No thesis tonight in your coffee, no thesis tonight. Instead you’ll have to settle for a quick traipse through some of the pre-dawn thoughts found in the
Sore-Hand Companion. While I can provide no real context for these midnight rejoinders, I can assure you you’ll
wish you’d paid attention when I pass out sheets at the end of the tour. Now if you’ll follow me, we have some non sequiturs to flesh out. And please - no wandering away from the group.
Pomp and Squalor
I admit it - the dichotomy gets me off. My inner contrast junkie just can’t help it. There’s nothing I enjoy more than wandering from the enclave of self-afflicted pageantry to the scene of some sordid exploit on the smelly side of town - then back again. Still don’t get it? Bet you’ve never reached for a microphone you attached to that wino an hour earlier and pinned it on some smarmy blowhard’s silky lapel. Therapy for the working man, if you will.
Tripping on the Cinders
Another moment of recorder’s bliss occurs whenever certain incongruent elements conspire to inspire. Litter skittering across the gravel lot of a burned-out restaurant, the crunch of shovel digging into a shady grave, late-day sun silhouetting the carcass of an 18 wheeler, dashboard blue lights throwing crackle and strobes as the crime tape billows…if think all fatalities
have to be ugly, might I recommend the night shift? I've seen structure fires prettier than paintings.
Pot Pulls, Cadaver Dogs and Mud Slides
What do the three have in common? No, they’re not individual events in the Redneck Games. They’re three assignments I remember getting absolutely filthy on. The first was an early marijuana excavation, which is a fancy name for a two mile hike into quicksand for six spindly reefer plants. Oh, and watch out above for the chopper wash. While you’re at it, be sure and dodge that steamer ole Rex just left in his wake. That shit can really take the shine off a news unit’s interior.
Ditch-Bank Rendezvous
Whatever the zip code, a tattered platoon of first, second and third responders considers your turf their beat. Paramedics, tow trucks drivers, cops and photogs - we come a runnin’ whenever enough sheet-metal is bent and act like we knew it was going to happen. Given any amount of downtime, we shuffle among the rubble and continue stories we last trouted out at that plant fire, the train-wreck or those lake drownings. You remember...
Pilots, Surgeons and Sax Players
There’s a certain protocol to documenting gross concentration - one that requires patience and subservient lens. It’s hard to put a trigger-finger on, but the same unmistakable aura emits from the hunched sculptor, the squinting physician, the sweaty welder, and the tipsy recording engineer. Remain quiet and still and you’ll soon slink away with potent imagery. Meanwhile, try not to unplug anything. People with power tools
hate that.
To Nod or Not
Much of the above centers around spot news: unplanned calamities ripe for the evening news. But a lot of what I broadcast features regular appearances by the Talking Heads. No, not the geniuses behind that song ’Psycho Killer’, but the revolving stable of experts and charlatans we so eagerly cut to every fifteen seconds. But for every sound-bite that airs, a shooter drags his gear in place and rolls - often by his or her lonesome. Thus I regularly find myself feigning comprehension of some lofty ideal being expressed while wondering if I pushed ’Record’ or not.
You know, I could go on all night with the broken prose - but since we both gotta work in the morning, I’ll try and wrap it up. Since it’s late, I’ll skip the quiz - but do me a favor would ya? The next time you’re forced to watch the news, think about all you don’t see - for there in the heavily-edited margins you’ll see the greasy cheeseburger fingerprint of the master photog. Ever since local station stopped airing credits,
it’s all we got...
We knew by Thursday night Greensboro had landed the new Honda Jet plant, but that didn’t stop us from acting all surprised the following morning. In fact, for only bringing an initial 300 jobs to the region, Honda got one hell of a welcome to its corporate headquarters’ new home. More than two dozen news lenses jockeyed for space in the private aircraft maker’s gleaming hangar Friday, all tradin’ paint with a shiny fleet of beaming politicos, countless muckety-mucks and one dill-weed of a still photog. More on him later. For now though, just know that this kind of ee-lectronic corporate theater doesn’t go down without a few sparks flyin’. Just ask the fellas packed onto the camera platform - the ones with the podium microphone’s every warble ringing in one ear, and the heated laminations of Judge Judy blaring in the other. They‘ll tell you the same as me: it’s a sixty million dollar boost to the local economy - not a moon landing.
Still, I wasn’t the only schlub broadcasting across multiple platforms. All around me, fellow lens-jockeys hung frozen in contorted positions, swathed in wires, cynicism and sweat. Thanks to the hundreds of feet of heavy cable trusty Canadian Tim Bateson and I drug in from the truck, the picture in my lens was beaming back live to the studio, where a co-worker with cleaner fingernails than mine routed it straight to our station’s websites (where I‘m certain at least six people were watching). Also, the studio goobs were recording my direct feed onto one of the station’s many hard-drives for later use - just as I was committing the audio-enhanced imagery to my camera’s optical disc. If that wasn’t enough, I was popping off snapshots with my banged-up digi-cam - when I wasn’t guessing what flavor of menthol cigarette the shooter wedged next to me had just enjoyed out back. A half-stale Newport, I think.
But I didn’t log in to talk fine tobaccos. I came to share with you what it’s like to be the eternal messenger. Sure, today’s elevated gang-bang is all because of a personal jet factory. A few days ago it was a gun-wielding grandmother’s video arraignment. Next week it may very well be a Valentine’s Day Boat Show. After a few such hundred camera conventions, the subject matter melds into the background. Far more important is the room’s overall light temperature, the location of the microphone mult-box and what kind of danish will still be available once when you finally get around to crashing the refreshment table. But that’s still a long way off. First, you deal with the have to deal with inevitable hum of the in-house audio system. Speaking of which, is there anything more annoying than a pasty soundboard tech with a gassy attitude? Yeah, there’s that guy. (NOT pictured)
Him...the out of town stills-shooter with too many zoom lenses and the big city sneer. Unlike the Fuji TV crew with their delightful accents, this cat goes out of his way to offend. Arriving early (as to tape his business card dead-center on the all too tiny camera stand), he hovered by his intended spot and announced to every new crew that his half-foot of platform was indeed, holy ground. We locals rolled our eyes at his continual proclamations, but gave him the benefit of an extra inch or two. That is until he insisted on jumping on and off the platform repeatedly, jostling everyone’s shot and sparking a righteous chorus of indignant ’Dude!‘s. Sure, the stranger got his shots, but he proved himself a insufferable prick in the process. While it’s certainly no skin off this frequent-flyer’s lip, it’s the exact kind of bad camera karma we local lenslingers work hard to avoid. Now you know.
Via 
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