In a spectacular moment of stupid, I had left my spare camera batteries in my car before the night shoot, thinking my current battery was nearly full, as it was indicating, and that I would make it thru the shoot without a hitch. Wrong. My camera battery died in the middle of the BLW 26 portion of the shoot for my group, and since no one had a spare EN-EL14a (Nikon D3000 series) to lend, I pulled out my cell phone (a Samsung Galaxy S7), fiddled with the camera's settings to access the ISO and shutter speeds (and RAW capability), and went ham with 1 second handheld exposures.
I'm honestly surprised this came out at all. I showed Steve Barry, who's first reaction was asking how I manged to time it with countdown for the flashes, believing that I had managed to do a night shoot with a phone at a much higher shutter speed. The lesson here, folks, is that the most important piece of photography equipment is the grey matter inside your skull knowing your equipment and how to use it (even if it has dumb moments like forgetting spare batteries).
