My Three Most Memorable Blunders When Traveling For Photography

Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming (click to enlarge)
Nikon D800E; 24-70mm f/2.8 lens @ 42mm; 1/100th sec. @ f/8; ISO 100

Confession time.  No matter how hard we all try to prepare, thoroughly think things through, do everything right, ensure all of the gear we want to take when traveling is ready to go with nothing left behind, it doesn't always work out that way.  Here are my three most memorable blunders when traveling and photographing.

Blunder #1

During the summer of 1972, I had the opportunity to spend 8 or 9 weeks out in NW Wyoming and southern Montana.  I went out to study Rocky Mountain field geology and field botany as part of my college course work.  I was a geology major and my dad was generous enough to foot the bill to send me west for much of the summer.

I grew up and lived in western Pennsylvania and was to pick up my ride to Wyoming with four other geology students outside of Cleveland.  My cousin drove me to catch my ride. Five of us, two guys and three girls, set out across country in an old, green Chevy van that belonged to the other guy.  About four hours after heading west from Cleveland on I-80, I realized I had forgotten my camera, a Minolta SR-T 101, in the back seat of my cousin's car.  There were no cell phones, email, texting, Twitter, Facebook, etc., or any other way to easily communicate while on the road back then.  I had no way of notifying my dad that I left my camera behind.  After we arrived at our destination in Powell, Wyoming, where we would be based for the summer, I called my dad and asked him to send it to me.  Thankfully, I thought, he said he would immediately.

I couldn't wait for my camera to arrive.  I was missing the most beautiful scenery I had could have imagined. For an eastern kid to first see the Rocky Mountains, I was in awe of their grandeur.  As we first drove up to the Rockies, I remember thinking to myself, "How can this be the same country?"  

Minolta SR-T 101; 40 years late (click to enlarge)

Finally, after a week or so, the camera arrived.  My dad also put some extra film (and some cash) into the box.  I opened the box and went to load the film, but the camera was jammed!  What?  

It wasn't unusual, back in the film camera days, for a camera to occasionally jam.  What would happen is that the film wind mechanism would jam with the shutter release.  When that happened, you just had to bite the bullet and send your camera off to be taken apart and the jam fixed.  That is what I found when I tried to load the film.  Ahhhh!

I called my dad and found out my younger sister had been playing with the camera as it sat in the house and before it was sent.  Sisters!  Ahhhhhh!  Evidently, she told no one and dad just sent it as it was.

I was devastated.  One of the instructors offered to drive me to Cody, Wyoming to a camera shop to see if could be quickly repaired.  The manager told us he could not fix it but would be glad to send it to Minolta to have it repaired.  He said he would ask for a "rush" on it.  Needless to say, I walked out of the camera store feeling fully depressed.

As our course of study went on, we made daily field trips to Yellowstone, the Tetons, Jackson Hole, Paradise Valley, Montana and all over NW Wyoming.  All I could do is watch others take photographs, record memories and learn as much about Rocky Mountain geology and botany as I could.  The days passed.  Then weeks.  No camera.

At the end of July it was time to head back home.  The five of us piled into the old Chevy van in which we rode west, and slowly headed east.  Before we left I had called the camera store manager and told him that I had to leave the area.  I gave him my home address and he said he would send it to me when it arrived.  He apologized for the camera not being returned in a decent period of time.  I knew it wasn't his fault.

The trip home was long.  I had almost no money left.  I mean I had less than $10.  With the little money I had left, I bought a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter and a jar of jelly.  That is what I ate for three meals a day for the three days it took to get back to Cleveland.  

Eight or nine weeks in Wyoming in some of the prettiest mountain scenery in the world and I did not have a single photograph.  My fault.  I left the camera in the car.  Lessons learned, for sure.  Always look behind you as well as in front.  I knew I would never make another mistake like that.

Blunder #2

It was 2008 and my wife and I had planned for a year to go to Alaska for two weeks.  Of course, I planned extensively as to what gear I would take, what bag, tripod/no tripod, monopod/no monopod, backup camera, filters, extra batteries, extra charger, image backup strategy, i.e., everything you could think of, every contingency, I planned for it, except, of course, for my own stupidity!

We flew from Virginia to Fairbanks.  It was a long day and I made images in the airports on on the airplanes along the way.  These were just record shots documenting our trip.  When we reached our hotel, I was exhausted.  We both went to sleep early.  The next day we started our activities.  We visited several interesting venues and were in awe of the Alaskan landscape, rivers, permafrost and the Alaskan people, who were very nice to us.

Famous Ketchikan, Alaska scene (click to enlarge)

That night, as I had planned, I pulled out my memory card to place it safely away as my plan was to not only back up my card to a portable hard drive but to use a different card each day.  After all, I bought and brought enough cards for two full weeks of shooting.  Only I didn't.  I couldn't find my memory cards anywhere in my camera bag.  I checked my suitcase.  Not in there.  I emptied everything out of my camera bag and no memory cards.  Had I lost them somehow?  I panicked.  Two weeks in Alaska with one small memory card?  That won't work.

In the morning, I asked the hotel personnel if someone could drive me somewhere so I could buy some additional memory cards.  One of the hotel personnel volunteered to drive me to a Walmart in Fairbanks.  I walked to the electronics section and they had one memory card on the shelf!  One!  Are you kidding?  And it was one of the really slow memory cards, but it was a "backup" card in case mine failed.  I was thankful.

We had a wonderful time in Alaska for the two weeks.  Each night, I backed up the memory card to that portable hard drive and had to trust it to be my only copy when the one memory card filled up.  The device served me well, thankfully.

Once we returned home, I figured out what had happened.  At the last minute, I decided to take a different camera bag.  I transferred all of my gear from one to the other and left the pouch of memory cards in a side pocket.  Another stupid mistake by me.  Well, that will never happen again!

Blunder #3 

It was 2012 and my wife and I were on an extensive road trip, you guessed it, back out to Yellowstone, Teton National Park and many other points west.  I was shooting with a Nikon D800E and took a bag with the Nikon lenses 16-35mm f/4, 24-70mm f/2.8, 70-200mm f/2.8, a Nikon 1.4x tele-converter and a Tamron 90mm f/2.8 macro lens.  Again, I carefully planned all aspects of the photography part of my trip since I wasn't able to get any photographs exactly 40 years before.  I mean I really figured and packed everything into my bag two weeks in advance and continued to go over it so I would not forget anything.  My big issue was which bag to take.  Should I take a backpack bag or a shoulder bag.  This time, I would also have my laptop, two extra hard drives for backup as well as extra batteries and everything else.  I left out nothing.  The laptop and all of the other accessories would have their own backpack to that wasn't an issue for packing the gear.  I just needed to decide which bag would work the best for the camera gear.

Aspen grove, Grand Teton National Park, after lens foot arrived!
(click to enlarge)

It took us 5 leisurely days to drive from the Atlantic coast to western Wyomin, sightseeing and photographing along the way.  The first thing on the agenda was to visit friends who would be in the area, which we did.  The next day, we drove to Grand Teton National Park and I was really pleased with being there.  I shot prolifically  and was enjoying the scenery and just being out in the Rockies.  On the second day in the Tetons, I grabbed my 70-200mm f/2.8 lens to make some images of a grove beautifully yellow aspen trees.  I set up my tripod and got out the camera and 70-200mm f/2.8 lens only to find that the tripod mounting foot was not on the lens.  What?  I tore apart my bag and it just wasn't there.  The lens was too heavy mount the camera directly to the tripod, in my opinion, and I wasn't going to risk deforming the lens mount.  I was out of luck.  Where could I get another one quickly?

After a couple of hours soul searching, I thought I might know what happened to the lens foot.  I called my daughter and asked her to go my our house and check the camera bag that, at the last minute, I decided not to take.  Just like Alaska!  I switched camera bags at the last moment and, sure enough, she called back after she got off work and said the lens foot was there.  I asked her to FedEx it out to me overnight to our hotel in Jackson, Wyoming, which she did. Thankfully, I have a wonderful daughter who immediately did so.  I received the lens for the next day but my little blunder cost me a lot of angst and $40 US.

Teton National Park (click to enlarge)

I know I will never make that mistake again, of course, until I blunder again.  You have to laugh at yourself and think that no matter how hard you try, it seems something will go wrong often enough that you have to roll with the flow.

By the way, on that last trip, I had some unfinished business in the way of taking some photographs my old Minolta SR-T 101 to Yellowstone and the Tetons that didn't make it out 40 years prior.  Ah, film.  That was the last film I shot and that camera can now be fully retired.

Hope you enjoyed this little confession.

Join me over at Instagram @dennisamook or my website, www.dennismook.com. 

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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