In a time of destruction, create something…

The above image is what the LCD screen on the back of my camera now looks like. Apparently some time Friday night while skating and shooting some photos at the Nike SB/Mutual Mobile office party designed as research for the soon to be re-booted NikeSB mobile app, my 6 year old LowePro backpack got hit by a stray board. The weekend came and went, only to discover this on Monday evening when I wanted to thumb through the images from Friday night.

My stomach dropped to the floor like a lead balloon. You know, that weird feeling you get in your stomach that mimics a roller coaster ride…

Immediately, I pulled the card and started ingesting them to the hard drive. Whew. All the images were there with no signs of data corruption. Then my brain created worse scenario situations for me. Maybe the shutter spring broke…. Maybe the sensor was damaged….MAYBE….

Snapped a couple quick frames and uploaded them to the hard drive. New images showed no issues. Shutter sounded like the door to a Mercedes closing. Focus was tack sharp. The camera survived just fine….I just lost my cheat sheet to viewing my unedited images. Luckily, I shoot tethered for 99% of my commercial shoots so this doesn’t have a huge detrimental impact to my work.

I can easily have the LCD replaced for $150-250. I am choosing to wait a couple months instead. I am going to treat my digital camera body as if it was nothing more than a Nikon F1 stuffed full of computer parts, a bastard hybrid of analog and digital. I won’t have a clue what the real results of what I captured are until I sit in front of the monitors with the lights off, stylus in hand to adjust curves, dodge and burn and retouch in my very own digital dark room….

As a reward for reading to the end of this rather wordy blog post, here are a couple of my favorite images from the NikeSB/Mutual Mobile office party.