Always be careful with your gear.

Just because you think it can’t happen, doesn’t mean it would happen to you. I live in Nova Scotia, Canada, at a particular location where the tides are the highest in the world. Where you’re never a 30 minute drive away from the ocean at any time. Now I just recently started to get into photography, and I fell in love with taking time lapses. So I’ve been scouting this place (Blomidon, Nova Scotia) for a while where I wanted to do a time lapse of the ocean tides. Finally the time and conditions were great, there was no moon meaning the ocean tides are the highest fluctuations. On this particular day the tides will rise and lower over 14 meters (45 feet) twice in one day and 115 billion tonnes of water will flow in and out over a 12.4 hour period.

I reached the place that I scouted a few weeks before, this spot was a nice empty field, no trees nearby to distract from the time lapse, and had a beautiful view of the famous Blomidon cliff side that draws people to this place.

So it was a perfect day to do a time lapse, the tides were right, there were clouds in the sky to give nice visuals, but not too bright.

At this place the cliffs aren’t too high but there are about 45 feet but it overlooks the ocean and it is a beautiful spot. It was a bit cold out, around 6 degrees Celsius (42.8 degrees fahrenheit) and it was windy as well.

So I get out of my car and get my gear out camera with ultra wide lens, heavy weighted tripod, and a book to read. I walk across the grassy field, I walk along the cliff edge to find a good spot to set up my weighted tripod. I find the perfect place, I go to set everything up but I forgot one thing… one small thing I managed to forget at home… my quick release plate to attach my camera to my tripod. “No problem” I thought to myself, I have my other lighter weight tripod I use for hiking in my trunk, I will just use that. So I finally set everything up I laid on the ground and opened my book, that lasted only five minutes. It was way too windy so I went to my car to keep out of the cold wind. My gear is set up outside I have a canon T2i, with a vertical grip that has a built in intervalometer and I was using a Sigma 10-20mm all set up on a Manfrotto Art 190B tripod.

This is a very wide lens, so to be able to get the camera to look off the cliff without having the ground I’m standing on in the frame so I have to bring the camera and tripod closer to the edge.

Everything is going good, every 45 minutes or so I’ll go outside I check to see everything is working right. Camera is good for battery life and still taking photos. For the first two hours my camera was fine I could still see it from across the field. Well while I was reading, at one time when I looked over from sitting in my car... and there was nothing there... my camera was gone.

So I got out of my car, ran across the field.

Nothing.

Nothing was there, I tried to look off of the cliff but I couldn’t get close enough to the edge without seeing anything… and I don’t want to fall off the cliff either.

So my heart is pumping, there were just so many emotions flowing I just felt so angry, stupid, and in disbelief.

I ran back across the field, to my car and drove down the road. This is where people actually can go down to the beach. I’m still in disbelief, I can’t believe this is happening, that this actually happened. I didn’t think that the wind was strong enough to actually blow my camera off of the side of the cliff… How can this be? Is this really happening?

Well after going down the beach for about 15 minutes there is was… first in the distance…. then up close. There was my camera broken off of its vertical grip that was still attached to the tripod. The body and lens are still together but broken at the mound, unable to detach them. Camera battery 10 feet in the opposite direction and my tripod with two broken legs is now a monopod.

I was devastated.

I felt so stupid for having my tripod so close to the cliff. You don’t think it’s going to happen, you think that this wouldn’t happen to me no way. But as I learned, anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

I guess you could say, this was my epic ‘canon’ ball story.