Bye bye Nikon D850

One of my obsessions or should I say fascination is water, I love it when it flows in rivers, or when it freezes into big icebergs. Snow is my element; lakes always gift me with beautiful reflections. I may be a bit too “adventurous” in the pursuit of my images when it comes to water, so it’s no surprise that I have lost my trusted Nikon D850 down a river! It was an ordinary day; I took some photographers friends to a favourite location of mine, easy access and plenty of really nice long exposure opportunities. As a good host I gave the others the best spots and looked for something different. The river was very full and fast, being spring the snowmelt was making the water “angry”. In my memory I have 3 very distinctive moments, all pretty horrific… First the tripod fell on the rock and the camera came apart from the tripod head, Second to my absolute horror the camera started rolling towards the river and then fell in it! If you are a photographer and you are reading this you must be almost in tears, as you know that cameras are not designed to swim! Third and most dangerous part of the story, the river started taking the camera away towards a 30 meters high waterfall that was only 3 meters away from my location. This is when my brain should have kicked in, but the instinct to save my drowned precious camera prevailed and I jumped in behind it! Yes, my friends say I am crazy now you know it’s true. My fellow photographer friends that were witnessing the scene were frozen with fear; one of them eventually reacted and came to help me out of the water. I told him to take my camera from my hands first and help me out after. The drowned D850 went to the Nikon head quarters in Paris where I was hoping a miracle would happen… Needless to say they couldn’t resuscitate it. To fish it out of the water wasn’t a complete waste of time because they kept it for spares and gave me a discount for a new one.   The moral of the story is that sometimes it’s safer to be in dangerous places because we are more alert; when we are in familiar territory we are distracted and overconfident…