Wedding Photographer Loses Over 2000 Photos After Car Was Broken Into

Screenshot of one of the bride’s Facebook pages asking for help locating the photos.

A Vancouver based wedding photographer, name removed – see update below, suffered a devastating blow this week. While photographing a wedding the photographer’s car was broken into and the thief made off with her bag which contained her laptop, the sole keeper of a heap of wedding photos. Of course the laptop is replaceable, but the 2,000 bridal photographs housed on it are not.

This is where the story really starts getting painful. The lost photographs were taken over the course of the previous two weeks at a couple different weddings she shot. Unfortunately, she had not had the opportunity to back up the images yet resulting in a total loss of two weddings worth of photographs.

The photographer told her local news outlet, Burnaby Now, that she had made a trip back to her car around 7:30 that evening to grab an extra lens and that everything was fine. When she returned to her car after the event was over, around 10:30PM, she was horrified to discover her car window had been smashed in and her bag and laptop had been stolen.

She is mostly sad for the couples that have had their once in a lifetime moments taken from them; however, after making a report with local law enforcement, she remains hopeful her computer will be recovered. The photographer is even offering a $500 reward for their safe return.

One of the couples, Caitlin Henderson and Jim Beland, say they are incredibly saddened by the loss of their wedding photos, but are not going to pursue a legal action against her. The newly wed couple have made a poster and have been sharing their story via Facebook hoping for the safe return of their memories.

Hopefully, this story will have a happy ending, but the photographer unfortunate tale should serve as motivation to us all, inspiring us to back up our photographs immediately, especially work done for clients and images that are deemed as ‘priceless’ as wedding photographs are. It also serves as a reminder to be careful what we keep in our vehicles while out shooting on location–these types of things can happen to any of us if we are not careful!

How would you handle this?

UPDATE: we removed the photographer’s name. It seems stressful enough of a situation to deal with without having bad SEO juice to worry about.

[via Burnaby Now | North Shore News]