In a viral TikTok, a photographer was left in tears after a couple’s wedding photos got erased from his camera’s memory card.
Content creator and photographer Justin Gummow took to TikTok to share the incident, which he described as “the worst thing that can happen to a photographer.”
He explained that he was hired to take snaps at a wedding in California, taking hundreds of photos of the bride, groom, and guests on the big day.
However, after transferring the photos to his computer, Justin was left “panicked” as he realized the memory card had become “corrupted,” deleting all the images.
“My card didn’t just get copied over, it got cut and copied over – so the card was erased,” Justin explained in a video with over 17.3 million views.
The photographer said he spent his own money in an attempt to restore the corrupted card, but unfortunately, when the photos were restored they were heavily pixelated.
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Photographer breaks the news to newlyweds
“Resigned, I sat there and I cried for a minute, and I said, ‘This is the worst. This sucks,'” Justin explained. “I had to call the bride and let her know that all those memories from her day that she paid a professional photographer to take, were gone. That sucked.”
The photographer offered the bride and groom a full refund and asked to take additional photos for them free of charge.
However, Justin later noticed some of the photos had somehow been saved onto the camera itself, instead of the memory card. He was able to recover those snaps, which brought some comfort to the newlyweds.
Though the photographer “hopes this doesn’t happen to anybody else,” he noted how this tip “hopefully might help somebody” in the same predicament.
In a follow-up video, the TikToker stated that the couple were very understanding and forgiving when he broke the dreaded news to them. He described them as “the kindest, most gracious couple,” adding that he took full accountability for all the deleted photos.