A professional photographer lost his life in CR yesterday...

• Today's Toronto Sun headline: Found dead in Costa Rica: Bruce McCallum, a Canadian photographer from Toronto, killed in stabbing.
  

• I didn't know Mr. McCallum but thought I would post this as a warning to us all to always stay vigilante while travelling abroad and maybe even more so in 3rd world nations. I wonder if this would still have happened had he not been alone?
  

• I have a fondness for Costa Rica so am quite upset to read this today. I had hopes of retiring there in the near future or at least spending the winters there. My wife was not quite as taken as I because of the actual 3rd world conditions and now has fuel for her argument.
  
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• This was a robbery and the gentlemen's backpack and camera equipment were taken. These slugs may have known what they were stealing. It occurred at dawn on the Carribbean coast as Mr. McCallum was shooting the sunrise at Puerto Viejo.
  
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• I seriously want to express my sincere condolences to Bruce McCallum's family and friends for their loss at this terrible time.
  

Another Canadian photographer was robbed at gunpoint in front of Buckingham Fountain, Chicago, earlier this year. Michigan Avenue is heating up. That's where the "rich" folks are I guess. The robber started a conversation with the victim, then came back with a couple of friends to rob him. I guess the accent made it clear he wasn't one of those dangerous, armed Americans.

 

<br><br>It's a shame about Bruce McCallum. You don't have to look for trouble, it will find you. My condolences to his family and friends.

According to the news, he was a school teacher and hobbyist photographer...not a professional photographer. Not that this makes it any less tragic. I used to drive by that Collegiate on a regular basic when I lived in Scarborough.

According to the news, he was a school teacher and hobbyist photographer...not a professional photographer. Not that this makes it any less tragic. I used to drive by that Collegiate on a regular basic when I lived in Scarborough.

 

Yes, later as the story updated it said he had taught for 20 years and 18 of them at his last school. So sad, just the same. I felt it pretty hard as that could have been anyone of us at anytime and I love CR. I have two daughters who travel the world as happy-go-lucky young women, trusting, friendly, outgoing... It scares me.

CR's murder rate is about 11 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2009 versus 5 in the USA, but this is not the whole story, of course, as local rates in some states are higher at around 8/100,000 (Alaska, Maryland, and Mississippi) and lower in others (c.2) (Vermont, New Hampshire, Idaho). Same deal for cities. On aggregate therefore CR is only slightly more murderous than the states in the US with the worse murder rates. If we consider violent crime well that's another story too. Either way, we all agree, a bad situation.

 

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-state#MRalpha

When traveling I always think of the video that went viral of a tourist in I believe Russia with his nikon slr and 70-200 2.8 on a strap around his neck. In the video, one guy bumps into and distracts him, another hits the release button and takes the lens off turning to hand it to another guy who hands it off to another guy and all before the tourist even realized it was off his camera. Think how attractive a 3k camera body and a couple of lenses worth say 3k is to someone who makes 800 dollars a year. On a fly fishing trip with each of us packing a couple of $800 fly reels and 500 rods, our Guatemalan guide wouldn't stop for coffee because with 6 guys gear in the car, worth in excess of 10k, we could be killed for it.