Vagaries of the Chase

Sorry if the blog has bogged down a bit, but work has been pretty typical as of late … if you can ever call my silly gig typical. With the May ratings period in full effect, my fellow photogs have been busier than ever - crafting special reports and series pieces with unparalleled zeal. This, of course, clogs up the edit bays back at HQ and displaces special operators like myself. Before I know it, I’m back on patrol, slurping a Big Gulp behind the wheel of a wobbly live truck and making macabre small talk with the reporter du jour. It’s a living, but not as interesting a one as you may think. Maybe that would change if I paid more attention, but after a while all those breathless dispatches run together - until the victims and charlatans of a thousand unrelated dramas make small talk in my head. And you wonder why I blog...

It’s therapy. Why else would I re-examine day after day of processing trivia into commotion? There are far better hobbies - ones that involve score cards, male bonding and scheduled revelry. Instead though, I retreat to my upper lair and rifle through the meaningless impressions of the day. Surely this behavior won’t get me voted Grand Poo-bah down at the lodge, but I’ve found there’s far more to life than clinking frosty mugs with guys in funny hats. No, I’d much rather talk to you; tell you a little bit about my day and hope that some of it sticks to your subconscious. Why that pleases me so, I can’t really say - but my insatiable desire to communicate leads me to bleed on screen most every evening, even on nights like tonight, when I ain’t got a lot to say. Don’t leave, though! Stick around and see if I can milk two more paragraphs out of this twaddle.

Now where was I? Oh yeah - scenes from the news hunt. Like these random photos I took of Eric White during this evening’s live shots, the mental imprints of your average news day come fast and furious, often devoid of any caption or context. Take the other day, when I wandered the concrete catacombs of my umpteenth wastewater treatment plant, finding new and artistic ways of photographing streaming feces without focusing too much on all those sewer-lillies. If you have to ask - don’t. Just know that it wasn’t the first (or the last) time I’ve toured such a labyrinth of shit. Nor was it my first time getting ejected from an upscale parking lot this morning. Seems Channel X got the story wrong, forcing the owners of the snooty and under seige shopping center to expel all interlopers of the electronic variety. At least they smiled when they walked me to my car.

An hour later, that strip mall exile was all but forgotten as I hunched over my lens and stared into the maw of a Tazer gun. “You ready?” asked the hulking sheriff as he fondled the trigger. On my signal, he contracted his index finger and chuckled under his breath as angry blue sparks erupted between the stun gun’s contact points. The sharp bark of the electrical charge sent my camera’s audio needles into syncopated spasms and I knew immediately this twenty seconds of disc space would air repeatedly in the afternoon newscasts teases. At once forgettable and indelible, that close-up shot of the stun gun’s arc will stick with me for quite some time, though in all fairness the image will be intermingled with that of raw sewage, drunk Shriners and a thousand unfettered live shots. Analyze that!