Forced Perspective

I was gonna unload... drop a pile of bile so vile even innocent pedestrians would smell the funk I'd fallen into. How else was I to explain my absence from this space other than to detail the vagaries of the chase? See, carrying a camera around everywhere I go has left me draggin' glass. Maybe it's the dirty weather, the dying gear or all the chicanery I framed of late. Whatever it is, the rub of a hundred thousand newscasts has left me feeling raw. It's a fact: exposure to so many transmissions can dull the senses, until you find yourself stumbling from palace to massacre with the same pained expression. No, it's not backaches or bunions or even (drive-thru) botulism that takes so many shooters down. It's Burn-Out: that hollow feeling you get after shoving too much mayhem and minutia through a tube. Most days I can shake off the sensation by working harder than I have to, but lately I've been forced to play with others and their inattention to detail has left me teetering between apathy and apoplexy.

Don't get me wrong. It's my nature to grapple with existentialistic angst one moment and search for a camera battery I hid from myself the next. But lately the usual sturm und drang has left me more frenzied than fatigued and it's quite possible I 'showed my ass' at work a time or two last week. By around Wednesday I was reminding those who hadn't even asked how I've carried enough debutantes across the finish line to qualify as a parade float, how I'd keelhaul the next cur that called in sick, how a man of my vintage simply had no time for amateur hour... After some time my colleagues tired of rolling their eyes and slunk off accordingly, warning all along the way that the wordiest of camera nerds was on a real bender. By Hump-day's dusk, I'd fallen silent, suffering a kind of dashboard despondency as I steered my mobile newsroom straight into the malaise. When it came time to pound my frustrations into a post, I found I couldn't do it, so I stewed in my juices until I was about ready to boil. And when I did, I was more than happy to get it all over ya...

Then, I went for a walk; several of them actually, in the company of my kids and canine. It was there - in my suddenly sun-baked neighborhood - that I realized I'd been whining on the inside. As frightfully insipid as some shifts feel, what I do for a living still beats a grown-up job. I still love it in theory but sometimes the real-world execution feels like an unfinished sentence in which I go from a news-man possessed to a half-dead zombie... At 23 I was conning my way into cop-shops, trading gossip and station paperweights for a shotgun seat on the very next ride-along. At 43, I sink in my seat at the first sound of scanner crackle. How I came to be that way is a story I'm still working on, but I'm not too far gone to admit that all the histrionics I can muster are nothing more than the blather of a badly aging hunter-gatherer. I'm not the first photog to curse the universe over dung-heaps in the distance, nor am I the last. But I join you tonight confident in the knowledge that the journey is still very much worth it - as long as you're careful where you step.

The dog taught me that.

I'm having that dream again...

...you know, the one where I'm covering the press conference and the room goes weird? Normally, I wake up as soon as the speaker's eyeballs start sliding down his face, but the other night the vision persisted...

There I am, happily half-conscious when the dolt at the podium starts speaking in gibberish. At first I'm confused, but then simply riveted as the monotone wonk sorta morphs into the lead Nazi from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Well, hey, I've seen that flick enough to know what's comin', so I block the shot of the nearest photog and scream, "Don't look, Marion! Shield your eyes!" Well, THAT doesn't even fly in dreamland so the photog - a guy I've chatted up at a half dozen structure fires but still can't name - throws an elbow of his own and before you know it we're grappling on the floor like a two A/V geeks fighting over whose turn it is to thread the filmstrip. About that time Himler's chin begins to drip, which is when I usually snap awake with the cat in my face, but this time I shake off my attacker, grab my camera and rise to my knees, lens cocked, loaded and ready to roll. There time stands still as I fight to catch my breath, knowing only that if God's about to strike down the Third Reich - or even that guy who was going over the city's new recycling plan - I'm damn sure gonna get the shot...

But what does it all MEAN? Am I projecting my inner sense of cinema on the most mundane facet of my day? Am I secretly wishing that something - anything - spectacular happen at these notoriously time-wasting events? Or could it be The Big Guy is finally about to smite yours truly for attending more pressers than church services? Naaaaah, it's probably just something I ate...

NAB '10: Check Your Head

Reticent as I am to mention it before booking passage, it's looking pretty official: Team Slinger WILL be attending NAB. That's the National Association of Broadcasters, a shadowy cabal that does little more than stage the world's largest Electronic Media Show every year in that glittering scab in the desert known as Las Vegas. Twice now Weaver and I have traveled there to take in the toys, shoot a few goofy videos and suck up as much free booze as strangers will foist upon us (that's me in the middle there, trying to shake off a hangover in the making long enough to finish taping). But we don't span the continent just to get hammered. There's work to do! What with fending off vendors, gathering enough schwag to choke a sales team and rendezvousing with certain readers, there's barely enough time for a contemplative stroll at the end of the day - let alone trying to rid Vegas of every drop of Maker's Mark.

But it's not the gadgets and ass-hats that bring us back every couple of years. It's the B-Roll Bash. A sausage party if there ever was one, this yearly summit attracts TV news photogs from across the country - all hoping to get a glimpse of the always tall Kevin Johnson, founder of b-roll.net - the highly influential message board that served as the Viewfinder BLUES proving ground. Long before I ever began to blog, I was honing my prose over at Kev's treasured website. For that I'm eternally grateful and if crashing his party every couple of years is the least I can do, well who better than a news photog to do the least that he can do? Don't answer that; just know that in a little more than a month from now I'll be breaking out my finest cabanawear for a surgical strike on Sin City. If that's the kind of thing that deploys your tripod, join us!

Already Rick 'the artist formerly known as Turdpolisher' Portier has pledged his attendance, Amanda Emily is setting aside her archives long enough to visit and we're still hoping that Tiger Woods will wing in one evening for a game of Pin the Blame on the Bimbo. Okay, so that guy's something of a tool - but with the year he's had I don't expect he'll be too eager to hang out with a bunch of sleazy media types, anyway. YOU, however, would be Perfect! Drop me a line if you're in the area come April 12th. I'll be sure to clear my calendar long enough to accept any chips, tips or gratuities. Just be careful, 'cause as we all know... What happens in Vegas will be heavily blogged about. See ya there!