Edinburgh freelance photographer Dave Johnston flew out to Alicante in Spain on Monday to cover the football tournament at San Pedro del Pinatar Stadium.
Dave and a colleague are out there working for SportPix covering the full tournament of six matches. They are filming video interviews with the Scottish team for STV and the Northern Ireland FA commissioned them for their games as well.
He was covering the double header of games between Northern Ireland v Iceland and preparing to cover the Scotland v Ukraine game tonight. The first game passed without without incident.
He was all set to take photographs at the Scotland match tonight until thieves made off with his kit including 2 camera bodies (a Nikon D4 and a D180), a Nikon 400mm 2.8 lens, a Nikon 70-200mm 2.8 lens, a 13 inch MacBook Pro, a Sigma 24-70mm 2.8 lens and a flash unit. A Lowepro bag was also taken with a Manfrotto monopod.
His kit was beside the dugouts in front of the barriers, so the thieves have clearly leaned over and then made off with it. Apparently they ran to a waiting car and sped off. A member of staff at the arena spotted the car however and noted down the registration number. It is registered in Madrid which is hundreds of miles away, so it was perhaps also stolen.
Dave told us: “The Guardia Civil are taking this theft seriously and have been to the stadium to download the footage from CCTV cameras at the ground. The footage shows 4 men, so I think these were ‘professional’ thieves not just casual opportunists.”
Although the thieves were caught on CCTV and there are fairly clear shots of their faces, the best camera which would have shown them running off with Dave’s kit is broken.
Dave has all the serial numbers of his gear, so this theft may be of limited value as the metadata of any photos may reveal the unique numbers.
Already back in Edinburgh other professional photographers have begun searching their cupboards, and Dave has been offered kit to borrow as soon as he gets home.
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
