Photographer’s Nightmare as Camera With Wedding Photos Vanishes on Plane
A wedding photographer is living through every shooter’s worst nightmare after her camera that contained all the photos from a wedding vanished at Denver airport.
Amber Smith is appealing to whoever has her backpack — containing a Sony a7r III and Sony a7C — to return it, or at the very least return the couple’s wedding photos.
29-year-old Smith was flying back to Utah from a wedding in St. Louis on October 8 and made a stopover at Denver International Airport at 13:15.
“I wasn’t feeling well so I just got off of the plane as fast as I could,” Smith tells ABC4 Utah.
“And when I realized I didn’t have my camera bag with me I kinda freaked out and I went back and the plane had de-planed.”
Smith’s bag with the cameras and RAW photos wasn’t on the plane when she returned and it hadn’t been handed to lost and found.
Smith says there are detectives on the case who will look at the plane footage to see if someone walked off with her backpack. The last time she had it was when it was under her seat on a Southwest flight that arrived at Gate C at DIA.
“It’s the worst feeling,” she says. “I’m like ‘Oh there’s someone’s wedding that’s just disappeared and it’s my fault’.
“My hope is that they will at least return the photos. Equipment can be replaced but memories and the wedding day can’t.”
Smith posted a video to her Instagram page appealing to the person who has her camera bag to do the right thing.
“My hope is that they will have the compassion to return the photos to me, otherwise this bride and groom have zero wedding photos from their wedding day,” she says.
“I know they [the thief] probably thought lots of expensive equipment is insured: No. My insurance barely covers one of the lenses so now I’m left starting over with the equipment and buying everything from scratch.
“But at this point, I don’t even care about my cameras anymore I just want the photos back. So please give me the memory cards, you can turn them in at the Denver airport or the Denver police.”
Smith is hoping that the “power of the internet” will see the wedding photos returned.
Image credits: Photographs by Amber Smith.
