Cameras have a way of breaking when you least expect it — sometimes with serious consequences. It’s happened to me twice: once on a personal trip, and once during an aerial golf-course shoot.

When I was starting out, I could barely afford a worn-out medium-format camera, let alone a backup. But after hearing a few horror stories while assisting other photographers, I learned to bring a spare whenever possible — especially for high-stakes shoots. With film cameras, that was relatively easy. Switching to digital made it harder. Having a backup $8,000 body simply wasn’t realistic.

The first failure happened in The Gambia, during a road trip. I’d brought along my oldest Hasselblad and a single lens — something I wouldn’t be devastated to lose if it was stolen. One morning, we came across a group of mothers with young children walking along the road. I loved the colorful clothing and rural backdrop, so I asked if I could take some portraits. I shot a few Polaroids to show them what I had in mind. My friend John captured the photo above on a Hasselblad XPan, just before I began shooting film. Then disaster struck — the rear blinds on my camera failed, and I missed what would have been a beautiful series of portraits.

The second failure was far more serious.

I was photographing a golf course in Lake Tahoe while working for the gaming startup WGT. The images would serve as backgrounds for the game — you can read more about this in my Career Timeline gallery.

At the time, we used Nikon D200s for course photography, but my personal Canon 1Ds was better for aerial shots. It was full-frame, and the 16–35mm lens was perfect for what I needed.

Toward the end of the day, I was finishing the last few holes from the air. Helicopters are expensive — $1,000 to $1,800 an hour — so I kept image reviews to a minimum. Normally, I’d check after every hole, but I was rushing to finish and waited longer than usual. When I finally looked, I saw a thick black line running through the last few frames. The shutter was still firing, which confused me at first, but when I removed the lens I saw the problem: one of the shutter blades had broken and jammed, blocking part of the sensor.

I had only about 45 minutes of usable light left. If I couldn’t reshoot immediately, we’d have to rent the helicopter again — a very costly option. My spare camera, of course, was in my car.

Thankfully, my pilot — who was experienced ex-military — said he could get me as close to the car as possible. While he kept the helicopter idling, I sprinted to the car, grabbed the backup camera, and climbed back in. I managed to reshoot the last three holes just as the light began to fade.

The two shots above were taken roughly an hour apart. The one on the left was moments before the shutter failed; the one on the right came after reshooting with a different camera and lens combination. Despite the chaos, the light held long enough for the images to look consistent in the final game backgrounds.

After that experience, I never flew without at least one spare camera in the helicopter — sometimes two.