an assistant) not realizing that a Hasselblad A12 magazine doesn't load the same as a Rolleiflex Automat (not auto frame 1 counter). And all the usual: dev before fixer, loading 35mm emulsion out...

Cheers,

R.
 
About two weeks after I bought my first and only M6, which I had been dreaming about for quite some time, I was shooting pictures on a large bridge near downtown Nashville, Tennessee. I was in the "zone," feeling very Cartier-Bresson-ish, and a family of three stopped me on the bridge. In a British accent, the gentleman asked "Is that a Leica?" I was so overwhelmed by being "recognized" (I guess, as a Leica photographer) that I proceeded to tell him a bit about the Leica and lens, it's history, and famous photographers and subjects associated with the famed Leica brand. He seemed positively delighted, and I felt very self-satisfied...I was bursting with pride. Then, right in front of him and his family, I (with purposeful casualness) opened the bottom of the camera and proceeded to begin changing film rolls. When the roll didn't slide out, I tapped the top of the camera (sometimes the rolls are in there pretty tightly), still talking to the man and pretending this was the common occurrence of a real Leica professional. The dang roll wouldn't come out, so I finally had to glance down and turn my attention to this troublesome roll of film, when I saw the raw film wound around the take-up spool, and of course it was totally exposed to the light of day. I felt a cold chill, and replaced the bottom plate. I looked up and the English gentleman gave me a wry smile, and I forced my own smile, excused myself, and walked away. That was the only time I've ever felt like throwing a camera off of a bridge. After momentary hesitation, I thought I should follow said camera off the bridge.

I've become a much more modest photographer, and nobody asks about my Fujis :D
 
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