Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
An Australian astrophotographer has pleaded guilty to several counts of fraud and theft after stealing over $16,000 from the Professional Photographers’ Association of Queensland (PPAQ) over a 3 year period.
Photographer Mark Culley allegedly used his Photoshop skills to forge bank statements and financial reports, and also to replicate the signature of the association’s accountant.
Drones disappear all the time. Sometimes it’s simply that they’ve crashed or software’s malfunctioned and it’s flown off to some unknown location. Other times, it might be a little more nefarious and it’s actually been stolen. Regardless of how you might have lost possession of your drone, it is at the very least a frustrating experience. Trying to find or recover it can be even more frustrating.
But a new service called Stolen Drone Info (SDI) by drone security company DroneSec is here to help. This is a website, which you can use for free, to report that your drone has gone missing or that you’ve randomly found a drone while out and about exploring. If you do choose to step up from the free to a paid account, it will even search online marketplaces, posted flight logs and other sources.
Over the last few months, we’ve seen quite a lot of gear theft in San Francisco. Thanks to ABC 7 News, one of the locations where stolen gear ends up has been found and identified.
Reporter Dan Noyes spoke to a San Francisco man who revealed that many of the stolen goods are sold in the street, often hours after the theft. One of the locations for these transactions is an open-air market at Garfield Square in the Mission District, and it’s all happening in broad daylight!
As you know, my gear was stolen in broad daylight as the camera was rolling two weeks ago in a public San Francisco park.
Another photographer got hit this week near San Francisco and way worse than I did. He was parked near Battery Spencer Park in Sausalito, in the Marin Headlands, which offers one of the best views of the Golden Gate Bridge, and thieves bashed in his SUV windows and fled with multiple cameras, computers, hard drives, and more.
Only a day after two photographers got robbed while stuck in traffic, another incident happened in California. While two men were doing a photoshoot in a San Diego park, six people tried to steal their gear. When the duo fought back, the thieves shot one man and hurt the other.
Camera gear gets stolen fairly regularly. It’s something we’re all cautious of and try to minimise the risk of it happening. But there are some events that cause us to lose our gear which just so brazen that it’s difficult to account for them. Something that real estate photographers Ben and Masha of Home Shoots discovered while driving home after a photoshoot.
While sitting in traffic waiting to get onto the Interstate 80 onramp on Friday afternoon, a car pulled up beside them. Somebody got out of the car, smashed their rear window, grabbed a bag containing over $7,000 worth of camera equipment and hopped back into their vehicle before racing off. And it all happened in just a few seconds.
It happens that gear theft gets caught on security cameras. But a very weird footage was captured at an anti-racism rally in Toronto this Sunday. A thief was caught on camera while stealing a backpack full of camera gear – and it was all filmed by the gear’s very owner.
National Geographic Photographer and speaker Joel Sartore recently had his luggage stolen at an airport in Bali. He’d spent three weeks photographing some of the world’s rarest animals, And sadly, among other things, his stolen bag contained hard drives with all photos from the trip.
Here is a video pushing my faith in humanity just a bit int he wrong direction. Greek photography site, PTTL, shared a story and a video showing a person borrowing a Sony camera and a lens from the photographer’s bag.
On Saturday, thieves smashed a photographer’s car window and stole all the gear that was inside. The theft left Manchester-based photographer Kenny Clayton not only without ~$9,000 worth of gear but also without all the photos he has done in the last five years.
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