This is a picture resulting from my tripping and falling on the church steps at a recent wedding. Oh yes. Apparently I learned to walk yesterday! It was one of those things where you stumble, and you thought you caught yourself, only to realize a second later that you just KNOW you're gonna hit the pavement. Had 2 camera bodies on me, plus my shootsac full of lenses, which all landed ON me btw. Nothing was severely damaged besides my pride and a light scraping of the knee. Oh...and lots of little bruises LOL from my equipment landing on me!

When I was editing through the pictures and came across this pic I was like WTF but then I realized what it was from and I just had to laugh out loud, seriously. Luckily the B&G weren't there to see it, only Uncle Bob and a few guests. Oh, and the limo driver. Ugh.

It broke my spirit for a little while, but I got over it fast enough to finish documenting their special day. Hurt like hell every time I dropped to one knee though!! LOL

Thank goodness your equipment wasn't hurt! I have been very accident prone lately. I stumbled at a farmer's market a few weeks ago and tore my knee up so bad that I ripped a hole in my jeans. It took three weeks to heal. It finally was looking almost back to normal and we had a hail storm. I ran outside to bring in some potted plants and my shoes were slippy from being wet and BAM! skinned the same damn knee again and ripped all that brand new skin right off. Ruined a second pair of pants. Both these times I was in sneakers, mind you. Imagine what I'm like in dress shoes!

I have started keeping contingency plans in my head now when I'm holding equipment. I make mental notes on what direction I should try to fall in in order to cushion the landing for my lenses.

Honestly, I've had some pretty nasty spills on icy ground the last two winters and both times I thought it was wiser to try to save the equipment (at the expense of injury no less). Now that my knees make these crazy cracking noises when I go up the stairs, I'm beginning to think that you can buy new equipment; unfortunately you only get one pair of legs!

Oh man! I'm SO glad that your equipment was saved!

I've had a few accidents myself, but the worst was a couple of years ago when I slipped on a rock and fell hard, hitting my head on another rock....all right in front of the family of 18 that I was photographing. My biggest fear was my camera crashing onto said rocks, so I held my right arm up as I went down, and when I landed, my right elbow hit another rock pretty hard too. My head bled profusely from where I hit it, and I bled all over the dad, his son, and one of his sons-in-law (both of the younger men were Drs., so I guess I chose the right people to do this in front of!). They laid me on the ground and wouldn't let me move for quite a while. It was pretty horrible....

In the end, I didn't need stiches, but had a very sore head and a badly bruised elbow for quite a few days. Yuck!

I've fallen twice at weddings and a couple of times during sessions. And every time, my equipment comes apart spilling batteries everywhere.

Your mind is concentrated on shooting and not important stuff, like balancing.

Oh yeah....well when I realized I was going down, I kind of hugged the cameras LOL and the way I fell kind was kind of twisted so everything pretty much landed ON me and then rolled off onto the ground. So thankfully nothing was busted. Took a few weeks for my knee to heal though....skinned it real bad, right through my pants even though somehow the pants stayed in tact. Still not sure how that worked. LOL

Oh and then later that night, I dropped a lens at the reception. I thought it was in my shootsac but wasn't in there good enough so it fell right out. Luckily I was crouched down so it didn't fall far, but it made a nice thud. Still works fine, but I'm sure some of the guests must have thought I was a real clutz.....good thing the pics were good or they might have thought of me as a sorry excuse for a pro! LOL

I feel your pain! Cool image though! Glad to hear you saved your gear, but you need to save your butt too!

I was second shooting (for a nice change!) Saturday and gave myself a NASTY concussion - mind you, I just had brain surgery and I whacked my head on my trunk latch about 1/8" from the hole in my skull! I saw stars and fell to my knees... and this was as I was on my way from meeting with the guys to go to the ceremony. All I could do for the next 20 minutes was repeat "what the <expletive deleted> did I just do?!" and keep checking for blood and making sure my shunt was still in place. It is now several days later and I'm still feeling the effects. I did call my neurosurgeon who promptly freaked out on me for not being more careful but said that I need to call Wednesday if I'm not feeling any better and they'll do a CT scan (I was already feeling a little bit better when I called Monday). I don't know how on earth I even managed to make it through the wedding much less pull off some killer shots. That night when I went to bed my head was throbbing with horrible pain, I was dizzy and very nauseas... still am. I had the hardest time falling asleep - mostly for the fear that I should have gone to the hospital and it may not be a good idea to go to sleep! Still not feeling great, but it is slowly getting better. I still cannot believe I did that - especially since I'm always so conscious of anything coming near my head now!

Glad you and your gear made it!

Dude...that so reminds me of this one wedding. I was back-steppin really fast, eye never taken away from the view-finder when all of a sudden I trip over a rope in the sand. I was like that gut getting knocked out in Fight Club...totally lateral....landed right on the rump. Hands covered in sand, gear alright, I kept shooting whilst some of the bridal party was cracking up laughing.

This happened while shooting the ceremony...of all things.