Quote:
Originally Posted by dyna mo
you've been in a crazy situation right? on the street when you had to duck for cover from a gun fight or similar?
did you find yourself frozen for a moment and having to consciously make yourself move or how did you react?
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Oh yea, I've been in the middle of some nonsense.
I'm sure there are others, but these are the ones that stand out to me at the moment:
- Caught in the middle of a gun fight in a small road in Bogota, Colombia. Had to hide behind a small concrete wall while bullets whizzed by. We stayed put until it was over. There was no where to go.
- Was pinned down by snipers
twice during the last riots in Bangkok. Have this on video, pretty crazy. They were shooting all around from rooftops trying to hit anything that moved while the ARMY was shooting down the street at protesters. Again, no where to run to. Had to wait it out until the sun went down and creep out of it very slowly. Some people got shot.
- Was taken off a bus at gun point in the mountains of Venezuela by some para military group. I actually thought I was going to get killed here, but there were 15 or 20 of them with guns on us right out of the gate and there was no where to run. They lined all the men up from the bus, my brother and I were the only white guys, they went down the list checking IDs and finally let us go. But I thought for sure that was it, and there was nothing I could do. If they would have shot us, it would have been firing squad style with 15 or 20 guns already pointed at all of us.
- Arrested in Colombia by the military police. Had an early AM raid on us, thrown to the ground, machine guns in my face, boots on my chest, all that good stuff. No choice there either, they took us down within 2 seconds flat.
Those top the list I think. In all of them I really didn't have an option to do anything other than to comply with their orders or take cover. I don't freak out during stress and can handle stuff like that pretty well. I always wanted to try my hand at combat photography, that is what took me to the front line of the riots in Bangkok. I wanted to see how I would handle a real conflict and if I could function to take photos during it. I am OK during times like that, but I have two friends who literally freeze and go brain dead over lesser things, like our raid in Colombia. So I can understand some people having the deer in the headlights syndrome, my two friends do exactly that.