My buddy was shooting dragonflies while prone next to a pond. All of a sudden cops were everywhere.

Somebody thought he was a dead body and called the cops.

Not quite as good, but I was lying in a bag blind shooting shorebirds in the mud once. Discovered afterwards the bus load of birders that turned up behind me thought I was a log, to which they referenced the position of interesting birds for about an hour.

Did the cops spook the dragonflies, hence ruining your buddy's shoot, or was he able to ignore the distractions and continue shooting? I think I would be rather annoyed if cops interrupted an image-making opportunity.

Finding a dead body while out shooting is a weird fear of mine. It's almost happened. Luckily someone else found the body and reported it before I did.

Someone else finding my dead body is more of a fear to me!!

Apparently not an uncommon occurrence. I was once mistaken for a dead body by a pond, but instead of calling the cops the person walked over for a closer look. Hearing the footsteps behind me (which of course also flushed my subject), I turned to look, and scared the person half to death.

I was lying prone in a small ravine near a golf course, waiting for the wind to drop enough to enable me to photograph some attractive wild-flowers that were growing there. When the wind abated and I'd got my shot, I stood up, only to notice two golfers looking down at me from the nearby fairway. One seemed startled when I moved, and said to the other: "Christ, I thought that was a dead woman down there!" Dead I could live with, but a woman!?

I guess they thought you had a nice butt!

Once when doing star trails at a nearby State Park, I pulled down a closed backroad (to which I had special access permission), set up my shot and proceeded to lay down in the front seat of my pickup for a nap. After about 1 mins or so, the whole world lit up with brilliant bright lights. The only thing I could think of was run to my camera and stop the exposure. Diving out of the pickup (remember I had been sleeping) I stumbled and ran to my camera. About half way there a voice came over the loudspeaker..."This is the Meade County Sheriff's Dept. Stop where you are and put your hands up." Needless to say, my exposure was ruined.

Apparently this remote back road is a prime location for local drug guys to run down and make drug swaps out of the seeing eyes of the cops and when this young lady cop (balls of steel, she thought she was approaching a drug suspect in a remote area at 3:00 AM with no back up) finally got me in the front seat and I explained what I was doing she let me off with a warning. Funny thing is I don't know what the warning was for, taking pictures, going down a road I had permission to go down, being out at 3:00 AM or just because I irritated her? She told me she was giving me a warning though. She wrote nothing down on the warning ticket she gave me but it said warning on it. I guess she had to give me something. I am thinking of having signs made that say "Caution Photographer at Work...Do Not Approach".

Only occasionally have I encountered law enforcement while out shooting. One time at the Gatineau (Quebec) airport, I was looking for Great Gray Owls. Along comes a police car wondering what I was doing. In hindsight I shouldn't have been surprised. After learning my quest, the officer proceeded to tell me locations around the airport road where he had seen large owls perched. I thanked him and went to search

Another time, on an empty rural road I was approached by a police car asking what I was doing. I explained about trying to shoot a Red Shouldered Hawk. He even seemed apologetic asking if he had maybe just scared the bird away. I said, 'oh no'. He wished me well.

Yeah, people have stopped a few times wondering if I was alright after seeing me laying prone on the ground. Not sure if they saw the camera or not. At least it shows they care which is a good thing

That could be this guy's story too Somebody thought man sleeping in river was a dead body and called the cops.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/12/joseph-deangelo-swimmer-drowning-rise-from-dead_n_1770179.html?utm_hp_ref=weird-news

I was somewhere in Virginia a few years ago and I "discovered" a nice waterfall (me and everyone else that hiked down to it that is). I hiked downstream to the "perfect" location, with my fairly new 1DsMKII. It seemed to me that if I stepped from one pretty green rock to the other I could get to the middle of the stream and take a shot that no tourist had ever taken (cough). So I started gingerly stepping my way out to the middle of the stream. It wasn't a raging torrent but it wasn't meandering either. Just as I reached my destination, a large flat and dry rock, I noticed that a plastic bottle top was lodged a step or so away. I thought bad things about whoever threw trash in such a pristine location and with camera in hand I took one more step toward a pretty green rock. It was kind of a pivoting step, camera held out from my side, grace exuding from my form (cough). A split second into my "graceful, dance-like step toward the pretty green rock I realized that in nature there are few green rocks and near water there are many slime covered rocks. At that instant my foot temporarily landed on the rock as I reached for and grabbed the bottle cap. With the offending cap in hand my leg flew up, the side of my head came down on the flat, dry, rock, my RRS angle bracket on my camera came down on the white rock, and the battery ejected from the camera. As the battery sped downstream I reached for it and missed. I in turn involuntarily careened downstream, laying on my side, in hot pursuit of the battery. I stopped "careening" after what felt like a 100 yard slide that was more like 100 feet with my battery triumphantly held in my hand. My entire left side was soaked. That's when I noticed that my head felt like it had slammed into a rock, which it had, and I started feeling a little unsteady. I climbed my way out of the water slide that I had just discovered and sat on the shore. I looked around for help but where once there had been dozens of tourists there was none. As my head cleared I had a vision of some tourist walking up, finding my dead body, and saying out loud "well, he's not going to need that camera anymore" then walking away with my camera in hand. So I got up and started assessing the damage to myself and the camera. I dried the battery as best as I could and to my delight it went right in the camera and the camera turned on. A quick test shot and chimp let me know that the camera was still in good working order. The RRS bracket had (still has) a little dent in it but the camera survived the ordeal better than I did. I made my way back up the hill, stopping to shoot the waterfall from the large rock in the middle of the stream. After all that the image was so so. When I reached the top one of the "tourists" that I had talked to earlier, an older gentleman, saw me walking up and came over to see what I had shot. When he got closer he asked "did you fall in the stream" I said yes and before I could tell my story he started laughing. Not ha ha laughing mind you. The kind of laughing that makes you have to sit down. Then to make things worse he called his wife over and she started laughing. I actually laughed a little too but I didn't feel right for about two days after that.