I am, unfortunately, not cool enough to have ever been in a motorcycle accident. I have been in a car accident before though. You will have to take my word for this, as there are no photos of the car accident I was in. You know why? Because I was busy being in a goddamn car accident. I was busy checking that I wasn’t dead and the bystanders — angels that they were — were busy doing the same thing.
[jwplayer OTsaPCx1]
This is just one of the many differences between me and Instagram influencer Tiffany Mitchell, whose own accident, which lives rent-free in my mind to this day, was entirely documented in a meticulous and surreal photoshoot.
In a since-deleted Instagram post, Mitchell described coming off her bike near Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee:
We played around for a couple hours before heading back up to Nashville around 7:30, and on a secluded two lane stretch, I misjudged a curve, took it too fast and my bike went off the road. It slid through the grass and I hit the pavement. I had my helmet on so my head was fine, but I scraped up my left side. I was in absolute shock laying on the side of the road. . . . I had my helmet on so my head was fine, but I scraped up my left side.
I was in absolute shock laying on the side of the road. Scroll through the pics to see how much of it Lindsey captured! Unreal. I was scared, and relieved, and so thankful I could move all my joints and that I never lost consciousness. My friends were at my side immediately, an ambulance arrived within 10 minutes (CRAZY fast), and sweet strangers loaded my bike onto their trailer to haul it back to my house for me. I was in a haze the entire time.
While Mitchell might have been “in a haze”, her friend, photographer Lindsey Grace Whiddon, was not. Whiddon captured the aftermath of the crash in a series of, admittedly, quite gorgeous photos:
Source: Instagram / Lindsey Grace Whiddon.
While taking photos of someone immediately after they’ve been in a motorcycle accident is probably enough to raise eyebrows on its own, what really piqued commenters’ interest was this photo, which has all the appearance of a sponsored post for Smartwater:
Source: Instagram / Lindsey Grace Whiddon.
Now, almost three weeks later, after facing accusations that the whole thing was a put-on to sell water, Mitchell took down the post and took to a lengthy video on her Instagram story to deny there was anything fishy about the story.
Always a good sign.
According to Mitchell, she was unaware that the photos were being taken but she was ultimately “genuinely grateful” that they were:
It’s vulnerability practice, it’s like, this was a heavy moment for me that was scary and that meant a lot and I have this treasure of having these images from it. Nothing about it was staged. Nothing about it was a sponsorship.
The artfully placed bottles of water were just incidental, according to Mitchell, and just what they had on hand at the time.
Folks, if there’s a lesson to be taken from this, it is that you should always wear a jacket when you’re riding.
