Video: Croatian High School Grads Push Photog Into Fountain, Destroy $18K in Gear

Reason number 14,526 why you should insure your gear: because a rowdy bunch of over-excited Croatian high school grads might just push you into a freezing fountain and destroy it all.

This might seem like an unlikely scenario (which is why it’s so far down the list) but it actually happened earlier this month to one poor Croatian photojournalist, and the incident was caught on camera.

The story was sent to us by the editor of the Croatian photography blog Cahayabox, who actually sat down with photojournalist Marko Lukunić to discuss the incident.

Screen Shot 2014-05-20 at 10.28.33 AM

Apparently, it’s a tradition in Croatia that graduates celebrate the completion of their last year in school on the streets, and photojournalists are frequently sent in to cover these celebrations. In this particular case, however, the celebrants got a little too celebratory, and decided to push Mr. Lukunić into the Manduševac fountain, gear and all.

When he got out of the fountain, the kids had run off, leaving him with a Nikon D4, Nikon D3, Nikon 70-200 f/2.8, Nikon 17-35 f/2.8, Nikon 35-70 f/2.8 , 64GB iPad Retina and iPhone5s all waterlogged and ruined. By Cahayabox‘s estimation, that comes out to 100,000 Croatian kuna, or about $18K US.

Screen Shot 2014-05-20 at 10.28.37 AM

Fortunately for Lukunić, the two kids who pushed him have been caught, and them (or their parents, we suppose) will be held responsible for replacing/compensating him for his gear. Fortunately for the students, Lukunić, who says he hurt his leg in the fall, doesn’t want to seek any further compensation than that.

To find out more or hear from the photographer himself, head over to Cahayabox by clicking here (so-so Google Translation here).

Discussion