Nuts and Bolts

Cops, firefighters...hell, even mailmen have plenty of figurines etched in their likeliness. But TV News photographers? Not so much. Perhaps it's our portly profiles, or sordid contortionism or less than noble motives... Whatever it is, something is preventing your local Hallmark shopp from stocking up on tiny dioramas featuring the many adventures of Cecil the Intrepid Cameraman. Yes, if you're a photog looking for a pocket-sized doppelganger, I damn sure hope you like Legos. I sure do, but every once in a while I'd like my effigy with a little less square-face...

Which is why I kinda came unglued the other day when I walked by Weaver's desk (Yes, Weaver and I both have desks in the newsroom) the other day to find a most clever conglomeration of nuts and bolts posing as a neighborhood news crew. In a flash, I grabbed a still camera and framed the metallic 'talent' out of the shot, capturing instead the fierce concentration on the shooter's face. But then Weave got all grabby and the kind of tug of war that would embarrass nine out of ten grown men quickly ensued. I don't want to disclose who won, but let's just say there's a certain Emmy award winning photog who's not above kicking his bestest work buddy in the spleen -- even when said pal is tucked into a fetal position clutching a occupational tool sculpture...

I just wish he hadn't tased me.

~~~

UPDATE! As requested, a wider shot of said sculpture...

Anybody know where I can get one?

The Soggiest Watch

Hey, I'm no alarmist. Most mornings, I spring out of bed like a Ninja, snooze button unmolested. Okay, so I more closely resemble one of those wretched Geico cavemen before breakfast, but that's not what I logged in to discuss. No, I want to talk hurricanes. God knows I'd wish one on no land, but the harsh reality of it is WE. ARE. DUE. Yeah, I know the Gulf Coast is the current poster child for beleaguered regions (and rightly so), but I'm enough of a North Carolinian to remember when our own shores acted as magnets for every other storm with a nickname. Could 2005's Ophelia really be the last hurricane I covered? That seems impossible, but once you've spent a few days surviving on granola, Gatorade and gumption they all seem to blend together....

Which is fine by me.

Fact is, I got more hurricane stories than Jim Cantore on a bender (including a certain unplanned swim I'd sometimes like to forget). Huddling in stairwells, racing sheet-metal down empty beach boulevards, standing in sideways rain while some producer tells the talent to 'keep it short': why the memories are as fresh as a slicker-induced heat rash. Come to think of it, if I'm not careful I'm gonna break out in hives, for no matter how cool a war story that storm coverage will one day make, actually being there is an exercise in suck. Sleep deprivation, hotels that kill the power moments after you check in, gas station food. And that's before the headlining wind ever blows on shore. Once it hits, the real work begins. And with hollow-eyed homeowners standing in line for water, nobody gives one plump shit if the logos you're wearing are less than fresh.

It's almost enough to make this aging photog duck for cover the next time the meteorologist gets weatherection that lasts more than four hours. Almost.

But who am I kidding? I'm certain I'll be among the fools angling for marching orders days before the next storm threatens our coast. Why? Hard to say; it's thoroughly miserable business. In fact, the only thing worse than dodging trash can lids on deadline is watching from afar as your friends and enemies do so without you. Besides, who wants to stick around town and shoot bloodmobiles when the real action is on the coast. Not me - which is why my runbag is already packed. I just wonder what all that continuous storm team smotherage will look like in the age of Twitter accounts and flip cams. Will a new breed of iPhone warriors join the stoned surfers and prickly paramedics out there in the rising surf? Will the current generation of reporters be able to go live continuously - withOUT constantly updating their Facebook pages? Will all those hi-def lenses make the reporter's ass look fat? Or just really, really defined?

Lemme get back to you on that.

The Wisdom of Distance

No doubt about it, what passes through your lens leaves a residue. Just ask Norman Lloyd, the legendary CBS News cameraman who spent thirty years dragging glass into battle all over the globe. He'd tell you about Bravo Company. In fact, the retired combat photog has just completed a documentary about the American soldiers he followed into Cambodia in 1970. "Shakey's Hill" tells the story of the 5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry regiment's search for a massive North Vietnamese weapons cache; a merciless lunge into the jungle replete with leeches, chopper wash and enemy fire. The interviews are new: Lloyd coaxes many of the men who so long ago buried details of those days to open up. The footage is old: forty years old to be exact, but four decades in the can doesn't diminish the power of Lloyd's incredible combat camera work. Fifty eight seconds into the trailer, a shot pops up that nearly liquefied my bowels. I simply can't fathom the guts it took to acquire that footage. But what would you expect from a 26 year old loner who bought a one way ticket to Vietnam? Lloyd did just that and while he didn't plan to come back, he ended up finding his life's purpose in those fields of fire.

"I would go out for three days, sleep in the jungle, shoot action, take notes, and give the film to a reporter who would then do the story. I'd get paid $50 for three days' work."

But Lloyd's courage didn't dry up after the fall of Saigon. He kept taking assignments others wouldn't; traveling to Tehran, Belfast, Nicaragua, Beirut, Somalia and Iraq. Along the way, he cemented his reputation as a combat photog who didn't flinch under fire. He also made lifelong friends; his partnership with a young Ed Bradley helped the late correspondent distinguish himself early. They continued to work together for 35 years. But during all that time, Lloyd kept thinking about the young men he chased into Cambodia - especially the battalion's youngest soldier, a stammering teenager nicknamed 'Shakey' who never made it back from the hill his fellow soldiers eventually won. Carrying a camera into a scenario where everyone else is armed to the teeth calls for a certain kind of youthful courage. Going back to examine the scars requires a wisdom only distance can bring. Norman Lloyd doesn't need to look at old film to understand the horrors of Vietnam...

But the rest of us could use the history lesson.

(Special Thanks to John Dumontelle for source material.)

Last Action Hero

Nooo, it's not another vacation slide. It IS however the latest day at the office for lenslinger at large Council Bradshaw. Seems El Ocho's favorite expatriate is keeping busy enough with his slicker than thou production firm, dejaviewmedia. Recently he was even spotted in Oregon, hanging off the back of a new John Deere Gator and no doubt getting paid for it. The nerve of that guy, succeeding in a lens-centric arena that doesn't involve live trucks. I knew I should have stayed in Promotions. Maybe then, I'D be the one hanging on for dear life as two wiser souls strapped into a mini-jeep and commenced to slingin' nasties. Hey, I've seen just as many Dukes of Hazzard episodes as Council and I ain't even got a promising rock band to gum up the works. Still, the former longhair looks good there back behind the lens. I especially like how the driver and passenger are wearing helmets, while my former mentor is rocking little more than a hunter-orange ballcap. It's probably got some cool logo on it too, kinda like the one he made me wear the day I tumbled into the drink. Oh well, I wish him only the safest of returns , for knowing Council like I do, the only thing he'd do if that Gator did stop suddenly is clear the rollbar and land on his feet - maybe take home an Emmy for his efforts...

Dude's annoying like that.

The Bicycle Diaries

I savored much during my time away: sibling harmony, soul-sucking heat, the loving rub of sandy swim trunks. But of all the flotsam I wallowed in, none filled me with more joy (or saddle sores) than my beloved beach bike. Purchased three years ago on a whim, my wobbly steed cost no more than sixty American dollars; a fragment of what I paid for the tricked-out Trek currently moldering in my garage. But as low-rent as my velocipede may be, it's more than adequate for the mission at hand: ESCAPE. And escape I did, regularly abandoning my estrogen-laden nest for an invigorating ride around the island. I'm not not all that spiritual, but there's something about this simplistic form of conveyance that restores order in my version of the universe. It has always been that way.

Blame Evel Knievel, My mother does. Back in the 70's, whenever that tight-ass in white would jump something stupid on ABC Sports, my older brother and I would run outside to replicate it with cinder blocks and two by fours. We rarely succeeded, but it taught me how to fly over the handlebars of life with style

Back at the beach I hammered down, picking up speed as I worked the bargain bin bicycle through all three of its neglected gears. M ipod bounced along in a cargo pocket, sending Jack White's every guitar howl to the grainy earbuds wedged in my head. With the wind at my back I could really fly and for awhile I sat back, hands outstretched, and steered with my seat. Soon however stick figures turned into Moms, kids and joggers as I rocketed over hard packed sand, the crashing surf strobing by off my starboard bow. I kept pedaling and grabbed one side of the handlebar. Suddenly a cluster of beach umbrellas hove into view and I reacted without thought dodging whole villages with the flick of a single gritty wrist. I may have felt significant, but from any passing satellite, I was but one more crusty organism skirting the edges of the briny abyss. Not bad for sixty bones and zero upkeep...

A fellow photog turned me on to mountain biking a dozen years back. He showed me the root-laden ravines and hiccuping hillocks that serve as the basis of some really righteous rides. Soon I was hunched over a spinning wheel, my eyes unfocused as I experienced the kind of buzz some folk loiter on street corners to score.

But my pedaling regiment was about more than mowing down shorebirds. I also played statue man in the town square several times a day. There I'd lean against a post, watching the cars, jeeps and minivans pour into the island as I collected specks of sand on my sunglasses and drops of bird shit in my hair. I can't say how long I manned those posts, or why - but the sheer pleasure of sitting still while nothing much occurred was highly therapeutic to this chaser of happenstance. Once, I even let a wailing ambulance pass by unmolested, though I did track it with my Ninja-like vision all the way to 37th street, which incidentally looks just like streets 1 through 40th, narrow graveled avenues crisscrossing a thicket of rental cottages. There as many sunburned folk milling about the streets as the beach and in crossing the board walk and doubling back I rode the risk of mowing down the same person twice on his trudge to or from the beach. Look OUT!

Yes, for a few years there I could truly call myself a 'mountain biker', as I churned and burned many an early morning and just as many dusks. My two-wheeled thrill was a guilty pleasure and I stole away to the woods as much as I could. But early middle age and a laundry list of excuses have kept me out of the saddle as of late...

Not at the beach, though. No, there I'm Mister Bicycle, one more sweaty Dad on holiday whose found his happy place in the slow lane. I'm pretty sure I passed an insurance adjuster who was towing a giant crocodile float to achieve the same effect. The wraparound shades and black knee socks gave it away. Then again, who knows what (if anything) they say when I wheel by. My children, promising young women in the throes of adolescence, usually duck under a boogie board when they see me coming. That's cool. I used to hide behind the Galaga machine whenever my parents wandered past the arcade. 'Arcade': that's a word tat came and went. Not 'bicycle' though. Not as long as I've got flip-flops on my feet, females in my lair and feeling in my but-tocks.

I'd give it about fifteen more minutes...

Station Break...

Created with flickr slideshow.
The last week of June is almost upon us and you know what that means: a momentary reprieve from the fruitless pursuit. So while I get my inner Griswold on, enjoy this hastily assembled slide show, featuring the many friends and villains that makes Viewfinder BLUES complete. Thanks for visiting; I'll be back tanned, rested and a little less vexed looong before you tire of my absence. Now if you'll excuse me I have to squeeze three bikes, two kayaks and my adult sized water-wings into the back of an undersized pickup. Seeya soon...

Ride the Dragon

"This job is an emotional roller coaster!"


The Chief said it and I agreed - and not JUST because he had that crazy look in his eye again. Truth is, he had a point. For as much as we photogs complain about the physical wear and tear of our work, the mood swings of a single shift can rival those of most drug interventions. So before the shakes set in again, I jotted down just a few from the other day...


There's the dread you feel when a producer eyeballs you in the morning meeting as she describes something she noticed on her morning commute ... and the orgasmic glee you experience when the managers tell some other schlub to turn it into a news story.

There's that feeling of relief you get when the news-maker you've hounded all day finally spills the beans within the confines of your viewfinder ... and the bowel-melting panic you feel when you notice the RECORD light isn't on.

Who can forget the tidal wave of shame that washes over you whenever you're forced to ask a dead person's relative for a family picture or a few painful details ... and the surprise you no longer feel when they tearfully comply.

There's the inherent comfort you derive from showing up for work dressed in hiking boots, cargo shirts and a Hawaiian shirt ... often followed by a feeling of unease when you realize you'll be spending the day at an overdressed Republican fundraiser.

There's that self satisfaction you feel at the end of the day when what felt like a hopeless assignment actually turned into a piece you'd put on your resume tape ... only to be replaced by the certain knowledge that your superiors have already forgotten about it and simply want to know what you'll do for them tomorrow.

Turd, Rising

Once upon a time TV stations the nation over fostered the oddest of 'talent' - in-house eccentrics, weatered debutantes and pockmarked auteurs. While never the prettiest horse in the stable, these locals souls were allowed to roam and they brought back a kind of coverage that was distinctively regional. But consultants changed all that; forging a brand of television both flashy and antiseptic. Soon, TV affiliates from every corner of the country simply mimicked each other - until broadcast offerings from Pfafftown to Reno resembled nothing more than, well - each other... just another canned dispatch from the United States of Generica. Gone were the slickers, hayseeds and con-men that once represented their particular wrinkle in the map. Now some local customs are thought too provincial, out-of-towners regularly decide what's right for around here and even a scant of an accent is damn near taboo.

Not so, however, in Baton Rouge.

There it seems at least one newsroom values a little indigenous input. How else can you explain the unlikely rise of one Rick Portier? You of course know him as Turdpolisher - the irascible author of his once vibrant blog. These days the Louisiana lenslinger doesn't share all he's writing, but he's too busy being a correspondent to bother! That's right, someone high up in the broadcast tower finally recognized Rick for what he is: an oral storyteller of the highest order. I first got the inkling they were on to him a few months back, when the station suits greenlit a televised quest for the perfect burger: conceived, executed and featuring a certain chrome-dome shooter. Apparently his turn as the Hamburgler was well received, for just the other day the grown-ups in the room ordered him outside all by his lonesome. Just what kind of heatwave story they wanted is mostly unknown. but I'm guessing no desk jockey present could have come up with what Rick conjured from the elements...



Somebody get that guy his own billboard...

The Legend of Lennie

Things were just looking up for Lennie, when the Promo Guys arrived. He'd only been a part of the Action News Team for six months - ever since that ugliness in Bender City got him banned from ever even entering another Piggly-Wiggly again - let alone complete his dream of bringing the Dewey Decimal system to the produce aisle. That little stand-off cost him dearly; he'd cleared out of his rented room in the middle night, loaded up the Impala and effectively ended his side career as a part-time waterbed salesman. Most of all, he'd had to leave Lurlene - the only Waffle House waitress he'd ever pursued without ending up on the wrong end of a restraining order. It was probably for the best, however. A few more fumblings in that back booth and Lennie would have no doubt revealed his true identity. Sure, that gal rocked a mean beehive - but no shapely slinger of hash is worth one more day in the brig... Which is why Lennie headed inland...

And stumbled across his station in life.

Actually, it was a dump of an affiliate on the edge of the industrial district - a crime ridden swath of blight nobody but news anchors called the Happy Crescent Metroplex. Lennie liked the station from the very start: the faded logo out front, the ice cream truck with the pole thingy otu back, the way the receptionist buzzed you into the lobby without ever asking what you wanted. All Lennie wanted was the latest bumper sticker to add to his collection, but something about the chrome and simulated wood-grain of the place spoke to him and he found a job application under his pen before he even decided which alias to use. In the end it didn't matter, for his warm pulse, vast knowledge of CB radio slang and strange willingness to work for slave wages suddenly ensured him an exciting career in show business. He figured he'd stick with long enough to scam some logo-wear but he found he loved the rub of a peacock on his tit. But it wasn't just the free polyester that got him off.

It was the lifestyle.

Lights, camera and as much side-action as he could muster on nine thousand dollars a year: that's what sustained Lennie in the first few months. But along with the access to the glamorous life, this man wanted by the Merchant Marines found he had an eye for emergencies,a natural jones for scanner codes and a gift for driving like a pig. Who knew his true talents lied in shot composition and the one-eye backpedal? Lennie didn't, but something about squiring around busty ingenues around town along with the latest in 9 year old technology really engorged this stilted drifter and pretty soon he was entertaining the idea of going straight - or at least as straight as you can get while still living out of a company car. Yes, it seemed ribbon cuttings ride-alongs and wrecks of every description filled a void in our anti-heroe's crusty heart and he soon stopped coming up with new ways to get over on The Man.

Maybe he could even send for Lurlene...

Warm thoughts, indeed; the kind Lennie wasn't used to. But before he could totally master hiding behind the camera, cruel fate intervened in the form of a paramour. Her name was Ava and as far as Lennie could tell, she owned only Kulats. That fad aside, she seemed okay, even if Lennie didn't fully understand what she did back there in the Promotions Office. All he really knew is she was warm for his form and though he tried not to lead her on, there's only so much you could do when you looked this good in a brown turtleneck. So it was not very surprising when Kulats and her boy Friday showed up at Lennie's live shot with a camera of their own. He didn't think much of it at the time, but the fruits of his impromptu photo session came back to bite him hard when he caught flashes of himself popping up between the chunks of Gunsmoke that passed for suitable reruns at the time. Needless to say, Lennie vanished the next day. Some claimed they spotted him down by the docks; others say the mob got him before those wretched sailors ever did.

Me, I'm not so sure - for every once in awhile, I'll catch sight of his reflection in my own viewfinder and wonder if a little bit of Lennie lives in me...

I'd be okay with that.

The Crying Game

In an as yet unposted News and Record column, my fave glottologist and all around nice guy Mike Clark tackles the tough issues:

"Videographers zoom in extra tight anytime someone on camera is about to cry. I think they're trained and certified in tear-zooming. Don't zoom in, we take your camera away and give no severance pay. Zoom in and you go national."


Now Mike, I can't speak for everyone out there with a face full of viewfinder, but those of us who stuff newscasts for a living do indeed zoom in at the first sign of ocular hydration. But if we're going to discuss this, we have to get the terminology correct... We are PHO-togs - rugged underlings who stick their lenses in other people's problems for a daily wage. We shoot crusty mud puddles and active hurricanes, oversold molehills and mountains of smoldering sheet metal. Videographers shoot weddings - poorly. You'd no more refer to one of these seasoned TV stevedores a 'videographer' than you'd call a grizzled homicide detective a 'rent-a-cop'. Okay, so the average photog isn't gonna break out the taser just because you mangled his name tag - but you get the idea. Now, as for honing in on falling tear drops, that we will do - but make no mistake...

We do not train.

Firemen train. Photogs sit around and bitch. We swap war stories and gossip about the other guys' "talent". About the only thing we're truly certified to do is drive top-heavy minivans and identify fast food structures by silhouette. Mostly though, we chauffeur reporters around reglons we know better than they ever will - all while constantly reminding them that without us, it's all just bad radio. Yes, we're not an especially easy breed to cozy up to; if you're looking for refinement and style you may want to check in with the overly coiffed camera crews at Bravo - but if you have to scale some poor widow's porch at high noon, you can do no better than your above average staffer. Why? We got snipers' eyes, a lifer's decorum and exquisitely subtle thumbs. I myself can reach up and feather my zoom controls at the first glint of falling water and never once tip off the surrounding in-laws as to my true intentions...

Unseemly? Yeah, but don't blame me. Blame Iron Eyes Cody. You know, the noble Native American who shed a single tear over the littering of America. I - along with a lot of other news shooters my age - watched Big Chief Verklempt quietly lose it in that famous Public Service Announcement for years. I even asked friend of the blog Bob Timberlake about him once and whiel the famous painter regaled me with a great story, I can't recall a single sentence of it. What I do remember however is that single tear rolling down the Indian's worn cheek and a small part of me has been trying to recreate that scene ever since. And have I. Victims, beauty queens, sweepstakes winners,: I've documented more waterworks than that Jacques Cousteau's cameraman. In fact, only one crying jag escaped my gaze and it haunts me to this day...

May 28, 2006. All the world was watching Hollywood as some gray haired schlub whose name escapes me won the title of American Idol. I was outside the Kodak Theater that night, camera-manning the red carpet as a gauntlet of pseudo-stars and real life celebrities preened and sauntered past. Among that number: goofy boozehound /national treasure David Hasselhoff. That's right: a half hour after the Baywatch mogul staggered past my camera, he famously lost control of his emotions over some banal bit of American Idol stagecraft. The Hoff cried and I MISSED IT.

Four years later, I still get choked up thinking about it.

The Parent Flap

Some news shooters polish their weapons on the perimeter as they plot their every move. Me, I just stumble into the breech. Take today for instance, when I bum-rushed a school awards ceremony like a deranged janitor. Technically, the Principal knew I was there - and even why. But to most of the parents packed into that cafegymnatorium, I was just one more Dad with face full of plastic glass. How else to explain the panting man in the cargo shorts, the one high-stepping over third graders and Room Moms alike. Yes, I was halfway to the podium when their collective stares weighed me down and I looked up to a room full of suspended eyebrows. It was then I realized they took me for a (GASP!) hobbyist. One glance at my hand and I understood why...

It's that damn new camera.

Plasti-Glass 5000, Fancy Cam Jr, Fisher-Price Vision: I still haven't decided what I'm calling my diminished lens. Fact is, I haven't so much as cradled it before today. Instead I've let it ride shotgun on auto-ignore as I squired around the old Sony I wished was my owny. It ain't - and until I get in the habit of buying TV cameras, I'd better get used to wading into the battle with a far weaker weapon. What's that you say? My new long-arm is less intrusive and newer, low on the hernia scale and of quite higher definition. Yeah, it's got some theoretical pluses, but for a fellow who's worn a groove in his shoulder with a certain caliber of camera, it doesn't always add up. But hey, match was never my strong suit, so I've vowed to shut-up and shoot - for any camcorder that acts as advertised should be all I need to enact some cinema, right?

Right?

Theoretically, yes. But having now used my pea-shooter in a real-world shoot-out, I find my self pining for the hefty embrace of my Sony XD. Today the topography of that fine device was much on my mind as I jabbed at my new rig and found most of he buttons missing. Thrice I tried to record a shot - only to white balance in three different shades of orangey-blue. If that weren't enough I conducted half a scintillating interview before ever realizing I'd yet to roll. Imagine a certain third-grader's chagrin when I asked to him to repeat most everything he'd said. Yes, that and the indignant glares of so many parents almost shook my confidence and for once I was glad my miniature lens at least had room for a trimmed up El Ocho logo. Otherwise, I'd be cast to the back of the the room with the rest of the amateurs...

And I'm not sure I could live with that.

Above and Below

Ahhh, the God Shot - that mythical frame that eludes news shooters both moving and still. At first, it's barely a concept. Soon however it morphs into obsession; a single minded quest for a vantage point the viewer will never see coming. It isn't always worth it. Rash acts rarely are. But when a committed lenslinger begins lusting for a certain angle, you'd best damn take cover. Before you know it, he (or she) will climb out on the struts of a wobbly chopper, strap himself to the hood of a black and white or jam a camcorder into an old aquarium and get wet. THAT'S exactly what my competitor Aaron Glancy did today as we faced off on the banks of the Mighty Dan. While I clung to the crumbling shore and bitched about the heat (my normal M.O. this time of year), the intrepid Glancy encased his rig in fish-house and plunged into the drink. Dude's got moxie (and hopefully a change of clothes somewhere). And while the muddy water may have clouded this particular vision, all was not lost - for the pasty schlub who stayed ashore left most impressed.

Almost makes me sorry for all those rocks I threw at him.

No Van Is an Island

Either the BP oil spill is causing the very planet to crumble into the sea, or Florida freelancer Roger Scruggs is having fun with Photoshop again. Either way, it makes for an image I can't stop staring at. I just hope The Suits don't see this; else they'll want this kind of team smotherage EVERY year...