Photographer leaves $13,238 worth of gear in New York City cab. Taxi driver returns it.

Here's a nice little heart-warming tale from the cold and "heartless" big city. Photographer and filmmaker Casey Neistat was coming back from ten days of travel and shooting when he hopped in a cab at New York City's JFK airport.

The cab dropped him off at a garage in the city where Neistat picked up his car and drove to Connecticut to see his son. It was about an hour into the drive to Connecticut that Neistat realized he had left all of his luggage -- including his gear bag -- in the back of the taxi cab.

While the clothing in his luggage amounted to a few hundred dollars worth of dirty laundry, the production gear included a Canon 5D Mark III, Canon XA10 video camera, a 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, audio recorders, microphones, and assorted accessories.

Neistat valued the lost imaging gear and clothing at $13,238.86

Argh!

But thanks to an honest cab driver, Neistat was eventually reunited with his gear. What he had to go through in his frantic search for his bags -- which Neistat wrote about in an Op-Ed in the New York Times -- was less than heart-warming.

Check out a video about that misadventure (with the happy ending) below.

And in case you're wondering, how the heck does someone leave $13K worth of gear in the back of cab, Nesitat has this to say in the intro to the YouTube video:

"before you call me an asshole for forgetting my stuff in a cab consider i'd been traveling for 10 days straight always with a producer who was responsible for the gear. this one time i offered to take it. was distracted w my cell phone, the bags were in the trunk and i was dead tired. these things happen in life."

(Via DIY Photography)