The Iceman Melteth...

The life of a TV news Photog is one of backaches, callouses and scratches.Then Summer rolls around and it gets really uncomfortable. Think I'm exaggerating? Obviously, you've never babysat a meth-lab raid in late July. Or toured a humidifier factory while wearing a beard-net. Or hounded a Founder's Day parade at high noon. If you had, you'd know we're on the cusp of The Punishment - that three months stretch of eternity when weather bunnies refuse to go outside and news shooters stew in their own juices. Or is it just me? Granted, I'm a white guy covered in fur, a suburban Dad with a perspiration pattern normally seen only in prison movies, a flaxen haired bookworm who sweats like a gorilla zipped into a monkey suit...

But I reveal too much.

Fact is, even an overexposed sweat-hog like me is lost in the puddle of a Southern-bred Summer. Take my friend Rick Portier up there - he of Baton Rouge burger fame. Dude ain't huddled under a towel 'cause he thinks it looks cool. No, he's just trying to stay upright. To do that, he'll suffer the slings of indignity known to photogs far and wide: He'll dress like a kindergartner on a field trip to the zoo - even while slumming inside some governmental press junket. He'll hide his last bottled water in his boxer shorts while fending off winos at the corner of Crackpipe and Swine. He'll accompany a hot news intern through a crowded ballroom with his bald head held high - even though he looks like he cat-napped in a car-wash. Hell, he won't even flinch when said intern catches him french-kissing his news unit's air-conditioning vents.

So what can you do? Not a lot, air-conditioned news viewer, but remember: If the overly-coiffed news tease standing in front of that brick wall on your tee-vee looks a little hotter than usual, know that her beleaguered stevedore is somewhere near, hunched over his rig, summoning the strength to plunge a rusty Leatherman into his own roiling gut as a sweat-soaked swatch of terry cloth covers his pate - but not his shame.

Now step over that wet patch of pavement, would ya. If I'm not mostaken, that puddle used to be a friend of mine...

Ten From Within

It occurred to me the other day - while hurtling toward a smoking lump of bent sheet metal - that I've become inured to calamity. When exactly it happened I'm not sure but I think my crusty photog shell fully formed somewhere between my eleventh hundred structure fire and mile marker 613. This minimum of empathy doesn't fill me with pride; neither does it stop me from tearing up at certain paint swatch commercials. Nor does it prevent me from filling up the screen with scenes some folks find repellent. It's easy: just frame up the pain and look away while you roll. While you do, consider if you yourself have been at this twisted gig too long by reviewing the...

Top Ten Signs You've Covered Too Much Spot News

10) Like Pavlov's dog, you instantly wolf down whatever food is front of you at the merest squawk of a walkie-talkie.

9) You've been to more bus wrecks than ballgames.

8) You judge smoke plumes by viscosity, debris fields by style and inner city stand-offs by their proximity to affordable buffets.

7) You've been berated by folks wearing pajamas in every county your station covers.

6) More than once you've nearly plowed into your spouse's car as you roared out of your driveway en route to some stranger's midnight collision.

5) You've chased a competitor's live truck to a breaking news scene you didn't even know existed.

4) As soon as the assignment guy starts rattling his maps, you stop drop and roll your ass out of the newsroom.

3) You've cat-napped by a lake as men in dinghies dragged it.

2) You've conned your way past whole generations of volunteer firefighters.

And the number one sign you've covered too much spot news....

1) You're reading this in a building with a row of satellite dishes out back.

Live Truck Summer

2010 (Rated R) Romance, hijinks and live shots ensue as a mismatched news crew covers a Georgia heatwave. She's a polished young reporter with her eye on the anchor chair. He's a loopy shooter who woke up in his clothes. Together they do battle with City Hall, some surreal hillbillies and their own tense chemistry until a ribbon-cutting gone wrong erupts into an impromptu road rally. Featuring a cast of unknowns and shot on a sun-warped Polaroid, this straight to cable release had a promising premise, but lost momentum early in the Second Act, when the cranky couple gets stuck in Atlanta traffic and spends the rest of the film behind the wheel of their idling live truck, trading office gossip and humming along to a yacht rock marathon. 1 out of 4 Stars.

A Question of Weaponry

Do pardon the vexed expression, but a most dreaded development has wiped the smirk from my fuzzy mug. You guessed it: they're taking my heavy glass. No, a quartet of horsemen didn't show up on my porch and rip the fancycam from my cold, dead hands - but a certain Brit did lay a new rig on my desk the other day and left me with a raging case of D.L.S. That's Diminished Lens Syndrome for those of you without tripods in your trunk. The symptoms are predicatable enough... initial unease at the idea of shrinkage, a false hope that smaller will somehow be better, the cruel realization that you're about to hit the streets with a molded plastic pea-shooter. Why it's enough to make an aging lenslinger pursue a second career - you know, something impervious to change like chimney sweeping, carpentry or cosmetic sales... Who am I kidding? I'll be shooting ribbon cuttings 'til they drag me away to the Old Photog's Home, but apparently I won't be doing so with a full-sized Sony in tow... Sigh.

You'd think a cameraman in his forties would welcome a lighter load. Not. So. See, those anchor-like growths on our shoulders are actually sleek, powerful weapons with incredible range, perfected ergonomics and a steadying heft. But it's not the size that matters. It's performance. What used to be accomplished with a subliminal pinkie twitch now requires the exploration of a few computer menus; dense parameter settings that are difficult to delve into when you're walking all one-eyed in front of a shackled crackhead. Throw in the tiniest of viewfinders along with a lowered lack of light tolerance and you have just two reasons why my new bazooka leaves me feeling less than protected. I guess the only thing I can be thankful is that The Suits didn't decide to outfit with honest to God baked-potato cams - those fist-sized abominations that shouldn't be aimed at anything bigger than a kindergarten graduation. Oh well, at least the Edit Bays aren't changing...

Except...they are. Final Cut Pro - that most exquisite format agnostic edit suite - is popping up in darkened rooms throughout El Ocho. I've hard to ignore their presence for weeks, preferring the comparatively simple Grass Valley system over the candy-colored hell that is an FCP keyboard. Today, however, I jumped on board and what shoudl have taken an hour took three. Good thing I had the time. Most days I don't. And therein lies the crux of my concern, for while Final Cut Pro is strikingly superior, it ain't exactly built for speed. And in News, speed is paramount. After all, this ain't a boutique. I need to be able to blow into a bay with the smell of house fire on me and lay the whole tragic smack down in under a few minutes. Will I be able to make such a deadline on a Mac with attitude? Eventually, but not before a hundred frantic deadlines test my resistance to stress-induced cigarettes...

Now, don't me wrong. These days, new toys are a great problem to have and while I wouldn't have voted to change EVERYTHING at once, I know I can make potent television with just about any piece of equipment that works as advertised. So do me a favor: When I come back on here in six months and rave about the merits of all this new equipment, remind what a wiener I was at the very outset. Until then however, I reserve the right to be grumpy as Hell about it and document in triplicate how things were better when test patterns were hung out to dry. I am a photog, after all. I can wimp and simper in three different disciplines and still feel like a man - even when Weaver or Matt finds me openly weeping in a sequestered edit bay.

I just hope they won't post pictures...

So Not Worth It

You can try to be careful, but spatial awareness and a day-glo vest will help but so much when you're clinging to the side of a busy interstate. It's one of the less logical things we photogs do. Most times though, a few minutes on foot in the breakdown lane results in forty seconds of newscast filler: a sauteed blur of rubber, chrome and steel. As footage goes, it's pretty forgettable and the inherent risk in its acquisition roundly ignored. Then, something tragic happens. Such was the case today when a sedan struck KSL photographer Mike Radice as he shot video of emergency repairs along westbound I-80. UDOT crews had blocked off all but one lane as they worked to restore a washout.

A sedan and semi truck collided as a result, and the ensuing energy spun the sedan into Radice - who no doubt didn't expect to become part of the news today. His exact injuries are not known, but he remains at University Hospital in serious condition. My heart goes out to Mike Radice, but his murky fate angers me as well, for the kind of video gathered by the side of a screaming highway is often generic, gratuitous noise will little benefit to the viewer and unthinkable risks to the person tasked with bringing it back under deadline. Will I refuse to go the next time I'm dispatched to a similar scene? Unlikely, but I will do everything within my power to minimize the risk, though as Mike Radice and the people of love him can tell you, there's only so much you can do when you're all alone and exposed on the open road. Godspeed.

(Photo by Matt Lee, ABC 4 News )

Schmuck Alert: Paper Goon

Proving you don't have to break a sweat to get charged with assault, a mustachioed brute went all 'periodical' on a Texas photog and came away with a court date. It happened in El Paso. KFOX photographer Rudy Reyes was hunched over his camera outside a federal courthouse when the father of an accused judge walked by with an unidentified family friend. Apparently, the swarthier of the two men took offense at being videotaped, for as he passed Reyes' lens, he swatted the photog on the head with a rolled up magazine! Apparently, this bruiser takes more than fashion tips from those old Sopranos reruns. If only he'd caught the show in its initial run, he'd know that even the most conflicted goon wouldn't strike a cameraman with a rolled up copy of Playgirl. Damn those basic cable edits!

To make matters worse, the heavy in question totally blew his HBO audition with a badly acted denial of the videotaped wallop. Chances are Reyes will recover, but it doesn't change the fact that the veteran photographer was within his every right to record the duo waddling up the courthouse steps. No doubt the still-unidentified man thought he saw a mosquito on Reyes' dome - or else he figured a harmless thwack from his dog-eared issue of Playgirl would be received as a show of respect or at the very most, an unrequited love tap. Not so, Asshole! Shortly after the son of the man he accompanied to court was convicted of corruption, police moved in and arrested the well-read troglodyte. It's impossible to know if the assault charge will stick, but I for one hope this thug pulls actual time - if only so he'll have to tell his new cellie how a magazine full of shirtless Chippendale dancers landed him in the poky. Say it with me...

Schmuck!

The Ballad of Kent and Brenny

As a guy who just celebrated his 20th wedding anniversary, I can appreciate a good partnership. Which is why I've got such mad respect for those reporter/photog teams that toil side by side, day after day. Take Kenny Cravens and Brent Campbell. For the better part of eleven years, this dynamic duo has covered Winston-Salem and points beyond for the kingdom that is El Ocho. Eleven Years! There are whole nation-states that haven't lasted that long! Even more amazingly, at no time has anyone ever had to pull either of them from the other one's jugular. Me - I get sick of anybody after about three days. Throw in the stress ball that is your average news day and perhaps you'll understand why I've been caught fashioning reporter voodoo dolls out of duct tape and toothpicks on more than one occasion. But this post isn't about my own shortcomings. It's about a seasoned pair of pros who've never let the vagaries of the chase unravel their friendship. Hell, in certain Winston-Salem news circles, 'Brent and Kenny' are considered one person! That is, until now...

See, Kenny's leaving. Soon, he'll pack in his local lens and hightail it back to his beloved Kentucky. There, he'll join his bevy of beauties for a whole new set of adventures and while some of them may involve a fancycam or two, it's safe to say he'll never again be a part of such a celebrated news crew as the Campbell-Cravens Continuum. It's our loss. Since arriving in the better of the Carolinas back in1997, Kenny has maintained a level of professionalism that still eludes your rather lippy lenslinger. While he spent most of his time in the Winston bureau, he played an integral part in our hurricane coverage - which may explain why he's soaking wet in so many of my memories. I also remember standing in a convention center full of American Idol wannabees, staring at my cellphone in disbelief as Kenny's voice told me he wouldn't be joining Shannon and I on our D.C. junket because, well, the satellite truck just stranded him on 1-95. (I thought he was screwin' with me until he didn't show up).

Now it seems Kenny's leaving us for good - just in time to miss our switch to smaller cameras, Final Cut Pro and my eventual mental breakdown at the hands of new technology. But as fragile as I am, we're all a tad worried about reporter Brent Campbell - who'll have to carry on in Winston without his favorite partner. As for Kenny, he'll fare just fine in his home state - though if he ever gets the urge to shoot another hurricane, he'll have to head East and strap on the laptop that will someday replace the sat truck. We'll be glad to make a spot for him - provided he bring some of that Kentucky bourbon to wash down the half-frozen ham-sicle sandwiches that pass for storm coverage cuisine. So good luck, Kenny. Promise us you'll stay in touch with Brent - lest we find him atop the receive tower, staring Westward, pining for his photog and friend. Otherwise, we're sending you a bus ticket...

Contents Under Pressure

Say what you will about the overheated scrum, but I do some of my best thinkin' while wedged between seven competitors and a fresh felon. As for what's on this guy's mind, I haven't the foggiest, but something about his determined countenance spoke to me long before I drained most of the color from this excellent Matt Ryan photograph. Sooo, without further adieu, allow me to project my own twisted missives on this total stranger's thought bubble in a little segment I call Contents Under Pressure...

5) Three more minutes before my battery dies. If that overly groomed worm from Station X asks this guy one more question, I'm kickin' em both in the nuts.

4) I've read the McRib is back - but for how long?

3) Seven different microphone flags present and I get the radio station's day-glow billboard in my shot. That's gonna cost me a good five minutes to pixelate.

2) I really should be paying close attention to what this dude is saying so I'll know what to tell the web guy when he calls in a minute to grill me -- SQUIRREL!

1) Perhaps that 64 ounce Slushee was a poor choice

Roll With It...

Ever have that dream where you're down on the ground suckin' rotor wash and suddenly the chopper starts dropping frogmen? (You know, the old school Johnny Quest heavies that used to pop up on the back of Race Bannon's boat...) Of course you train your lens on their descent and never even flinch as they peel back their masks to reveal themselves as your least favorite anchor team. Except they're not really an anchor team you've ever known but an amalgamation of dynamic duos from your last eight affiliates. There's Chet and Buffy, Skip and Cassandra, Pinkie and the Brain... At first it makes no sense why they're sporting formal wear under their wet suits, but then you catch sight of a jug band warming up in a nearby swamp and you realize you're pulling another shift on some kind of cosmic telethon.

That's when it gets weird: First Bigfoot comes out for a little soft shoe, followed by a bevy of Budweiser girls who proceed to act out the entire Alec Baldwin intro scene from Glenngarry Glenn Ross with nothing more than Popsicle sticks and their own inherent jigliness. None of it makes a damn bit of sense to you but since you're just standing under a camera it doesn't have to. Besides, there's a disembodied voice on your headphones telling dick jokes and you're pretty sure you'll be quizzed on them the next time you hit the break room after the noon news. For now though all you can do is roll with it, though somewhere in the shallow end of your eyepiece you're beginning to suspect you're dreaming.

It doesn't really matter though, 'cause before you can do anything about it you're swooped up by a chain-smoking assignment editor who gruffly informs you he's the Ghost of Ribbon Cuttings Missed. From there, you're soaring over the Heartland or Silver Valley or Flannel Crescent or whatever the hell your station insist you call your town. It's a bit disconcerting even for a dream, but before you can identify the exact gravy stain on your Assignment Ghost's tie, it breaks away under your grasp and you're falling, falling, falling... By now you're wishing the damn trip would end but just before you crash to the surface a parachute pops out of the fanny pack you didn't know you were wearing and you float harmlessly downward until you land in the middle of a giant satellite dish.

There, you lay in the lack of shade and twitch a while what's left of your frontal lobe searches for meaning and nuance to the disjointed misadventure you now find yourself trapped in. You're about to piece it all together when a distant siren sends a jolt through your frame and the scanner junkie that lives inside you rises up from the ashes of that lasagna you ate before bedtime and you find yourself staring at the biggest smoke plume you've ever seen. That's when you realize the damn thing is wrapped in yellow crime tape and even though you're now schlepping sixty pounds of prehistoric recording gear you realize the only sensible thing is to climb this intoxicating tower of police tape and smoke. All goes well for the first few feet but when your foot gets caught in the coils of video cable hanging off your battery belt you lose your sweaty grip and once again you're falling, sinking into the abyss of a delusion you just KNOW you wouldn't be having if you'd tried a little harder in school and maybe got a real job...

You ever have THAT dream? Or is it just me?

Drunk on the Funk

When last we left our Introspection Action Figure, he was sucking dust in an upper room; spent of energy, crippled by his own misgivings. Okay, so the doll was just sitting there but he's been giving me stink-eye for the better part of a month now. There I'll be polishing off a paperback, staring out the window or trick-clipping my toenails into a distant shot-glass and I'll catch the little bastard eye-gouging me from across the room. Noooo, he doesn't talk - but with a molded plastic countenance, who has the face muscles needed to speak? No bother - I know what he'd say anyway...

"You there - with the thinning hair and thwarted ambition - weren't you gonna be somebody? You know: the thinking man's photog, unrequested pundit, self-appointed scribe for lenslingers at large ... what up with that?"

So far I haven't answered. It's easy when you don't know what to say. But the questions my hobbled doppelganger wants to ask are the very same ones I've been quizzing myself with lately: "Where is all this drivel leading me? How long should a blog continue? Shouldn't at some point I go back and re-read it?" So far no mystical messages have appeared written in my sausage links, no holographic elders have popped up in my peripheral, no speed limit epiphanies have driven me off the road and into a better frame of mind. So where am I going with all this? Apparently, nowhere.

Once upon a blog, I was on fire with The Word, blasting out dispatches well after midnight, hitting the POST button and stumbling off to bed without so much as halfhearted spell-check. As a result, I have five years of rambling screed, an ever-swollen thesis complete with purple prose, run-on puns and a stash of stolen notions. In many ways, that hasn't changed - but what was once a torrent of forehead fodder has turned into a trickle. This bothers no one more than me - for like it or not I'm one of those flaky writer types who has to bleed all over the screen just to feel normal. Lately though, I've managed to sleep just fine without my litany of opinion emblazoned in pixels the web over and it's the exact kind of slumber that keeps a creative soul like me up at night. I LOVE to write - almost as much as I love to read. In the half decade that I've given it a shot, the rewards - while a bit intangible - have been much more than I deserved or expected. So before I go much further, lemme thank you. If you're reading this entry, chances are you've been here before. I appreciate it more than you know - especially considering the fact that...

I'm not stopping this blog any time soon. I can't. Every time I'm tempted to chop down this repository of thought, I lose all strength in my index finger and my temples tingle with story ideas I never got around to tackling. There's still time, I guess. See, unlike the news beast I feed everyday, a blog comes with no set deadlines. I can (and will) add to it when I'm inspired and I'm willing to fake it the rest of the time. No. Problem. Just know that I haven't forgotten my mission statement: to spotlight the plight of the TV stevedore. It's a task I'm oddly qualified for and until my eyeballs run down my face I'm going to continue adding to this web address. But don't be alarmed if my output wanes once in a while. It'll come surging back when I can least contain it and if history is any indication, I'll gladly get it all over ya. Meanwhile, let your eyes glaze over this mea culpa, for I was reluctant to write it in the first place. I'd love to be implacable, but twitchy word-nerds like me can rarely pull that off. No, I share this lack of progress report with you with the sole hope that it somehow gets me back on track - which is the last place I spotted my quickly diminishing train of thought.

So don't cry for me, Lower Archdale. I'm fine. And if you promise to click back here and there, I'll keep adding my blather. In the meantime, a 'slinger's got to find a way to cope - which is the only reason I bothered you at all. Just be glad I'm not fixating on my action figures, or posting fresh pictures of them on the web...

...'cause that would be weird.

The Usual Suspects

When is a train wreck the social event of the summer? When you know more cameramen than debutantes, that's when! Moments after an Amtrak passenger train derailed in downtown Mebane yesterday, a predictable scrum began forming around the wreckage. I was in Raleigh at the time, battling field trip kids at the North Carolina Museum of Art. As impressive as that place was, my heart was on the edge of Alamance County, for I knew a number of my friends were convening there against their will. Thus, I couldn't help but stop by on the way back West - if for no other reason than to count the crews who suddenly found themselves stranded by those buckled tracks. My timing was off. The noon newscast had just wrapped up, another press conference was hours away and even the looky-loos who'd canceled the rest of their day were getting bored by the debris. Those crews I did encounter were a little hollow-eyed, mumbling in half sentences about impossible deadlines and a glaring lack of dining options. I offered to get food but most of them stumbled off to their live trucks in a zombie-like daze. No worries. I took a few more looks around, realized I couldn't reach El Ocho's sat truck on the other side of the tracks without a congressional escort and beat feet out of town. Later I was forced to glean details of the disaster by staring at a glowing screen in the corner of my den...

Weird.

Austin's Hour

I don't feel good about everything I put on the air. It's hard to - when at any time I may be called upon to distill fresh misery. That said, this gig has its moments - and they're rarely where you might expect them. Take yesterday. By 2:oo PM, I'd yet to pull the trigger on my fancycam. Instead, I spent the morning furrowing my brow over Final Cut Pro - the stunning edit suite I've been studying thirty seconds at a time. It was a useful session, but it didn't change the fact that two minutes of the 6:00 newscast was sponsored by yours truly and 120 seconds of me chewing my lip over a candy-colored keyboard would not do. So I worked the phones, did the math and ended up driving an hour away from the station, deep into the kidney of a neighboring county.

That's where I found Austin Whitaker, a twelve (and a half) year old Burlington boy who was just happy to be done with his End of Grade testing for the day. Then again, it's been a tough week for this Alamance County seventh grader. See, late Saturday night Austin was lying in bed reading a book when he heard a strange crackling noise coming from down the hall. Imagine his surprise when he looked down the hall to see flames licking the interior of his family's mobile home. From here, this story could take a typically tragic turn - for trailer fires aren't known for their happy endings. But Austin wasn't going to go down that way, so he lept into action: waking his parents, grabbing his five year old little brother and generally saving the day. Not bad for a kid whose main motivation is achieving the next level in a bevy of video games...

Yes, thanks to Austin, his family escaped their burning home. Three dogs and a cat did not. Their modest trailer is now a petrified mess and Austin's parents still aren't sure how they're going to go about rebuilding. All that aside, the entire family welcomed me into what was left of their yard and miraculously, we had a few laughs. I left forty minutes after I arrived,with just enough interviews and cutaways to tell the story of a 12 year old boy who knew when to man up and the grateful Mom who still can't help ribbing him a little. My silly little TV story won't bring back their belongings, but I do hope the exposure will bring some charitable viewers their way and if nothing else, Austin might be hailed as the hero he is by his classmates...

Not bad for a late-day shoot in the middle of the sticks...

Clash of the Scavengers

Thanks to realistic movies like Up Close and Personal, Hero and Anchorman, the general public has a pretty good idea how news crews act. We go live(!) without any wires, talk over the sound we're recording and regularly challenge each others to knife fights. Okay, not really. Truth is, it's a small business, one rife with incest and peppered with assholes. Still, most people are pretty decent - regardless of what side of the glass they're on. I'm not saying every sat truck encampment is a Love-In, but for the most part, folks get along.

Which is why a recent riff between a FOX affiliate and an ABC crew is so perplexing. It happened in the Sooner State. With deadly tornadoes barely a memory, TV crews from near and far descended on the damage in and around Oklahoma City. Having not been there since the turn of the Century, I couldn't tell you the lay of the land (flat, as I remember). But it seems pockets of debris were hard to come by, as a crew from nearby KOKH-TV stormed a Good Morning America live shot, catching the normally chiseled Sam Champion looking a little confused around the edges. After pushing his clipboard into frame, Sam can be seen addressing the local lenslinger (who no doubt was just following orders)...

"You know where you're supposed to be ... so be there. It's alright ... it's all good ... so just be there."

AWK-weeeerd! Now, trampling over a visiting crew's newly secured spot isn't illegal. In fact, the sharply swung elbow is a sanctioned reflex of the body photog. But pointing a live lens at the other guy's talent is damn near taboo and as photographer John Biebrich found out, a great way to get stink-eye from a weather guy. While no mannequins were harmed (network OR local) in the making of this clip, it has gone viral - with web viewers weighing in with great vigor on the Network Bigfoot Syndrome, the ravages of live TV and the veracity of Chamipon's cheekbones. There's even a detailed post-mortem on display at b-roll.net - where most agree the network guys were for once, in the right.

Me, I can't help but think about a certain morning several weeks ago, when I was setting up an early morning live shot along a tornado-damaged patch of High Point. Soon after I strung up my lights, camera and tripod, a sat truck hired by ABC materialized. The driver stopped to chat, but soon drove past to a badly -damaged gas station in the distance. There, they broke out enough HMI lights to make that broken Citgo visible from the space station. It was so much light I was tempted to horn in on their cinema, but my cable wouldn't reach and besides, three minivans lay on their side just a few feet away. In other words, there was plenty of eye candy to go around, so I didn't have to risk life, limb and logo by wading into someone else's fray...

It's just bad form.

Whitey's Watery Woe

Few forces of nature are insidious as floodwater. It's something I first realized while floating through a sea of dead cattle. That was more than ten years past and I still smell the desperation that Hurricane Floyd left in its rainy wake. Now a similar surge has laid waste to much of Music City and a friend of the blog has suffered as a result.

Longtime readers of Viewfinder BLUES will no doubt remember Eric White, that lanky everyman who poured his endless reserves of enthusiasm into what can be a very thankless job. After four years as a general assignment reporter here in the Piedmont, "Whitey" left El Ocho a better place than he found it, bagging a local Emmy before he left for the flat screens of Nashville. There, he flourished - proving himself a capable storyteller in a larger, busier market before turning his thoughts to higher education. In the meantime, he more than enjoyed his downtown apartment...

I guess you can see where this is going. Whitey was out of state visiting family when the deluge that threatened to swallow Nashville settled in. By the time he returned, there was five and a half feet of water in his apartment - an apartment he was no longer allowed to enter... Word went out. Through new social networking and old fashioned phone calls, associates far and wide learned the most decent guy they ever worked with had just lost most of what he owned. Hearts ached, hands dug into pockets and before it was over I wasn't the only schlub feeling good about helping an old friend. Meanwhile, Eric perservered and - if I know him correctly - tried to dodge any local coverage of his waterlogged plight. Well, eventually his current coworkers got him in front of a camera and produced a piece that is as touching as it is understated.

Days ago, Whitey finally got into his apartment. Most of the water was gone, but the pallor it left over this single man's belongings won't soon wash out. Among the higher-end items lost were his new Mac laptop and a treasured PS3, no tto mention all the other things we take for garnted until they soak in near-sewage. But Eric knows others in Nashville fared a lot worse, so don't look for this eternal optimist to start complaining. Heck, he even Emmy got his back, the grimy press passes looped around it now serving as a fine conversation starter. Godspeed, Whitey...

Emergency Exit Plan

It should be noted that when overnight assignment editor Jacki Cisneros realized she and her husband had just won the Mega Millions Lottery, she finished out her shift. Mature? Youbetcha, but I suspect 266 million dollars would cause this photog to promptly go Kent Brockman...

No doubt I'd high-five a few coworkers on my way out the door, but cruel fate would probably intervene in the form of a misjudged knuckle-bump and I'd end up fracturing my clavicle.

One things for sure: I'm hiring Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings to play my going-insane, er going-away party.

Once I checked out of rehab, I'd call together key County Commissioners, City Councilmen and assorted school board members to tell them once and for all that the cameraman in the corner considers them complete and utter buffoons. Then I'd probably leave town.

No way I'm buying anything as doomed as a TV station, but you can look for those late night infomercials to be replaced by my personal reel mixed in with every episode of Bullwinkle.

Using my new found renown, I'd bring important reform to the rental cop agency, work to ban the revolving door and sink some serious coin in the company that makes yellow crime tape. That shit's got a future.

I'd rent the top of some high-rise as my workspace, lock myself in and finally write that damn book. Weeks later I'd probably be spotted in a downtown park - wearing a top hat and monocle - telling stroller moms and woodchucks alike that I was finally gonna start writing that damn book.

After the Swarm

News doesn't happen in a newsroom. It seeps into the nooks and crannies of your adopted region; down dusty, dead-end roads and up long, plastic hallways. I know, for I am but one of many lenslingers paid to collect perspectives. It's an interesting living and until ACME Products perfects the News Drone 5000, there should be adventure a plenty for those thick enough to pick up a lens. But be forewarned: Numbing discomfort afflict all who enter here. Consider it the price of admission. See, war stories don't ring true unless the teller wears a few scars. It's what separates us from the Producer Class, that rare ability to remember news events by the way they smelled and felt, not just the way they shimmered on the far wall of a crowded booth. Wanna shoot news? You gotta find it first - and contrary to what those wretched deskies think, there is no drive-thru window in the game of Life. Even a few fleeting seconds of footage can require a dirty walk in and an even dirtier walk out.

And that's on a normal day.

Lately, Nashville hasn't had many normal days. One look at the national news proves that. But the flood waters that are swallowing Music City have a far bigger effect on the local guys than your average network news crew. It's their home. True, it's a chance for all Nashville stations to shine, but it's awfully hard to perform superhuman feats when your own lair is swirling in dirty runoff. But that's whats happening in Central Tennessee and it's not quite registering on the national consciousness in the way that Katrina did. Why that is I'm not really sure, but I'd like to take this opportunity to extend a heartfelt shout-out to all the local news crews currently dealing with the insidious beast that is a flood. We have many friends in Nashville: Eric, Nicole, Smitty, Cordan and Roxy, to name a few. It's hit some harder than others (Help is on the way, Whitey!), but chances are they've been too busy scrambling for purchase to soak in the longview. Better days are on the way, folks. What you're living through is miserable history and the only small solace is that you won't need any periodicals or network specials to recall the onset of Summer, 2010.

Hang in there...

Cue the Ruin...

What with a giant oil slick headed for our shore, random news crews are popping up along the Gulf Coast in hopes they'll be the first to spot the blob. It would all be delightfully absurd - were it not such an environmental Waterloo. Still, it's one more reminder that no matter what peril our planet faces, there will be a clot of its most annoying citizens thrusting lights and lenses at the gaping maw of the moment. I'm reminded of the Summer of the Shark a few years back, when field producers from FOX News were caught spreading chum just off Martha's Vineyard. Okay, so that never happened (as far as we know), but you can rest assured that if a hovering spaceship suddenly appeared and started turning citizens inside out, news reporters would rush to the scene and fight for a proper spot in which to debut their designer entrails. Worse yet, they'd drag a hapless shooter like myself alone and before you know it my ignoble end is being twisted into a Made For TV Movie starring that guy who played McLovin' as the furry cameraman who got too close.

That's an intestinal tract I don't need to share with the world, but I cannot guarantee it won't happen, for despite all my armchair smarm, I too rush headlong into misfortune with the notion I won't get hurt as long as I'm packin' a Sony of my owny. Hurricanes, forest fire, daycare stroller regatta: there are few scenarios even a reticent bookworm like me won't storm. Chalk it up to foolish pride, occupational myopia or the mistaken assumption that I deserve a front row seat solely because I spoon-feed select images to the great unwashed. So the very next time a volcano upchucks, or a tribe of Sleestax takes over the Post Office or some fry-cook finds an image of the Virgin Mary burnished into a hamburger bun, remind me how I'm just a mid-market photog with a writing compulsion, severe tennis elbow and a five foot nothing wife of twenty years who might actually miss me should I wind up disemboweled on the evening news...

I promise I won't get mad.

Other People Dying

Ever wonder what it's like to work the overnight shift? Tony Smyth knows. For a quarter of a century the CBC shooter has prowled the meaner streets of Toronto, surviving on a diet of 'death, destruction and drive-thru coffee'. Now his coworker Muhammad Lila has turned the lens of him and created an elegant, bracing and ultimately depressive look at what passes for news after midnight. Despite the grisly assignments, Smyth seems resigned if not happy to babysit crime scenes and fatal car crashes. No shame in that game - but feasting on what the big city will serve up that night' takes an intestinal fortitude your not so humble author sometimes lacks. I ain't skeered - most folk leave us photogs alone. But a steady stream of carnage and regret effs with my head - and I find myself yearning for a sunnier gig to recalibrate my dome. Not Smyth. He's happy to process midnight calamity into breakfast television, knowing that 'nothing's official until Dawn breaks'.

Tru Dat.