When things go wrong

There’s a version of the photography tour business that looks very clean from the outside. Small groups, beautiful locations, golden light. And most of the time, that’s exactly what it is.

But sometimes things go wrong. And how you handle it when they do says everything about who you are and how you run things.

The Morning at the Great Pollet Arch

We were out for sunrise. Walking the ground, looking for compositions, doing what we do. I’d spotted a beautiful spot a little further along and went to make my way across to it.

Stepped with my right foot, went to step with my left, and my left leg just completely gave way beneath me.

I hit the ground hard. Couldn’t move my leg. Couldn’t understand why.

It turned out I had ruptured my suprapatellar and suffered a quadriceps tear. One step. That was all it took.

The group were brilliant. They helped me up, we made our way back to the van, and one of them drove us back to the accommodation. From there I headed straight to hospital. I’m now in a brace, on crutches, and facing surgery.

And yet, the tour carried on. I got a driver sorted. The group kept shooting. Nobody went home early.

That matters to me more than I can properly explain.

I also want to say a personal thank you to Brian and Henry (Father & Son). The moment I went down they were straight over to me, no hesitation. I was probably a metre from the tide when I fell, and Brian grabbed me and dragged me back to safety. The two of them helped me scramble back over the rocks and up to the van. I am genuinely grateful for that. To everyone else in the group, thank you. You were all incredibly sympathetic and handled a difficult situation with real grace. Michael, your sense of humour was exactly what was needed in that moment. Barry, your concern meant a lot. You were all brilliant, every one of you.

The Chaos Behind the Scenes

When I got back to the accommodation, I made a decision. I told the group clearly, no offence intended, that my priority right now was me. Getting myself to hospital. They were safe, they were at the accommodation, it was paid for through to Monday morning, there was a restaurant on site. They weren’t stuck. They weren’t stranded. And that meant I could deal with what I needed to deal with.

But getting to hospital was only the start of it. I needed someone to drive down from Derry to Portsalon at short notice. So while I was waiting, and then while I was lying on a hospital bed getting ultrasound scans, X-rays, and doctors coming in to assess the damage, I was also working my phone trying to find a solution.

My brother, who lives in Australia, was ringing around people from the other side of the world. One of my neighbours, away working in Kenya at the time, was on the phone trying to help from there. Another neighbour closer to home was working through what felt like half of Derry trying to find someone who could make it down. I put a post up on my personal Facebook page. The response was incredible. I had offers from all over the place.

My girlfriend, who lives in the Netherlands, was trying to work out what she could do from there. Her dad, a man who hates flying, was prepared to get on a plane and come over to help with the driving. Let that sink in for a second.

In the end, one of my good friends messaged me and just said: I’ll do it.

I want to be honest. Writing this, I still find it emotional. Every single person who matters to me, people who have been part of my life for a long time, all dropped everything to try and help. From Australia. From Kenya. From the Netherlands. From up the street. It was extraordinary, and I don’t take it lightly for a second.

But I want to be honest about that period in the hospital. I was in pain, I was exhausted, and I was in a very dark place. Lying there frustrated, gutted, sad, so many emotions all at once. Trying to work out how I was going to get the guests to Dublin. Trying to work out how the tour was going to end. Two of the guests had already messaged me to say they’d make their own way, get to Derry, then catch the bus to Dublin, just to take the pressure off me. That kind of generosity doesn’t go unnoticed.

But once my friend confirmed he could help, I messaged the group chat and told them all I will be there at 4:30pm, I’ve secured a driver and we’re going to finish the tour! I didn’t say anything before because I didn’t want to make promises I couldn’t keep or build their hopes up until I knew for certain. I just showed late Saturday afternoon evening. I don’t think they expected to see me again, but there I was, crutches and all, ready to shoot.

After a dinner, the rest of the evening we spent down around Dunlewey, the old ruined church, the Poisoned Glen. I was on crutches, doing what I could, hobbling over to the guys and trying to help as much as possible, talking them through what I was seeing, what I’d be waiting for, what was going through my head. At one point Mark, turned to my friend David and said quietly: “He should not be here.”

He wasn’t wrong. But I was. And it was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

The doctor in the hospital had signed me off work for six weeks. And if I was employed somewhere, maybe that would have been straightforward. But I’m self employed. This is my business. This is my life. This is how I’ve made my living for the past ten years. When you’re self employed there’s no such thing as just stopping. You don’t have that option. I’m passionate about what I do, it means everything to me, and I wasn’t going to walk away from my guests or my business because of an injury. So I didn’t.

The day after that, no sunrise, because crutches don’t come with headlights and I can’t see where I’m going in the dark, but we were out at nine in the morning and we didn’t stop until 11:30pm that night. Sunshine, showers, rainbows, dramatic light, light on dark, which is my favourite kind of light. We ended up doing nearly a sixteen hour day. The guests were absolutely fantastic, they where tired by the end of the day but I couldn’t have asked for better conditions. They couldn’t have got any any better!

That matters to me more than I can properly explain.

It’s Not the First Time

This isn’t the first serious incident I’ve dealt with on tour and it certainly won’t be the last. Over the years of running Chasing Light Tours, I’ve had two others that stay with me.

In the Lofoten Islands, a woman in the group slipped on ice and broke her arm. Her husband was with her, both of them photographers on the same tour. I got them both to the hospital, made sure they were in good hands, and then went back to the group to carry on. I asked her husband to keep me updated and as soon as they were done at the hospital I went straight back to collect them. Unfortunately the injury did cut their trip short, but their travel insurance paid out and that’s exactly why I require every guest to have it in place before they join.

On a separate Lofoten trip, a man slipped and dislocated his shoulder. I stayed with him the entire time in the hospital, right through until they popped it back into place. We got back to the accommodation in the early hours of the morning and were back out shooting the next day. Because of what had happened I offered him a significant discount on his next trip. He took me up on it. And then he came back again after that. That’s now three trips together, and I’d like to think that says something about how I handled it.

None of these moments are ones I’d choose. But they happen. Outdoors, in winter conditions, on uneven ground, sometimes at the edge of cliffs in the dark before sunrise, the environment demands respect. And occasionally it reminds you who’s in charge.

What I’ve Learned

Every tour teaches me something. Sometimes it’s about a location, a composition, a better way to explain something. Sometimes it’s bigger than that.

What this injury has made absolutely clear to me is something I should have acted on sooner. I need a second person on every tour.

Not just a dedicated driver, but someone who can share the driving, help sort accommodation, find somewhere for the group to eat, and take care of the logistics that run in the background of every tour. That frees me up to do what I’m there for, helping people with their photography, reading the light, getting the best out of every location. But more than anything, it means that if something does go wrong, there is somebody there who knows what to do. Nobody is left on their own. The tour doesn’t fall apart because I’ve gone down.

From here on, my aim is for every Chasing Light tour to have a second person with me. I won’t pretend that’s something I can implement overnight. It takes time to find the right person and build that into how I operate. But I’m already working on it, and my goal is to have somebody in place for my twelve day Ireland tour coming up in four weeks. That’s where it starts.

And I want to be clear. This isn’t something guests will pay extra for. The price stays the same.

I should also mention something that people don’t always know about me. I hold a Rescue and Emergency Care Level 3 certification, known as REC3. It’s a professional first aid qualification designed specifically for outdoor and remote environments, covering everything from casualty assessment and fracture management to dealing with medical emergencies in locations where the emergency services can’t reach quickly. It’s the kind of training that matters when I’m standing on a clifftop in the dark or in the middle of a mountain landscape miles from anywhere. I completed it because I take the responsibility of leading people into wild places seriously, and I believe every guide who does what I do should have it. It doesn’t make me invincible, as I’ve now proved very clearly, but it means that when something goes wrong, I know what to do.

Why I’m Writing This

I’ve always said that landscape photography can be an extreme sport at times. Early mornings on wet rocks, uneven ground in the dark, coastal edges, winter ice. It’s beautiful but it’s not without risk. It’s also why every guest on a Chasing Light tour is required to have travel insurance before they join. Because things do happen. I’ve seen it enough times now to know that’s not pessimism. It’s just reality.

I’m not writing this for sympathy, though I appreciate it. I’m writing it because I think honesty matters in this business.

A lot of tour operators present a very polished version of what they do. Everything goes smoothly, everything is planned, nothing ever goes sideways. And maybe for some of them that’s true.

But I’ve been doing this long enough to know that the outdoors doesn’t care about your itinerary. What matters is what you do when it doesn’t go to plan.

I’ll be back. Brace, crutches, and all. In fact I don’t have to wait long, because in four weeks I’ll be leading my twelve day Ireland tour. For me, nothing stops.