[Spangletron]

In May of every year, I go to Florida (or wherever our concept takes us, usually Florida) on a 2 week photo shoot for a large sport boat manufacturer. I'm a graphic designer, so I'm mostly there just to art-direct, but the photographers have started letting me shoot as well, which I LOVE! And this year, with my 2 week old D300, I couldn't wait. These shoots consist of a group of guys from a very cool northern Michigan climate pulling 18 hour days for 2 weeks in the Florida sun. It's incredibly taxing, but incredibly fun.

This year my job was to detail photograph each boat in the company's line-up, which is the job the real photographers don't want to do, but for me it's such excellent experience that I was ecstatic to do it. Basically I need to shoot a product shot of every single part of every boat in the lineup.

About midway through the shoot, I was working with a model, shooting seating from the dock underneath a large silk. As she climbed off the dock onto the boat, she placed her incredibly high priced Fendi Sunglasses by my feet and got ready to be photographed reclining in the luxurious aqua-flex vinyl lounge seat. Naturally, my next move was to knock the expensive (I could have bought a new lens for the price of them) sunglasses into the murky marina.

"Oh no!" she yelled. "Those are my expensive Fendi sunglasses!" or something to that effect. Well, being very attractive, as most bikini/boat models tend to be, and me being fairly typically male, I said, "Don't worry. I'll climb into the murky marina and retrieve the expensive sunglasses."

So I climbed in, skewered my hand on barnacles, felt around in the smelly, boat-fuel-charged muddy, clammy, water until, by some stroke of luck, I actually found the glasses. What I haven't mentioned is that I also took with me, in my pocket, two 4GB memory cards, both luckily empty. When I got back to the dock, I realized that I had completely submerged the two cards - VERY annoying. I went back to my hotel room, changed clothes and laid the cards out, with hope that they would dry...

In case you're wondering, you should let memory cards dry far longer than you think you need to, should you get them wet. The next day, I was in need of a card, and the two wet ones didn't seem wet anymore. They were...

After placing one of the cards into my new D300, some odd things started to happen. First, the camera wouldn't focus. Then, a few seconds later, the LCD wouldn't turn off. After that, things went down hill as I watched the camera fry in slow motion. Suddenly the camera wouldn't turn off. I fired the shutter and it stayed open. Then it beeped and died for good. For the next 2 hours, when I should have been shooting, I found myself on the phone with Nikon. Nothing we tried would bring my baby back to life, take the lens off, put the lens on, remove the battery, put the grip on, and on and on... Finally, one of the photographers on the shoot suggested I give Calumet, where I bought the camera, a call. I have never been so distraught in my life! Calumet, bless them, sent me a brand new D300 before the end of the shoot. In the meantime, one of the photographers let me borrow his back-up Fuji S-something. It made me LOVE LOVE LOVE my Nikon so much. The end.