The company that has insured my camera gear for the last eighteen years has just had to pay out for accidental damage for only the second time since I joined them in 2008. When I was looking for a quick phrase about why you need insurance as a creative professional this sentence from their website came up from a Google search:

“Insurance allows you to concentrate on production knowing that your creative assets are protected and you don’t have to worry about the unexpected happening.”

There are plenty of ways to think about equipment and getting some cover for it. A lot has been written on social media in the last few months by my colleagues who have found that some underwriters use some extremely awful and underhand tactics to avoid paying out on what, only a few years ago, would have been cut-and-dried claims for theft. I have no idea what my particular insurer’s angle on theft claims is because I have never made one but, as our American friends say, they are two-for-two on accidental damage.

This time around I was photographing a group of delegates to an International Anglican Church conference as they walked across the Peace Bridge in Derry/Londonderry. It was day four of an eight day assignment in Northern Ireland. I was swapping between one Canon EOS R5 MkII with an RF 70-200 f4L lens to a second R5 MkII with an RF 14-35 f4L lens when I dropped the body complete with the longer lens.

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