“Fuck. I broke my camera, broke my lens and broke my tripod.”

those were the first thoughts to fly through my head as I heard a loud crash and saw my tripod lying lifelessly on the floor, severed lens rolling mockingly away to the other side of the road.

The story:

Essentially, the photographer in me called out yesterday to go take some photos in the 90 kmph gale-force winds that was blasting through Montreal yesterday. I had seen some pretty sweet tornado pictures and was hoping to experiment a little by balancing long exposures and rear-sync flash.

Turns out it wasn’t soo good of an idea.

My D300 with a 17~55mm f2.8 mounted on a Manfrotto 190 ProB Tripod (Note: MRSP of some 3000$) ended up being blown over by the wind to slam into the concrete from a 2 meter elevation.

I cried.

The sad part is, the shot I was trying to take wasn’t even that fantastic. This is the final shot that I got off before the tragedy:

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So the dammage?

To be honest, I don’t know.

• I brought the lens the Nikon repair center with fingers crossed hoping that they’ll even be able to repair the damn thing.
• My D300 body seems to be fully functional but there’s a worrisome hairline fracture that might make it not~so~good of an idea to shoot in the rain anymore.
• Although a bit bent, my tripod head is still functional.

For those of you that I have contracts with, please don’t worry. Xiao Yu was kind enough to lend me a backup sigma lens… even though it resulted in me waking him up at 8 AM to grab it (sorry!). He’s got a really nice website up (benefits of being an awesome programmer?) with some fantastic shots of his 8 month trip out in China//Tibet//Asia. I highly recommend you check out his photography.

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Benjamin Wong
http://iintrigue.com
Montreal Based Photographer