By Steven J. Barry

steven@askthephotographer.com

What do you do when an SD card containing shots of President George W. Bush and your client in the White House breaks into pieces, leaving you holding one of the tiny microchips you know full well should be inside?

The answer probably won’t surprise you one bit: Take a deep breath and try to remain calm. This will provide you with no practical benefit. It will, however, afford you just enough time to really mull over how completely screwed you might be.

This is precisely the situation photographer Justin Kase Conder found himself in last month.

After an epic effort to gain access to the White House and nab a camera that would actually be allowed inside, he was able to take hundreds of photos and a few hi-res video clips of his clients and G.W. at the White House, only to see the SD card that contained all the data snap to pieces in his hands like a cracker. A really small, really important, $30 cracker.

His weeklong saga began on Nov. 11–Veteran’s Day–when Conder received a text message from a friend.

“So, are you going to be at the White House tomorrow?”

Conder is a successful freelancer. But the White House doesn’t fall into his typical assignment rotation. As such, his response was, “Why would I be at the White House tomorrow?”

It turned out that Fresno State University’s championship baseball team was going to be there along with other NCAA champions as part of “Champions Day.” Conder gained much of his early sports photography experience working as Fresno State’s team photographer.

Conder has been working in the Baltimore-Washington D.C. area for the past few years, and he’s about to relocate back to California. The White House was one professional stop he said he wanted to make before heading back west.

He figured he would put forth a top-drawer effort to make this assignment happen. His first step was to try to learn the basic procedure photographers normally follow to gain access to the White House and, with only a day to go, to see if he could get the exception to policy he guessed he would need. Conder quickly found the number to their media relations office online, but because it was Veteran’s Day the main hired hands weren’t there and the person staffing the desk was something less than informed.

He then called the media relations representative from Fresno State Unviersity–who of course still remembered Conder–and asked if maybe they’d like some professional coverage of their visit. They would indeed, he said. Could he give Conder a call when he landed in D.C. that evening and they could talk about adding him to their list?

“The White House doesn’t really do things at the last minute, so that wasn’t going to work,” Conder said.

The media rep did have the name and title of a White House contact, but no phone number or e-mail address.

After talking with a colleague, Conder learned the basic formula for White House e-mail addresses. He narrowed it down to three variations on what it might be and fired off a “concise, to-the-point” letter to all of them.

Two bounced back, leading him to believe that the third had landed. Still, since it was Veteran’s Day, he wasn’t sure what sort of response he would get. He wasn’t expecting the world.

 

Getting in and finding the right camera

But he got a call back later that day. The media relations representative who spoke with him was bearing less than desirable news: He would be corralled to a tiny press area on the White house lawn, where he could take photos only after the team had exited the building. If he wanted to go inside, she said, he wouldn’t be able to bring what one may consider a fairly crucial piece of this whole equation: His camera gear.

“The rest of the media would be upset that you’re in the White House,” she told him. “Consequently, if you come inside the White House, you’ll have to leave your cameras behind.”

However, she told Conder he could “bring any camera that’s not a professional camera.” That would seem a problem for a professional photographer. He wasn’t about to waltz into the White House with his Digital ELPH.

“So I begin to think, ‘What camera can I bring that’s sort of nondescript and non-professional looking?’”

Though it is most decidedly a professional piece of equipment, Conder figured the Canon 5D might be passable. It’s a full-frame, 12.8-megapixel camera, but it’s about the size of many consumer-grade DSLRs. Problem: He doesn’t own one. He shoots Canon, but he uses only the 1D-Mark III and the 1D-Mark II. Either of those would stand out.

After a few calls, he learned that a friend of his would be passing through his neck of the woods at 8:30 the next morning, and she said he could use her 5D. Just after that call, he got a call back from the Fresno State media relations fellow asking if he could meet them at 7 a.m.

So, no 5D for him.

His next option was a Canon G9. It’s a 12.1-megapixel camera that can shoot raw and record high-res, XGA video. And though it is a point-and-shoot, the G9 has in fact been used for some advertising shoots. His heart rate steadily increasing, he called a former co-worker who owned one and drove over to pick it up. By this time, it was 11:30 p.m.

Conder spent the night tossing and turning, freaking out about pulling it off right with a G9.

And the next day, it all went according to plan. Conder joined the team inside the White House and thoroughly photographed their visit. He recalls marveling at the history around him, studying a portrait painting of George Washington and bumping his head against one of the building’s deceptively clear, six-inch thick, bulletproof-glass windows.

“I looked around and saw that a bunch of other people were bumping their heads, too,” he said, adding that the windows are so clear it looks as though you’re leaning toward an empty window well. “There’s no distortion from a six-inch thick window. It blows my mind.”

The group headed to the lawn and President Bush came out to speak. It wrapped up beautifully, and Conder drove home breathing dozens of sighs of relief.

 

Calamity

But Conder had a date with destiny. The kind of destiny that breaks things you really need.

He headed to his girlfriend’s parents’ house for dinner afterward. Everyone was eager to see how his shots had turned out, so he went to upload the shots to a Vista PC they had there.

Now, if you’ve ever tried this, you’ll know that for some reason, the built-in SD card readers in most Vista machines seem to be extremely fickle. They don’t like just any SD card. You often have to insert it a number of times before getting it to read, and sometimes you have to position it in just the right fashion in order for the machine to read it.

As Conder was engaged in this frustrating practice, the unthinkable happened.

“It goes, ‘crunch,’” Conder said. “I go, ‘AHHHH!’”

The card containing the photos he had fought so hard to get splintered in his hands. He immediately recalled the constant advice his late grandfather gave him regarding mechanical situations: “Justin, don’t force it, because if it’s not working, there’s a reason why.”

Above: The dismantled SD card. (Photo by Justin Kase Conder)

Distraught, he sat there holding the cleaved SD card and a tiny microchip that had popped off the wafer-thin circuit board inside. His girlfriend’s mother walked in and saw what had happened.

“I’m sure you can take it to Ritz camera or something and they can fix it,” she said.

Conder tried to stay calm. He took a deep breath, went outside and walked around the block, futitely attempting to calm himself which, as we have discussed, is standard procedure in those sorts of situations. He then realized how completely screwed he might be.

“I just take the damaged card–each little part–put them in a ziploc baggy, and proceed to leave my girlfriend’s house in absolute disarray,” Conder said.

Not only was he going to have to explain to his client that he didn’t have the images. He would have to do without any photos or footage of his near-presidential encounter. Conder’s been taking photos of his important life moments since he was seven years old.

He held on to the dimming hope that the images might be salvageable.

“It’s damaged, but nothing was fractured,” he said. “Parts just came off of other parts.”

Using a macro lens, he took close-up shots of those parts and posted them to a hidden gallery online so he could show the experts he hoped could tell him what, exactly, he was up against. He posted a Facebook status message announcing his frustration, and a friend of his suggested he talk with a circuit-board repair expert he knew.

Above: A chip containing 2 gigabytes worth of images next to a penny. (Photo by Justin Kase Conder)

 

The quest to salvage

Conder called him up and sent him a link to the photos. The man told him he was probably out of luck.

Just the same, the brief encounter helped direct the course of his search for a solution. Rather than photography equipment repair specialists, he figured it would make more sense to search for circuit board repair specialists.

He Googled up a list and started making calls.

“I would get gasps of air when they first looked at it,” he said. “They would gasp and say, ‘Uh, that’s probably not going to work.’”

He kept dialing away and getting the same answer everywhere he went.

But eventually, he talked to a man who said, “Well, it’s possible.”

That man was Skip Moccia, an Application Engineer with the Circuit Technology Center in Haverhill, Mass.

It might have been Providence. Moccia had recently dealt with a similarly overwrought man who had dropped and shattered a flash drive containing months worth of wedding plans–guest lists, booking information, you name it–that were stored no place else. To rectify that situation, Moccia had found an identical flash drive, took the key storage chips from the destroyed equipment, and under a microscope meticulously soldered the vital parts to the new flash drive.

Sensing the critical nature of Conder’s situation, he suggested that if he could find an identical SD card, there might be a chance his photos could be saved.

“I know when he spoke to me he kind of sounded like he was at the end of his rope with it,” Moccia said.

Conder got on the phone with A-Data, the company that manufactured the card. They were able to find a match after he read off to them numbers inscribed on the back of the crucial detached chip. To his delight, A-Data immediately shipped him not only an identical SD card, but also a replacement to cover the one Moccia would have to cannibalize.

Above: The 2-gigabyte chip that detached from the SD card’s surface-mount circuit board. It has 24 leads on each side. (Photo by Justin Kase Conder)

He boxed it all up and included a note detailing the paramount nature of the items therein contained, and shipped it to Skip.

The circuit board used inside an SD card is a surface mount board less than a millimeter thick, and, as one might imagine, the whole combo is assembled using sophisticated, precisely tuned robots. Conder had been told repeatedly his data was doomed. But Moccia had said there was hope. He kept his fingers crossed. It was out of his hands.

A few days later, Moccia gave him a call.

“We’ve got some great news for you,” Moccia told him. “We were able to salvage about six files from your SD card.”

Six? Hadn’t he taken hundreds of photos?

When Moccia mentioned the files were too large to fit on a single CD, they figured out the mixup. The six files were movie files. The photos Conder had taken were CR2 files (Canon’s raw format) and Moccia didn’t have the plugin he needed to view them.

All of the photos were there. He was saved. He could deliver images to his client and he would have the record he wanted of his trip.

Aside from being completely jubilant and gaining the knowledge that there is hope out there for those with dismantled SD cards, Conder said the experience gave him a newfound appreciation for how big the world is, and the broad spectrum of skill sets people in it have.

“I was totally, unbelievably impressed that these people were able to do what they did to get these images back,” Conder said. “It just goes to show that there are people in this world with unbelievable capabilities.”

A few of the miraculously salvaged photos:

Above: Members of the Fresno State University baseball team stand next to a heavily armed Secret Service agent. (Photo by Justin Kase Conder)

Above: The Fresno State University baseball team inside the White House. (Photo by Justin Kase Conder)

Above: President George W. Bush addresses NCAA championship teams during “Champion’s Day.” (Photo by Justin Kase Conder)

 

If you find yourself feeling hopeless, holding a dismantled SD card in your hands, here’s the guy to call:

Skip Moccia

Circuit Technology Center

135 Ward Hill Ave

Haverhill, MA 01835

978-374-5000

 

Justin Kase Conder is a commercial and editorial photographer based in the D.C., Baltimore region who regularly has his photographs published in major national publications. A partial list of his clients includes the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Sports Illustrated, Kaiser Permanente, Clark Construction, USA Hockey, NFL Networks, the Western Athletic Conference and the Boston Globe. Learn more about his work at www.justinkaseconder.com.

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