Bad luck and mishaps and other curious experiences in 15 years of Zwischengas
In 15 years, and that's how long we've been writing and photographing for Zwischengas, a lot has happened. We may have written some of it down before, but we kept some experiences to ourselves years ago. Some of them can also be found in the picture story by our colleague Daniel Reinhard , edited especially for our 15th birthday.
When you think about all the things that went wrong or didn't go as planned, surprisingly little comes to mind at first. Everything was either suppressed or somehow forgotten. But wait, there was something else?
Exactly, there was the Ferrari where the ignition key broke off, with the engine running and in the middle of a photo shoot. There were also major oil leaks and one or two cars got too hot to start.
There was also a special incident with another Ferrari, which ran out of fuel at the most stupid place on the route, namely in the middle of a roadworks where the traffic on the remaining lane was alternating and controlled by traffic lights from both sides. And there I was in the luxury sports car from Maranello, with a queue behind me and traffic approaching from the opposite direction. Everything was blocked until a few friendly helpers were able to push the Ferrari with me into a niche next to the road.
However, an empty gas tank was not that rare on photo drives, fuel gauges are not always reliable. I remember a BMW from the fifties, a Maserati Ghibli, an Alpina BMW, but also a Citroën 2 CV.
And then there were also technical problems. For example, a somewhat more modern Maserati with an automated gearbox. There was suddenly no power, so the gearbox could no longer be shifted.
Flat batteries were the number one cause of breakdowns during the photo sessions anyway, just like in real life.
And yes, the equipment also had to suffer sometimes. Once we drove over the camera with a Seat, which the lens didn't appreciate at all. Another time, the SLR fell down while we were unloading it and the housing was gone.
Some cameras were flooded when shooting in the rain, sometimes the hairdryer in the hotel helped, but sometimes not. Or all the monopods that were either run over or simply forgotten.
Photo shoots were not always peaceful. Sometimes we were threatened with the police because the engine noise was disturbing or because other road users were in danger of being slowed down during car-to-car shots. And then there were one or two encounters with law enforcement officers because we were driving without a license plate or on prohibited routes. However, it has to be said that the police were always understanding and accommodating. Thank you for that at this point.
Overall, however, bad luck and mishaps never prevented us from delivering and publishing articles and image productions. This certainly has something to do with the reliability of the camera equipment. But also with the robustness of our Zwischengas platform (thanks Balz! Please also note his reminiscences in a blog post published a few days ago), which has always been immune to major failures to date.
There have been problems in other areas, for example when we wanted to print the Zwischengas annual magazine in November as usual and the printers told us that capacity would only be available again after Christmas. This meant that the magazine would not have been published until January. Impossible. But we found a way out and were still able to deliver on time. The fact that almost everything always worked out is of course also down to the enthusiasm and improvisational skills of the Zwischengas team.
Sometimes, however, we had to work until we dropped, and some nights turned into days.
15 years is a long time, a lot has changed, some things have stayed the same. What will happen now? We are curious to find out ourselves!
