Having your laptop and photographs stolen usually isn’t a good thing, but for photographer Melanie Willhide, it actually helped her career move forward.
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Apparently robbers in Northern California are starting to learn that photojournalists typically shoot with pretty expensive gear. The New York Times reports that robbers have been targeting news photographers in recent months, sometimes at gunpoint:

Last August, Laura Oda, chief photographer for The Oakland Tribune, was photographing people painting the mural when she spotted someone in her peripheral vision. “Within seconds they were on me,” she said, “one in front and one in back.” Armed, they pulled cameras off her neck and grabbed her bag of cameras and a laptop from her car.

Three months later, Ms. Oda was photographing cars at a busy intersection when she was again robbed of her camera, at gunpoint once more. For a while, she avoided the streets of Oakland. She has since returned but has established a new rule: she does not stay in one place for more than five minutes.

One veteran photojournalist has already lost five cameras to robbery. Each successful theft nets the robbers between $3,000 to $50,000 in gear — gear that hasn’t been turning up on the secondary market (e.g. craigslist).

In Oakland, Photojournalists Covering Crimes Become the Victims [NYTimes]

Image credit: Oakland Tribune by James Cridland

When photographer Jess T. Dugan picked up her luggage after a flight from Chicago to Boston on December 18th, something didn’t feel quite right. It felt a bit lighter than it should have. She opened it up, and, lo and behold, several thousand dollars of camera equipment was missing — oops.
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A number of years ago, a TSA agent named Pythias Brown accidentally left a camera out of some luggage he was screening. Not wanting to be reprimanded for his mistake, he decided to avoid any problems by secretly taking the camera home. This event opened his eyes to how easy it was to pocket passengers’ belongings, and he began to steal more and more items in increasingly brazen thefts.
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With the advent of Internet-connectivity and apps in cameraphones and digital cameras, images can now be shared with others in ways never before seen in the history of photography. Unfortunately, not all of the ways are positive. Some are downright creepy.

Take PlaceRaider, for example. It’s a malicious Android app that hijacks your smartphone’s camera, secretly takes photos of your life, and uses those images to reconstruct 3D virtual spaces of private locations.
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You’ve probably heard people say that you should keep your camera gear with you at all times when flying, as there are multiple points in the travel process at which your valuable equipment could get stolen or damaged. In case you’re not convinced, check out the video above showing an investigative report that ABC News recently did.

To test airports that have a history of theft, Brian Ross of ABC’s The Blotter left 10 iPads inside the plastic bins at security checkpoints. At 9 out of 10 airports, the screeners followed protocol and immediately contacted the owner using the contact info prominently displayed on the iPad. In the 10th case, an agent was filmed taking the iPad out of the bin before it vanished.
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If you want to protect your pricey camera gear from burglars, one of the safest places in your house (besides a safe, of course) is one that might not be very obvious to you: your kid’s room. The Readers Digest published a simple slideshow containing home-proofing tips gleaned from the minds of convicted burglars. One interesting tip is that burglars generally don’t go into children’s rooms when hunting for valuables to steal.
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For people looking to protect their belongings from theft in public places, there are bag alarms out there that can alert them (and everyone around them) if someone tries to pick up their stuff. DIY hacker Kip Kedersha (kipkay on YouTube) recently came up with a clever way to make one of these alarms for just $2.
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There’s some shady business going on at CES 2012 in Vegas. Sigma has announced that one of the lenses it unveiled at the trade show this year, the 180mm f/2.8 macro lens, disappeared after being unveiled on Tuesday. The lens is believed to be one of only two pre-production models that exist.

(via Amateur Photographer)

Image credit: Classic Bond with Gadget Briefcase by Dunechaser

If you’re ever sitting down in a public place with your camera bag, having it close by isn’t enough to protect it from theft — you need to make sure it can’t be easily snatched. Tom Bird of the UK learned this the hard way: he was at a pub recently when his camera bag suddenly disappeared. It’s contents? Just thousands of dollars worth of gear including a Canon 5D Mark II, a 24-70mm f/2.8, a 50mm f/1.2, a 16-35mm f/2.8 and a laptop.
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