I know a situation where I invariably put my camera down. Not claiming moral superiority, but just saying... it's how I operate.
When there are lives in danger and I am in a position to help, I always do my best to help. This has cost me some beautiful photographs.
A specific example is a backpack trip I took with my wife and some friends. We left my cabin in Camp Nelson, CA and headed up a nearby trail to Pecks Canyon one Memorial Day weekend (May). We were a few miles in the backcountry, and got caught in a brief freak snowstorm. The next morning we had to make our way back to the car with several inches of snow on the ground, inadequate gear and no trail visible. The scenery was beautiful and I had slide film in the camera. But the camera didn't come out. We weren't really prepared for snow and needed to get out.
I had a general idea of the route, but it wasn't an obvious trail like most. I remembered an unusual turn where we had come down from a ridge and I knew if we missed that turn, we'd head into a ravine. What saved our day was the tree blazes. These are cuts in the bark shaped like exclamation points or boot footprints. This was the first time I had to rely on them. I learned that day to appreciate that each blaze is set within view of the next blaze... So once you find one blaze, just stay at the tree with the blaze and look around until you see the next. At least in the Sequoia National Forest it works that way.
I also focused my attention on making sure my wife's feet were warm, since she had thin trail shoes. I gave her some plastic bags to create vapor barrier socks, they worked well enough (since the blazes kept us on the trail) because we got back to the trailhead in the shortest possible time. Only then we found out my buddy didn't bring chains for his minivan, and he quickly got us stuck off to the side of the road.
Bill Roberts, a well-known "local," arrived within a few minutes, loaded up his horse trailer and left us there as he helped everybody else out. I usually tell the story that he figured we'd be alright since I was a "local." At the back of my mind I was worried that he had somehow seen me drinking coffee from my "Sierra Club" mug... I was worried about being discovered ever since he told a joke at dinner one night at "The Alpiner" that he likes to line up "Sierra Clubbers" and "Endangered Species" so he could shoot them both with one bullet.
Anyway, everybody else was taken care of but us, and we were getting cramped and cold in the minivan. At one point we heard the ranger had driven over an edge of the road and had to be pulled out. I finally left our party and hopped in the bed of a pickup truck, determined to just hitch a ride back to my cabin where I could get my own chains. Didn't get as far as my cabin, someone had a set of chains to loan us, so I hopped a ride back to our minivan, chained up and all was well.
I didn't take any pictures the whole day. I wouldn't have it another way.