thief

The New York Police Department (NYPD) has posted bodycam footage taken from one of their mounted police officers as they apprehend an alleged sunglasses thief in Times Square.

Here's a bizarre story out of New Jersey: a man reportedly stole an iPhone and then proceeded to shoot a grotesque close-up selfie of himself to share on his victim's Instagram account. Police are now widely distributing the strange selfie in hopes of identifying the man.

A photographer in San Francisco is offering a $1,000 cash reward with no questions asked for the return of stolen memory cards containing irreplaceable wedding photos. The cards were taken from her car a week ago by a thief who also made off with $15,000 in camera equipment.

Razer made headlines this week with a couple of cool prototypes, including the world's first triple display laptop codenamed "Project Valerie." Unfortunately, what seemed like a great week with some great products and press ended badly when two of their prototypes were stolen off the showroom floor.

If you're going to be shooting in an area where you're genuinely concerned you might have your camera stolen, it's probably wise to prepare. And if you prefer the DIY "on-the-cheap" approach, then this simple 'theft-proof' camera strap may be exactly what you're looking for.

While shooting only her second wedding, Boston-based photographer Alyssa Stone experienced every photographer's nightmare. Someone had stolen her gear out of a church pew, and she found herself camera-less just as the couple was about to tie the knot.

A professional camera store in Palo Alto, CA opened the store on Monday morning to find a nasty surprise: they had been robbed through a hole some crooks had cut into the wall behind the Nikon display case.

This is one of the luckiest, craziest stolen gear recovery stories we've ever heard. Five months after a man had $34K in gear—including a pre-production Canon 1D X Mark II—stolen out of his car, he actually got it back after the thief sold one of the stolen lenses to a police officer.

It’s been a funny week. A couple of days ago, while I was sitting in the office reformatting my MacBook in sunny West Sussex, I was also sort of arrested in Islington, London.

Let me elaborate...

Earlier this month, we reported that a North Carolina-based photographer Faith Massey had gotten her camera bag stolen from her car. Inside was a memory card that contained irreplaceable photos of the last moments of a baby's life, which Massey captured through the charity organization Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.

There's a happy update to the story: the memory card has been returned, and all the precious lost photos have been recovered.

In 2011, photographer Jessamyn Lovell was at San Francisco gallery SF Camerawork when her wallet was stolen. Not long after, the unauthorized charges started pouring in.

Infuriated at what was taking place, Lovell decided to track down her thief rather than simply replace her cards and move on with her life. In doing so, she turned this art gallery mishap into an art project all its own.

Stolen gear registration and recovery service Lenstag reached a major milestone last week when they successfully recovered and returned a stolen lens to its rightful owner!

We take no responsibility if you're all of a sudden afraid to take your camera anywhere after reading this (especially if you have a Nikon D7000 or a Canon 60D), but this gear theft infographic by anti-theft service Lenstag is packed interesting information that we think every photographer should be aware of.

This was NOT a good week for moronic criminals with access to Instagram. After posting a bunch of ill-advised selfies on the photo sharing site, a Florida teenager now finds himself behind bars and facing 142 felony counts thanks to his oversharing habit.

Photojournalist Christopher Morris has documented some of the world's hottest war zones, reclusive North Korea and the 2012 Republican National Convention. But it took modern Detroit to totally punk him, with thieves there stealing $15,000 in camera equipment and another crook cheating him out of $200 in reward money later that same day.

Sure, Instagram has provided some folks with a ready-made market for selling illegal items or doing unsavory things, but the photo sharing services has also expanded the boundaries of how incompetent a crook can be.

Dear clever person who stole my camera from the Barcelona train station -- yes, you are oh so clever. I must say, I read about your ilk in all the guidebooks and could not even imagine how you might be able to get my beloved camera from my ever-watchful grasp, but you and your band of accomplices managed to play me and my group of friends like a fine tuned instrument. I am still only guessing at what you did to me.

It's unfortunate that this is a piece of advice we need to give, but alas, it's necessary: never leave your camera gear unattended. One photographer recently learned that lesson the hard way at an outdoor wedding he was shooting when he was deprived of some $6,000 of camera equipment in one fell swoop. And what's more, the entire theft was caught on camera by the wedding's videographer.

From the annals of "How Low Can You Go?" comes word from Hawaii of a stolen camera whose memory card had a family's only photos of a two-day memorial service.

Having your laptop and photographs stolen usually isn't a good thing, but for photographer Melanie Willhide, it actually helped her career move forward.

After seeing the story of the DSLR-stealing lion that we published last night, Zurich, Switzerland-based photographer Alessandro Della Bella sent in an unusual camera theft story of his own. While shooting time-lapse photographs of the night sky using three intervalometer-trigger DSLRs, one of the cameras was stolen by a thief. What's interesting is that the camera documented the whole event through time-lapse photos! The video above shows the time-lapse that resulted.

What’s with underwater photographers getting mugged by large sea creatures these days? Dutch photographer …

Notice anything strange about the photograph above? It shows the Myers family taking a photograph together outside the Capital building in Madison, Wisconsin. Look a little closer, and you'll see that their Canon G7 caught something unusual.