Spend just one year chasing news and you’ll quickly start repeating yourself. Winter storms, Spring training, Summer camps and Fall Festivals, all punctuated by a steady barrage of crime and grime. I’ve spent the past fifteen years running circles around this slow lurching parade, doubling back and stealing glances while trying not to get run over or step in too much horseshit. It’s a ludicrous way to make a living, but it’s the one I’ve chosen.Or maybe it chose me. After following my lack of ambition around for a bit, I wandered into my first TV station at age 22. Imagine my shock at all the inmates running the asylum. Character straight out of vaudeville sat in corner offices, puffed-up anchors arm-wrestled for face time and zonked out production types regularly fell asleep at the wheel. Suddenly, I was home! Looking around at the twenty year old technology, blustery egos and simmering incompetence, it occurred to me I’d found my special purpose.
So I dove in headfirst, soaking up everything there was to know about backwaters television. I started each morning slow-dancing with a studio camera as ladies with blue hair hawked homemade potholders. I learned to run audio for the noon news and tried not to doze off during weather. After lunch, I’d hold up in a musty edit booth, watching wizened masters craft polished spots out of sticks and scrap metal. Along the way, I traded notes, jokes and a few unmentionables with the pirates, freaks and madmen that made up the station ranks. Staffers a few years older told us we were attending the Roy Park School of Broadcasting - a half slam against our affiliate’s miserly owner. How right they were. The steakhouse coupon I got for being Employee of the Month turned out to be the only sheepskin I've ever received.
But a funny thing happened on the way to becoming the World’s most well-read studio tech. I saw...THEM. Swaggering through the tape room like dusty gunslingers, the station’s news photographers ambled past with their cameras hung low and dirty. I couldn’t look away. With their streamlined gear, digital pagers and seen-it-all stare, they bled the kind of street cred I‘d been faking all these years. As they passed by my darkened post on their way back to their waiting news steeds, I sunk further in the tape room’s shadows and swore to myself I’d one day join their ranks.
And so I did, but not the way I‘d envisioned. It took a fake handgun and a twist of fate to draft me into service, but once I became indoctrinated, I never looked back. How could I? I was too busy learning the ways of The Force, sharpening my camera skills and editing acumen until I could slay the scariest of deadlines. Looking back, it all seems quite silly, but at the time, it was a heady rush of newsgathering truths, a period of time in which great mysteries dissolved into well-worn tips and tricks behind the lens. Before long, I was blowing through the station with considerable swagger of my own, convinced I’d already seen it all because I’d attended a half dozen press conferences.
That was a decade and a half ago, though it feels even longer. In that time a lot has changed. I’m a father now, one who places a higher value on getting home on time than scoring that elusive exclusive. I don’t knock over old ladies to get to house fires anymore, I don’t jump curbs to attend ribbon cuttings. More significantly, I don’t high five co-workers over tears captured on tape, I don’t roll up on children in peril without swallowing hard and thinking of my own beautiful girls at home.
No, the joys and pitfalls of the evening news aren’t quite as intoxicating as they used to be. What rendered me spellbound as a 24 year old news punk with an attitude now barely holds the attention of this 38 year old taxpayer with a mortgage. I suppose that’s only normal, but as I spend day after day peering into the same old viewfinder, I find myself wondering how much longer I can keep it all in focus.
Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a groundbreaking I have to get to.
Ah, weather video - that immeasurable service TV stations provide for all those viewers held captive in window-less basements. What solace my static wide shot must be to all those folks quietly chewing their way out of their restraints. I can envision the thank-you notes they might send: letters and words ripped out of newspapers and magazines, haphazardly pasted to faded construction paper...
As gray as a battleship, the Brown building did not fit its name. But that’s what the cops called the two story brick job on the edge of downtown so I didn’t object. I was too busy anyway, scrambling to detail the steady flow of crime and grime headlines that flowed through that ugly windowless structure. From its gravel parking lot out back to its tiniest interrogation room on the second floor, I put almost every inch of that place on the local news. 
Getting in was tricky, at first. But sling a camera around enough crime scenes and the detectives would soon buzz you through the lobby door, especially when there was a fresh arrestee in handcuffs waiting on the other side - which was only always. I’d hate to guess how many times I breached that threshold with camera in tow, only to point it at some fine taxpayer getting their thumbs blackened for the third time in a not-so-illustrious criminal career. If you were lucky, there was evidence to photograph: duct-tape bricks of marijuana, illegal guns, black market electronics, all spread out on scuffed conference room tables by beefy detectives in short sleeves and shoulder holsters. For a local news photog, it was like shooting ducks in a barrel. 
But the real action was in the parking lot, a low slung gravel rectangle with enough room for a dozen unmarked Crown Vics and two or three TV station wagons. It was this humble lot that every criminal of intrigue arrested by the city made his perp walk debut. Countless are the times I raced to that lot only to pace for hours with chain-smoking buddies until a late model sedan swooped in and all conversation stopped. The sound of feet scuffling over rocks filled the air as we backpedaled in unison, orbiting the accused with zoom lenses and leading questions. If we were lucky the cops would park in the farthest available space, giving us a long runway to bag as many angles of the walk down as possible. 
Come to think of it, you could judge how much publicity the cops wanted on individual cases by the distance they parked from the Brown Building. Accused murderers, thieves and arsonists made many a forced march through the wall of local lenses; some hung their heads, others shots angry glances and cursed the assembled cameramen. All gave a show, from the drunk Marine in a hospital gown accused of torching his own apartment to swarthy bikers in shackles and tats who looked as if they‘d hunt you down given the chance. All gave a show, with their buzz-cut captors in a supporting role. Despite the revolving cast of bad actors, every performance ended the same: with the heavy metal thud of the building’s back door, often followed by a burst of nervous giggles as we lenslingers critiqued our one-eyed backpedal.
But those day are gone now. A few years back the City abandoned the Brown Building, moving their Detective Division to a shiny new fortress downtown. Now, curious cameramen have to call ahead and talk to the new Public Information Officer. Backdoor walk downs are a thing of the past. Now officers bring in the bad guys through a guarded sally port, well out of range of the Fourth Estate. Maybe that’s for the best. Even those accused of heinous crimes have a right to enter the Judicial System without a cocky camera in their face, even they have a right to a little bit of dignity on the way to the Big House. 
The Tarheel Tavern, a weekly compendium of North Carolina bloggers of which I am taking part, is now in it's second edition and available 
You know, there's nothing like a fresh disaster scene to remind you how random fate can be. Hurricanes are one of the weirder examples of this force of nature and few have more access to them than the local TV lenser. After all, we are the often the first to feel the winds pick up - and we're damn sure always the loudest about it. But then, would hurricanes even crash our coast if they weren't assured their very own mini-series? Think about it...
Depending on the impending Cyclops’s lumbering speed, this protracted teledrama can lurch along for hours on end, until rain-hooded reporters are interviewing stoned surfers and worst of all, other rain-hooded reporters. As the wind increases and it's starts to rain upside down, a nation of viewers is held captive on their couches by the dumb, the brave and the pretty. Who will be the first to lash themselves to phone poles and try to act casual THIS time?
Back at the shop, the weather experts go back to sleep and the guys in the art department re-dress the storm graphics. No more swirling palm tree at the edge of the screen, the lives taken by the storm demand a subtler hue, a heavier drop-shadow and more somber music. The Fables of the Reconstruction have begun. 
I remember bitching about day three of cold burgers while standing outside a high school gymnasium full of homeless flood victims - only to be rendered speechless by the sight of a mother changing her baby's diaper in the middle of the rainy field. I turned to look away and watched an old man sit behind the wheel of an rotting sedan as he brushed his teeth with a filthy handkerchief. It was enough to make even me a windbag like me shut up for once.
Finding your groove, getting in the zone, achieving a shooter's high - whatever they call it, those who squint through a lens for a living all 
Regular travelers along Highway 158 in Forsyth County know Loui’s Restaurant as a great place to eat, but when I pulled up to its gravel parking lot this morning, it was just the latest gutted structure in a l-o-n-g line of overnight fires. Nothing more, nothing less. With a precision honed over fifteen years of peering through the ashes, I grabbed my cameras and got to work. A biting wind took my breath away as I prowled the lot and collected shots. Nearby a tired looking man in turn-out gear sought refuge behind the warmth of his pickup’s steering wheel. He was kind enough to roll the window down for the pesky cameraman but neglected to go before the lens. Seems in his haste to leave the house, he forgot his teeth and didn’t want to be televised sans dentures. Do you blame him?
Moving closer to the building to escape the bracing wind, I got a better look at the restaurant’s interior. A thick paste of ash, firewater and mud covered the floor, turning everything into an ashy, abstract landscape. Less than eight hours earlier, it had been a thriving country diner, a welcome oasis between Stokesdale and Walkertown. Now it was a soggy, smelly mess. After bagging a few close-ups I moved around the parking lot, gathering the obligatory wide angles and compression shots. When my ingrained photog instincts told me I had enough images in the can, I leaned on my tripod and thought about sound. No news story is complete without it and I knew that if I couldn’t find any, two dozen nifty angles of a burned out building didn’t mean diddly. Through my viewfinder, I zoomed in on the firefighter nestled in the cab of his pickup. From the way his head had rolled to one side, I knew he was either asleep or dead. Not wanting any more story than I already had, I assumed he was sleeping. 
That’s when I met Louie. The small gentlemen with the Greek accent sat behind the wheel of a nearby car and surveyed the broken building that bore his name. At first he didn’t want to talk on camera, but after a little coaxing, he voluntarily stepped in front of the glass. Through halting English and a no small amount of pride, the kindly immigrant told me how he’d spent the last twenty five years turning this roadside diner into a daily destination for hungry locals. For a quarter of a century he fed his family by feeding the legion of farmers, firefighters and factory workers that frequented his establishment. Business had been good in recent years, so much so that Loui sank sixty thousand dollars into renovations, money he now wish he’d spent on a decent fire insurance policy. 
As the implications of this last detail sunk home, I pulled away from my viewfinder to catch sight of a lone tear rolling down the man’s leathery face. Suddenly I felt guilty for my earlier annoyance at the lack of talkative bystanders. While I was pouting over the dearth of preferred storytelling components , this grizzled businessman was staring at the charred remains of a lifetime of labor, wondering how his piece of the American Dream has been so suddenly rendered to cinders. I had no answers for Loui, just words of gratitude and a promise to share his plight with a million or so viewers. What good that may do remains unseen, but I for one am hoping his lifetime of good karma and daily specials will now pay off in spades. And just maybe, someone who can help Loui get back on his feet will do so because they saw it on the news. I've been doing this long enough to know my limited role won't mean alot in the long hard reconstruction, but how else is a TV news photog supposed to sleep at night?