3 Things We Learned From Losing $2000

Winston Churchill once said, “All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes.”

We have made our fair share of mistakes this year. It’s easy to read about our daily lives on Facebook and Instagram and think that our lives are carefree. But that’s the smoke screen that is social media today. Everyone’s lives are perfect, right? Wrong. You don’t get to see what happens behind the steady stream of smiling photos with friends and posts about how great life is right now. Well today, you get a small peek behind that curtain for Ryan & Alyssa. It’s a curtain that our nature tells us to seal up and never open. But we are going to overcome that today and share an experience that changed our perception of ourselves, our trust of other people and our awareness of how quickly our sense of control can be broken down.

The first part of this cautionary tale is the facts. You need the facts. But as we are sharing the facts of this story we want to be careful not to share too much. You see, this event happened at a wedding. It happened at the wedding of one of our amazing couples. However, this couple had absolutely NOTHING to do with the story. Their wedding day was amazing and beautiful. The last thing we would want would be for them to think that what happened was their fault! So if it seems like we are being slightly ambiguous in the description, that might be why.

Now that we have piqued your interest (mwwuuuhahaha) we will give you a quick outline of the story.

The first thing you need to know is that we have 2 camera bags. We have a primary bag that’s big enough to hold all of our gear. We take that bag to every session and wedding we ever shoot. But we also have a smaller bag that Ryan carries when we don’t need the big bag but we need an extra lens or two. Take this for example. Sometimes we will leave our primary bag inside while we go out to shoot the ceremony. But Ryan knows that after the ceremony we will be shooting family portraits and we will need a wider lens for those portraits. Well, we won’t take the big primary bag outside, we will just bring the smaller bag to help carry that one extra lens. Make sense? On the day of record, we had a quick discussion before we left in the morning about whether to bring the smaller bag to this wedding because it was all taking place at the same venue and there wouldn’t be any moving around (so we thought). One of us thought we should bring it. One of us didn’t. The nays won that argument and we didn’t bring the bag (mistake #1 for all of you keeping score at home).

So we arrive at the gorgeous venue. We make it a point to go into every wedding day expecting at least one new challenge that we have never faced before. That mindset almost always pays off for us. So we weren’t thrown off when we quickly found out that our perception of how things were laid out was off by a good bit. The ceremony, in fact, would be taking place no less than a quarter mile from the reception site. A walkable distance for any able-bodied person, no doubt, but a fair distance nonetheless.

You are now caught up on the pertinent details of the situation! So, to make a long story short, we will jump to the end of the ceremony. Our primary bag is now at the ceremony site. Well-hidden. Safe. It is now time to do family portraits and bride and groom creatives. Those are going to be shot about 30 yards from the ceremony site. If we have lost you in the course of this story, here is the most important part to understand. For family portraits, we often use a different lens than we use for bride and groom portraits (for photographers reading this, we often use a 24-70mm for families because of the large groups while we use a 50mm and a 70-200mm for bride and groom portraits).

So now you can see the situation. Our primary bag is now 30 yards from us. No problem. It’s hidden. It’s safe. However, now we have 3 lenses with us. We are currently shooting family portraits with a lens that we will no longer need once family portraits are done. Usually? No problem. Because we have our smaller bag. But on this day, we didn’t. Enter, the moment of truth.

You have to really understand the way things move on a wedding day. People are going here. We have to be there. These pictures start at this time. We are behind. We need to move faster. So-and-so is late. Now what? Let’s move that to after the ceremony. But that’s going to cramp up our portrait time. That’s all we can do. Ok let’s do it.

So as we switched from family portraits to bride and groom portraits we made the fatal error (mistake #2 if you’re still keeping score). We put the 24-70mm down off to the side of the path where we would easily forget it. And in the heat of the moment, we kept shooting. At that time, we were within visual contact of the lens, but for a span of about 5 minutes, we went around the corner to do a few more poses.

You know the rest.

We went back to pick up our lens and it was gone. We checked the surrounding area but in hindsight we believe that someone (not involved in the wedding) picked it up and walked off. Yes. You can feel it. Pain. Suffering. Tears. Our $2000 lens was gone in the blink of an eye. Not the kind of ending to a wedding day that we would hope for to say the least. But it happened. And we have to learn from it and move on. In the time since, we have dealt with the situation and we have learned a few things along the way. We wanted to share a few of those with you to help keep this from happening to you!

1. Keep Smiling

When this happened, our job wasn’t done. We still had 2 hours of the reception to shoot which included crucial moments like the first dance (which took place about 10 minutes after our lens was stolen), the cake cut and the bouquet toss. We didn’t have the option of missing these moments. Ryan was furious. Alyssa was in tears. But, as hard as it was, we had to put our smiles on like nothing had happened and keep pressing that shutter button. No matter what happens on a wedding day, our couples’ wedding experience comes first.

2. Keep Track Of Your Equipment

To the responsible people out there this might seem like a no-brainer. Well, apparently we aren’t in that group. Or maybe (hopefully) we’re just too trusting here in the kind, well-mannered South. Either way, we learned. We will never leave another piece of equipment where we can’t see it at all times! And we will never go to a wedding again without our little bag!

3. Get Insurance

Thankfully this is a lesson that was reinforced through this event rather than a lesson we had to learn the hard way! But just so that we are clear on our position here: GET INSURANCE!!! YOU NEED INSURANCE!!! Because we had insurance, this situation turned into a $250 mistake instead of a $2000 mistake. All we had to pay was the deductible of $250 for a new lens while the insurance covered the rest. If you are a photographer and you need insurance, whether that be Property/Equipment or Liability (*we have both), you need to check out Package Choice Insurance through a company called Hill & Usher. It’s designed specifically for media professionals!

*If you want more information, let us know! We can help!

And if you’re looking for new equipment, here’s a super helpful article from Cole’s Classroom on how to save money!

At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is that the wedding was success and that our couple never knew anything was wrong. If Churchill’s advice sticks with us, we will learn from this mistake and be the wiser for it. And if our story keeps this from happening to anyone else, then it was well worth the trial we endured!