Hi all,
Yesterday I was in a park trying to photograph bees on flight leaving
the flowers after feeding (or is the right name "collecting"?). It was
a bit late already, around 20h and at a given moment the people that
were playing arround me, left. Suddently I heard some loud voices having
a extrange conversation in some foreign language. It was near to a side
gate of the park. I felt insecure and started walking toward the playing
ground (something like 200mts away, by crosing a small bridge). At this
very moment, one of those guys approached me on a bicycle asking me to
stop. I just stated running (like hell) towards the area with more
people and the guys (3 in total) turned arround in the opposite
direction always watching me. They left the the bicycles behind and
entered the playground (where I met with my wife and daughter) always
keeping a menacing eye on me. They're just like saying "we're going to
catch you!".
After strongly hitting the swings inthere they finally left into the
surrounding bushes.
I stayed in alert state until we left, and once we got home I had this
awful feeling of being violented mixed with the "being lucky" given that
nothing really happened and I still had my camera and no injuries.
Anyway, the bitter event made me think about all possible scenarios and
there's not much you could do in those cases.
By standard lines I was in a "safe" place, and luckily not completely
abstracted in my own 'world through the lens'.
I'd like to hear about your experiences. Is somebody carring some kind
of active theft prevention device (pepper spray, electric shock, etc...
(all illegal to carry over here anyway)). Best practices, etc...?
Regards,
Gerard.
PS: Just for the On-Topic tag: I was using a 50E+BP2, 100f2.8 USM, flash
bracket 380ex & ocsc2. Not really easy to keep a low profile with such a
big setup. Lucky I had no tripod with me... I don't think I could have
run fast enough with that.
PS2: I'm thinking about one of those lead guns powered with presurized
CO-2 cans. It's legal to carry 'em (maybe not to shot a person with it)
and it hurts enough to make them withdraw.
PS2: My 550EX just arrived!!! je. By little, I had no camera to mount it
;-). Does somebody has a English manual available that I could borrow?
or Spanish ? or Dutch? It came with a German and a French manual from
whose I don't catch too much.
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