2005 in Review - February

We now return to our thoroughly predictable look at the year that was...

February kicked off with all the excitement of a moon landing as High Point’s favorite homegirl blew through the city she would so openly disparage in her upcoming book. Heck, if I grew up on the wrong side of Montlieu Avenue, I’d bash it too. But Fantasia remained ever the sweetheart as she made whirlwind rounds from radio station to TV affiliate, all under the watchful eye of my camera. Along the way, it occurred to me that I could turn these daily photo safaris into blog-fodder, as well as material for the evening news. ‘Wait until Greensboro 101 gets a hold of this‘, I thought. Or as Fantasia put it, “yeah-yeaH-yeAH-yEAH-YEAH-YEAH Y-E-E-E-A-A-H-H-H...”

But the second month of the year wasn’t all breathy dispatches from the celebrity front. I tried to explain why photogs are so damn grumpy with Ride-alongs, Ribbon-Cuttings and Rage. In My Time on the Dark Side, I recounted the misery of being a promo hack. I also covered one of my most meaningful assignments with the quiet tale of She Were Soldiers. After offering a few Real World Award Categories, I confessed how sucking at baseball led to a mostly rewarding career behind the lens in Birth of a Photog. If that weren’t enough I outlined my findings in a tersely worded The Extraordinary Madness of Crowds. All that for the price of a click and a drag...

As February progressed, I grew a good deal bolder with my digital camera and turned picture-heavy posts on the many incongruent vistas I encountered on the daily news hunt. One of those that I’m still kinda proud of is From Crisis to Commodity, perhaps because it was an overdue articulation of long-held thoughts. Another such typical gig resulted in Press Conference Zombies. By the time a homely mutt named Bam saved his owner, I was on fire with the blogabilities of my daily gig. But all that self-satisfaction faded away when I woke up in the middle of the night, clicked on-line and discovered one of my biggest literary heroes had put a gun in his mouth and ended and added to his legend by pulling the trigger. I’m still trying to figure that one out...