28-year-old professional photographer and videographer Hunter McEwen was fired from his latest five-figure commercial job after he lost three days’ worth of shooting when his bargain-basement, counterfeit memory cards failed on set.

McEwen, who stores all his archives on a scattered assortment of dinged-up SSDs he got from Temu, says he is shocked that his $23 memory card bought on eBay from a seller with no feedback failed him.

“I spent $12,000 on my camera and lenses, so I figured, why spend more than I have to on a memory card?” McEwen says. “I know my photos and videos are actually the thing that I’m selling, but it just seems stupid to spend hundreds of dollars on a tiny piece of plastic made by a reputable company. No thanks.”

This is not McEwen’s first rodeo with failed cards. His last cards, bought through an unofficial reseller on Amazon, malfunctioned after the photographer swapped them between cameras without reformatting them.

“It was pretty odd. The card said 512GB on the outside, but it seemed to only hold about 100GB of data. But hey, whatever, I bought six of them for $80 anyways.”

When asked if he ever used his secondary card slot for overflow, McEwen replied, “Lol what?”

McEwen mentioned he’s also damaged camera gear after his $40 tripod from Wish suddenly collapsed on set.

“Why would I pay even $100 for something that just sits there and doesn’t get me clout on social media?” the photographer opined. “Nobody even sees it. So it’s not like it matters.”

The photographer has also suffered unfortunate power failures, but refuses to blame his knockoff batteries of dubious origin.

“He looked so professional and his work was really good,” says the business that hired and then fired McEwen. “We didn’t even consider that someone with all that fancy gear would have the workflow savvy of a toddler.”

McEwen was not the first and certainly won’t be the last photographer to be burned by impossibly cheap memory cards and poor storage practices. If only photographers thought the little item that records and preserves their photos was worth their time and consideration. Who even cares about the actual photo files?

Image creditsHeader photo licensed via Depositphotos.com.