Have Mullet, Will Travel

I was foraging through the Viewfinder BLUES studios earlier when I actually found something to blog about: my inaugural Media ID. I remember the day my very first news director pulled me aside and told me with a gruff I'd be covering the Presidential visit to Eastern Carolina. "K-e-w-l", I thought, envisioning a one-on-one sit down with George Herbert Walker Bush. Little did I know then I'd be sucking tarmac fumes while Air Force One taxied to a stop a half mile away. No, as I sauntered down the hall to get my photo taken, I conjured up small talk for the Prez and I to share while the Secret Service guys yammered into their cufflinks.

"Get my good side," I told the production manager as she fumbled with her Polaroid, "this one's for Herbert." The manager rolled her eyes and lined up the shot while I gave her camera my best thousand yard stare. The next day, I picked up my shiny new I.D. and admired it all the way to my afternoon ribbon-cutting. I'd arrived, I decided. No longer some nameless studio schlub, I was an official member of the Fourth Estate, a swaggering interloper welcomed at crime scenes and fancy ballrooms, as long as I flashed that most prized possession from my velcro wallet. Strangely, the fact that I looked like a roadie from a .38 Special cover band didn't seem to bother me. Since then however, my kids have more than made up for it with their own special brand of shame.

Can't say I blame them...

Doppelgangers in Motion

You ever look up from your workspace and see an exact replica of yourself toiling away for the competition? I do all the time, but only today did it weird me out. I was staring through the viewfinder when it happened. More accurately, I was admiring the dustmotes swirling in the background while the Principal in my lens spoke of car crashes and crisis counselors. With my camera perched on its tripod and my reporter locked intently on the educator's words, I was free to daydream and did. In fact, I ws near catatonic when the heavy door to the gymnasium lobby opened and caused my head to swing to the left. When my eyes gained focus, I could have sworn I was looking back in time.

The reporter held the door while the photog squeezed through the space with his camera and bulky tripod. As they did, the school's basketball coach, a man whose DNA still lingered in my lens, greeted them. Respectful of our own ensuing interview and the subject matter at hand, the coach and reporter spoke in hushed tones while the photog set up his gear. Strangely, I was enraptured with this workaday scene. It certainly wasn't the first time rival news crews shared the news. Heck, I see some of my competitors more than I do extendede family members. Buy something about their 'Groundhog Day' appearance intrigued me. Perhaps it was the overwhelming similarities: Like mine, the other crew's reporter was compact, groomed and vaguely Latino. Like me, the other photog was scruffy, Caucasian and more than a little bored.

When News Crew X interviewed the coach, I could almost read the reporter's lips as she asked the Coach the same questions we had a few minutes earlier. Nothing wrong with that; it was after all a run of the mill story about high school kids badly injured in an overnight car crash. Neither crew was breaking any new journalistic ground and we all knew it. But staring at the four of us just going through the motions made me think and I realized why, to the people we interview on a daily basis, we all look the same for a very good reason.

Of course, I didn't let my lack of originality stop me from my appointed rounds. We soon left the gym lobby quietly, as not to interrupt the other crew as they took the microphone from the Coach and attached it to the Principal's lapel. In fact, I'd pretty much put the quiet interlude out of my mind, until about an hour later when I followed an impossibly vague set of directions to one of the injured boy's home. Who should be squeezing out of the humble trailer's door than our cross-town clones. We traded pleasantries as they packed up their gear and we unloaded ours, but I couldn't help but notice the other photog looking at me funny as they drove away and we climbed the mobile home's rickety stairs.

Bet I know what he was thinking...

Robot Goes Global

Hey, I know those frames! Why it's JL Watkins, creator of Little Lost Robot, dorking up the place on his station's website. It seems someone at WYFF has figured out what a technically savvy spazmonaut he truly is and sent him packin' to Italy! With their Sports Director no less, just in time for NBC's smotherage of the Winter Olympics. Before they crawled into a pressurized tube, JL (he'll always be "Robot" to me) and the ever grinning Geoff Hart shot a trio of clever promos highlighting the photograblogger's inherently entertaining goofiness. Not bad for a guy who collects wind-up cyborgs. Check out his cutting-edge site or Geoff and JL's Torino blog, to see how everyone's favorite globe-trotting uber-doof spends his off-time in The Old Country. NBC should give him his own sitcom...

Open Up and Say Cheese

Some days my job is like pulling teeth. Other days it's merely like watching someone else get their teeth pulled. That was my Friday morning, stumbling through a crowded dental clinic like some two-headed cyclops bent on peering into every gaping mouth. Thanks to intern Stephen George for snapping this shot, though it doesn't really do justice to the crushing swell of humanity packed into the dozen dental chairs, or the stir Jeff Varner and I made while we were there. All I can say is, if you've never waded into a sea of giddy dental hygienists with a TV camera on your shoulder and a former Survivor contestant by your side...well then, you haven't walked even a half mile in my boots. Not that you'd want to.

The Grand Revision

Today's lack of quality post brought to you by Unbridled Ambition, an exciting new fragrance that quite frankly has your friendly neighborhood lenslinger spinning in his office chair. What I'm trying to find a new way to say is I didn't blog last night. Rather, I broke open my collection of scribbled notebooks and launched a hard target search for meaning and clarity. When that quickly proved difficult, I lost interest and began staring at the lava lamp again. But a few minutes later I turned back to my tablets and scratched out a table of contents, columns and rows that represent an awful lot of work for yours truly. But I'm not whining. Instead I'm excited yet weary, grateful to those who've risen from the mist with offers of help and determined to make it worth their while. I probably won't blog about it much; if so, I'll never get it done. Just know that forces are colliding, and work on The Book has begun in earnest. Now if you don't mind, I have about a million words to rewrite. By the way, anybody got a quick synonym for 'delusional'?

Mojo Denied

As the old folks moved in determined unison, I tried desperately to get into the groove. Still, I couldn’t seem to get in synch with my viewfinder and it was beginning to piss me off. It certainly wasn’t due to a lack of visuals. Before me, everything a student of the moving image could want played out in slow motion: repetitive action, staccato sound, fat shafts of morning sunlight. The subjects of my lens were even ignoring me, lost in thought as the burly personal trainer guided them through movements they used to take for granted. Parkinson’s disease had robbed the dozen senior citizens of coordination and the broad shoulder man who looked like he should be pacing the sidelines of a football game was determined to recover their dignity. I was determined to capture it all with my camera, if only I could find my mojo somewhere in my fanny pack.

Electronic News Gathering is fraught with small complications. Spent batteries, dying bulbs, finicky lenses: tiny maladies that can bring the show to a crashing halt, despite the best of intentions. Very often the news shooter spends more time trouble shooting than composing magic. The trick is to never let the viewer know that things are going South, be it through quick thinking or slow editing. Thus, nothing’s more frustrating when every gadget is working but you. As a camera-malady, it’s impossible to predict. Be it a picturesque car wreck, a swirling blizzard, or solemn prayer vigil, everything you line up in your sights feels flat, off kilter, unworthy of broadcast. Worst of all, there is no cure, and show producers rarely grasp your sudden lack of photog feng shui

Sometimes, only a cinematic tragedy can snap you out of it. That’s what happened yesterday, as the trainer instructed the Parkinson’s patients to form two single-file lines. Turning into face each other, the seniors stood at stooped attention as the trainer walked down the center of the sunlit aisle. I leaned on a mirrored wall, cracked my knuckles and thought about the two cups of Guatemalan java I’d downed over my morning e-mail. As I did, two old fellows on the end broke rank and rubbed it in. Slowly, they raised their weathered arms and shook each other’s hand. The small, silent act illustrated their plight in a way words cannot. Worse yet, the backlit sun rendered them in perfect silhouette. In my corner, I fumed – irate with myself for missing what surely would have been my story’s piece de resistance. Grumbling under my breath, I shouldered my axe and waded into the fray, determined not to miss another visual touchstone…

Truth be told, I never did get my groove back. But I captured enough of the room’s atmosphere to properly portray it on screen. Now, every mistake I made on that pockmarked dance floor will come back to haunt me in the edit bay. Maybe that’s where I left my mojo.