As iNatters, we have probably all gone somewhere with the purpose of taking photos, or at least have taken your camera/iPhone with you somewhere, and it proved useful. And we probably have all seen some pretty cool organisms! But the more you go out and do something, the more of a chance you have to have some pretty annoying experiences.
Here’s my worst: I came somewhere with my camera, all charged and ready, to take some photos at a new place. I took my camera out, opened it, and tried to take a photo. And that’s when it hit me–my camera card was in my computer, back at home. Since I was there with my family, I couldn’t go back and get it. What made it even worse was that I saw a lovely moth, probably a wave or mocha, that I had not seen before, as well as several others enjoying the cooler day. I certainly learned my lesson that day, and since then, have checked meticulously to make SURE that my camera is really ready for the trip.
What about you? I’m excited to hear some of your stories! 
Frustrating, for sure, but I imagine your family didn’t mind that you weren’t stopping every ten feet to take a picture of a moth!
I was irritated by the question. As long as I’m iNatting it’s not frustating. But then, that’s what your story is about.
I have learnt by experience like you to check that I have the card in the camera and that the battery is charged - and take a spare battery on longer trips.
Especially whne the battery dies and you think: if I wait a few minutes, hopefully the insect is still there and the battery has recovered that much that it lets me take that one photo.
Definitely so many!
- Ticks, ticks, ticks
- Camera dies midway through Inatting
- Having the coordinates of a rare plant and not finding it at the coordinates
- People marking my observations Captive/Cultivated when I clearly state “not planted”
- Getting blocked by Inatters
- When others stop for me to “take one photo”(spoiler! It’s never just one!)
- Finally, when people make fun of me for being a “weird nature nerd”(or much worse that I can’t say here without getting this post flagged.)
I found a live Neotibicen superbus– my favorite species of cicada, and uncommon in my area– while on a walk, but it flew away before I could get a picture. If I had managed to photograph it, it would have been my first live observation! This was like months ago and I still think about it regularly.
Also once someone called the cops on me while I was at the community center in the neighborhood I literally lived in. That was unpleasant but I suppose it was more frightening that frustrating, especially since the responding officer had absolutely awful etiquette in regards to cornering a lone teenage girl in the woods.
When people observe Barney and say it’s a T. rex.
Oh, they were playing tennis, and I had to join in 
Had to write - I’ve done the SAME exact thing with my camera. Left the card at home 2.5 hours away!
Great minds think alike?
I’ve done this many times. I try to keep a spare card and batteries in my backpack, and I also don’t close my camera’s battery/card doors if the slot is empty. So when I pick up my camera, I’ll know something’s amiss.
I went on a trip to Spain without my cellphone, so my mom lent me hers. It was a brand-new iPhone, and I had no idea you had to give the camera permission to save the location of the photos. Because of that, none of my pictures showed where they were taken, and I honestly couldn’t remember the exact spots. In the end, I just had to guess and put an approximate location for each one.
Had that forgetting of the battery or card happen to me as well, but fortunately never on once-in-a-lifetime-trips but only on outings in the neighbourhood… still pretty annoying.
My worst frustrating moment was probably when I was on vacation on Galapagos and my DSLR started dying.. the camera body was not able to recognize the lenses anymore and so I was not able to focus on any subject… that happened on my second day on Galapgos.. oh my, my vacation was basically over at that moment 
I somehow was able to “repair” it, though. And after countless tries it suddently just started working again for the rest of my vacation until this day.. that was 6 years ago and I still expect my camera to finally break down any day so I can defend my need to get a new camera.. however, it is still with me and running strong after 14 years and wittnessing namibian desert sand, south american rainforest climate, salty ocean breezes and even an armed robbery (where they just stole my phone, but not the camera.. it seems to stick with me through whatever)
.. to this day I have a weird dream every now and then, going somewhere with my family and something happens to my camera and I observe the most amazing stuff and cannot take the photo.. I guess I really have first world problems if this is the worst nightmare I end up with😆
That’s a pro tip right there - never close the little doors on an empty card/battery slot. I also had to start doing that after a couple instances of heartbreak. 
Wow! Smartphones can be troublesome! Welcome to the community!!
I’m glad to know so many people forget there camera card.
I do it LITERALLY ALL THE TIME.
The worst was when I went to some lake somewhere and saw a pied-billed grebe for the first and only time. I pulled out the camera, zoomed, focused, clicked the shutter button, then looked at the camera screen and saw the fateful ‘no card in camera’ pop up.
Not to mention starting a walk down the road, then checking, seeing I forgot it again and having to run back.
Probably the second worse is seeing something super cool and missing the chance to get the photo, like a sharp-shinned hawk flying over you at a baseball game. All I got in the photo was the very tip of the wing.
Frustration with a happy ending—does that count? I was cycling through a national park a few days from home when a butterfly flew from behind and nearly collided with my handlebars, then flew off. The inner wings were metallic azure with black edges and white bands at the tip—she was a Southern Purple Azure female, I deduced later: uncommon due to a dependence on ants and mistletoes. I swung the hip pack around and pulled the camera out, but she was gone. Even if she had landed nearby, the outer wings resemble ridged bark, so she would be very hard to pick on a trunk.
I developed an obsession: I had to find another one. Northern Purple Azures are known in Brisbane but not often seen. According to one expert, Southern Purple Azures are not found here. Both species are hard to spot because they fly erratically, land high and move rarely. I cycled for hundreds of kilometres looking, with no success. Then, one day I was arriving home and looked up at a tree oozing sap next door where Evening Browns had been congregating. I saw a white band on a forewing—and ran inside for the camera. I just managed a photo before she flew off. A Northern Purple Azure at least. I proudly posted to Facebook. An expert came back with a corrected ID: Southern!
maybe not exactly the kinda answer you’re looking for, but for me, it seems that if I find a particularly cool critter (and for me, it’s always some sort of bug or spider), my camera will insist on focusing on everything but the subject! and if I put it in manual mode, the subject will then move around all too much! 
There’s a general tendency I’ve noticed where the coolest encounters keep happening to me on the days where I think “eh, it’s just a quick chore run, I don’t need a camera today”. Le sigh. One day I’ll learn…
But for a more specific example – I recently participated in a local BioBlitz. Since the idea was to make as many different observations in one day as possible and given that I don’t have a lot of time to frolic in nature, I planned the day out in advance via the maps to be able to scour as wide and interesting of an area as possible.
So I decided on a place where I haven’t been in a while, but which I remembered from my youth to be cool as hell – an endless steppe full of different wild grasses, and a cliff at the end of it, on the other side of which lies local estuary. And looking at the map – there was also supposed to be a village nearby with a nice big pond that I could go to afterwards for a taste of a freshwater-based ecosystem.
The day arrived, and I set out on my little adventure together with the sunrise. In retrospect… I should’ve known better. I made 77 observations that day. 24 of them – on my way to the general area I planned to have my adventure in.
Where I remembered the road giving away to the endless steppes and expected to find a biodiversity galore – was a sea of trash, and then a sea of brown. Empty tilled earth. A lonely invasive buffalo bur growing at its edge. I trailed the thin line of plant growth separating two giant empty fields all the way to the cliffs, and the only non-plant life I found still living there was a little colony of harvester ants.
That’s okay. That’s fine. This is fine. The cliffs are made of brittle sedimentary rock and prone to suddenly killing you, so there is always a strip on untouched grassland between the edge and whatever land is being used for human activity. I can always find something there?
No. I can’t. Looks like someone threw their cig butt into the dry grass again, so now there’s a long strip of black ashes instead.
That’s fine. We can go down to the estuary. There used to be a pretty cool ecosystem at the edge of it… The water starts much farther than I remember. The slimy mud shore is a cool insect cemetery, but it smells like death (well, that and ammonia). To get a good shot of tiny lifeforms that still manage to survive along the drying waters, you have to get on your knees and get a whole lungful of rotten egg, human shit, rancid salt and decaying plant matter. I still grab a few quick shots, but decide to move on before I pass out.
It’s okay! Salt water environments are always a bit bare, comparatively speaking. Let’s move on to the village. The map showed a giant pond and those always harbor plenty of cool critters!
It’s gone. There’s a tiny overgrown puddle crowded with mosquitoes and flies, but the place that used to be a giant body of water on the map is an empty football field now. At that point I just internally gave up and ordered a taxi back home. And that was that for my first BioBlitz.
If nothing else – I suppose still a life experience.
The way the world is going, I’m surprised more of these stories aren’t like yours. Welcome to the future.
I had an SD card failure once after taking photos all day. So now, I not only leave the camera door open when changing SD cards as mentioned above, I also always take a photo and then check to see if that photo saved to the SD card, not to mention backup SD cards/batteries.