Sometimes the speed and convenience of digital photography isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. This image of political consultant David Axelrod brought the day to a screeching halt at the end of the vice presidential debate last week at Washington University.

Picture editor Lynden Steele, staff photographer (and newly named Emmy award recipient!) David Carson and I were furiously sending pictures back to the newspaper on deadline, working in the media center beside ‘Spin Alley’, where all the consultants give their take on who won what. I had just finished photographing former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani and transferred pictures onto the laptop when everything crashed, all because this frame corrupted the compact flash card.

In the time it took to find the problem and rescue the other pictures, we could have processed a couple rolls in C-41. By the way, that’s what we older photographers used to develop film years ago, like six years ago.