Kooky Exclusive

It's not often the News Gods do you a solid so early in the week - but on this fine Monday morning, I caught nothing short of a thunderbolt. KA-WHACKA LACK! The dust cleared and I spotted three figures: two glib hipsters and some stiff in a sleeping bag. Together they strode toward me, drawing stares and glares from the unwashed throng at Winston-Salem's crowded downtown bus depot. Okay, so two of 'em strode; the guy on the handtruck kinda floated Still, they made a damned entrancing trio and as they passed I fell in behind them, raking away singed eyebrows, shouldering my weapon and wishing for once I'd read the press release.

I hadn't. I'd driven all the way to Winston without so much as glancing at the crumpled piece of paper in the passenger seat. Instead, I'd leaned forward into the wheel, knowing only 'an artist' was gonna exhibit some kind of work. Paper Mache, Watercolor, Day-Glo Play-Doh...I knew not the medium. I just knew I was going to make ninety seconds of television from it, come hell or highlighter. So you can fathom my glee when, instead of being met my a grade school teacher with plaster of paris in her hair, I stumbled upon a couple of crazed curators back from a weekend at Bernie's. I couldn't help but grin as I moved in for the kill.

But then the men stopped short, and with the flick of a few quick-ties, adhered their less animated friend to a light pole. There he stood, all sensible shoes and and downy filled slumber sack. I glanced around and saw several faces I wanted to press under glass. So I did, so working the lens for all I could squeeze from it before turning back to the light pole for 'the big reveal'. It did not happen. Instead of hoisting the big blue sleeping bag upward to unveil whatever sacred creation lay beneath, the two museum men disoled into the sea people, never letting the cat out of the bag...

It was then, the crowd moved in...

Behind Every Great Reporter...

...is an equally great photog. Okay, so that's not true. I know reporters who could make Sasquatch cry on cue no matter WHO'S standing behind the camera - just like I know shooters who can concoct whole operas without the aid of any on-air talent. But overall, TV News is a collaborative effort. Hell, even a needy loner like me has to employ the assistance of former reporters to voice his precious anchor-packs. Yes, the act of broadcasting can be best described as a team sport. So why do I so love to go it alone? Well, you could say I don't play well with others, or that I'm a tad anti-social, or that I have something of a chip (or 3) on my shoulder. You could say ALL that! Just don't say I don't like reporters. I LOVE 'EM!

I love reporters who bring in the Emmy they won nine years ago and plant it firmly on their desk for all to admire. Where ELSE am I gonna stick my old chewing gum?

I love reporters who can double as game show hosts. That type of personality comes in damn handy when you're trapped in a Wal-Mart parking lot interviewing random strangers about abortion, moratoriums, or The Lord.

I love reporters who take 45 minutes to tease their bangs yet can log an entire morning's worth of footage I shot in the time it takes Ellen to stop dancing. It's a favor I usually returnin the edit bay.

I love reporters who can accompany me up a widow's porch, get the pictures, soundbites and details our bosses so desire and NOT make me want to take a Lifetime Shower afterwards. They're rare, but they're out there.

I love reporters who constantly remind everyone around them of their personal tragedies, semi-famous spouses or priviliged upbringings. THEY are a satirist's dream.

I love reporters who aren't quite yet ready to admit they're gay - even though it's the ONLY thing their colleagues talk about. Coming Out can't be easy no matter where you work - but TV newsrooms are filled with angry, self-loathing reprobates who live to denigrate anyone more stylish than them.

I love reporters who think I'm some dumb-ass photog. God, how I love them!

I love reporters who used to be debutantes, 'cause they make me stonger. See, I've carried more prom queens over the finish line than most parade floats - and I got the callouses to prove it.

I love reporters who can discern innuendo, cohesion and nuance from rambling county commissioner soliloquies, l-o-o-o-n-g after my dumb-ass photog eyes have glazed over.

I love reporters who come to the morning editorial meeting with a dozen story ideas, because chances are I'LL get to turn the really visual, fluffy ones the suits don't want to burn a full crew on. (Thanks, Whitey!)

I love reporters who carry around their make-up and haircare in those six-tiered, oversized tackle boxes. I've produced weekend telethons with less gear.

And finally, I love reporters who can take vague, protracted, esoteric issues and make them electronically palatable for the masses. It's something I cannot do and it serves as a constant reminder that the broadcast world cannot live on smart-ass cameramen alone.

(Speaking of smart-ass cameramen, the one pictured above is one of my all-time favorites: Rick 'Turdpolisher' Portier. The reporter he's standing behind I don't know, but if Turd's backing him up, he's okay by me. Now go check out Rick's latest post on Truisms of Photogerry. And give him my love, would ya?)

Glassing A Massacre

November 3rd, 1979. It's a date the leaders of my adopted home city would rather you not remember. But it's a date that will be inexorably linked to Greensboro, N.C. - for that's when the Ku Klux Klan shot and killed protestors from the Communist Workers Party, all while local TV cameras rolled. When the smoke cleared, five accomplished idealists lay dying in the grass as the Klansman crawled back in their convoy of beat-up sedans and sped away. Since then, smarter minds than mine have examined every facet of the shoot-out at Morningside Homes. Books have been written, documentaries shot, hearings held. Here in the Piedmont, the end result of that murderous day - sometimes called The Greensboro Massacre - has long remained a blight on a city that likes to think of itself as progressive. If the police department's lack of action that day wasn't enough to convince some the attack was ordained, the eventual acquittal of six Klansmen by an all-white jury made many think it was, at the very least, tolerated.

But that's not what fascinates me about the unthinkable events of November 3rd, 1979. It's the fact that so much of it ended up on the evening news. Four cameras were shouldered and rolling when the KKK began scuffling with protestors. By the time the guns came out, the photogs present were no doubt operating on disbelief and adrenaline. The images they captured are still hard to watch; murder, death and anguish usually are. In a sense, that smeary footage has never stopped rolling in the collective memories of many people who still call this city home. But what of the news shooters? What about the veteran lensmen who watched a mundane assignment morph into madness through the shaky frame of their handheld cameras? What does that do to a person who has decades left of squinting through a tube? I ask because I do not know. A few of the journalists there that day have gone on the record with their impressions, but a shooter or two have remained comfortably mum. That's their every right, I guess, but I'd sure like to pick the brain of any TV photog present that day, in hopes of understanding what a day like that does to the soul.

So, there you have it, gentlemen. I've always been too polite to broach the subject in person. Consider this an open invitation, should you ever want to relive a shift you most certainly haven't forgotten...

The Rhythm Within(?)

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I was on the outskirts of boredom when the drums kicked in. Until then, I'd been sleepwalking through my week: chasing invisible beaver, corralling camels in small darkened rooms, even profiling weirdos at a local costume shop. None of it thrilled me. Sure, it could all pass for party fodder - but technical snafus, well-meaning newcomers and a rash of predictability had placed me squarely in a ten day coma. I get that way sometimes; so wrapped up in my own cranium that I become impervious to verve. That's where I found myself Friday as I stumbled out of a convocation I'd crashed at Winston-Salem State University. Inside some educated folk were preening in cap and gown. Outside, a clutch of scruffy drummers were standing in a loose circle, fondling their tom-toms. No sooner had I noted their position when they noticed me and my glassy-eyed friend. With a bleary precision they began hitting their skins, and I had no choice but to fall in behind them.

From there things get a little blurry. I remember the fancycam floating free, it's heft turning buoyant as it lifted me off my feet, dragging me to the source of all that rhythm. Suddenly I was surrounded as street performer and professor alike gave into the primal vibe. Moms, Dads and brand new Grads poured from the auditorium doors and the campus of WSSU took on the atmosphere of a New Orleans garden party. With a red light glowing in the corner of my tiny screen, I forgot all about shot selection. Instead I followed my instincts around the edges of the drummer's scrum before breaking off to catch a few faces. To a person they all exuded a certain groove and even this rhythm-less Father of two eventually fell into place, as for the first time in weeks I found myself shooting free, loose and unencumbered.

I just wish I hadn't tried to do 'The Robot'. Who knew they'd walk me off campus like that?

Oblivion or Bust

Hey I'm no Willie the Wimp, but when I pass, you can bury me behind the wheel. Why not? I've spent most of my adult life entombed in a procession of Fords: a pre-OJ White Bronco, skeevish EconoVans, all sorts of Escorts, one two-door Explorer and the esoteric little number I drive today. Couldn't tell you every make and model; but I bet I've fled, bled, and even played dead in more near-new hoopties than a parade of repo-men. It's not how I envisioned spending my very adult weekdays, but neither did I see all that lower back pain coming. Perhaps I was distracted by all the gas I passed. Or maybe I was taken with all those logos on the doors. Empty promises and day-glo striping can hypnotize any pilot, ya know - from that fresh faced traveler with dreams of prizes on the horizon to that craggy has-been who now lives in my rear-view mirror. Was that mental breakdown closer than it appeared? Or am I just a little highway-shy after flogging oh so many miles?

Ya got me. All I know is a thirty minute commute each way and a never ending list of stilted missions have left me a lot less fond of the cockpit than back when I first stowed away in a rusting production truck. Back then I'd let the older guys strap me to the hood if they'd let me hold their fancycam. It never occurred to me I'd have that pleasure for years and years, but now that that the groove in my shoulder matches the one in Unit Four's driver's seat, I can't help but glance at the places I've been. Clogged interstates and empty back-roads. Fog-choked mountain passes and trinket shop parking lots flooded by twisters with nicknames. Ritzy neighborhoods I could never afford and squalid housing projects where all eyes were on the cracker behind the wheel. I rolled low and slow through trailer parks where I wasn't wanted and emptied whole gas stations just by pulling up to the pumps with an unleaded icon on board. Mostly though I've leaned forward as the engine roared, wondering what normal folk feel when they grip the wheel and squint into the distance.

I may never know, for proper reflection would require me to slow down a bit - and as long as there's a cell phone diggin' into my side I simply cannot afford to coast. If I did, the good citizens of central N.C. might miss out on the latest in ribbon cutting intrigue. Whole imbroglios would go unnoticed if I get stuck in traffic.Viewers may even be forced to shut off their tranquilizing tubes and look outside should they really wanna be a Weather Spotter. No, I'm not crisscrossing the same eight counties day after day for nuthin! I'm on an expedition of utmost import: a timeless journey of stale drive-thru items and fine-divining u-turns. Yes, there's no mistaking I lead a purpose-driven life; I just wish it ran through Easy Street. Still, I saddle up most every morning fresh but never rested- knowing that no matter where I may end up, I'll have forgotten how to get there the next time I try to find it in a hurry.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to ask some stuttering drifter how to get to the Pop Tart Emporium.

I, Disciple

Much love to Amanda Emily for her donation of a hefty tome to the Lenslinger Library. Actually, I was on something of a reading sabbatical; having devoted my scant downtime to the far less enjoyable task of assembling a book proposal. Still, when the tattered but loved copy of Alley's 1941 autobiography appeared in my mailbox, I knew I could safely file this hardcover under 'Research'. After all, the man known as "Mr. Newsreel" accomplished my goal 26 years before I was even born: he turned his time under glass into a crisp narrative people clamored to acquire. Then again, Norman William Alley was no mild mannered mid market master-hack. He was THE pioneering lenslinger whose early newsreel work helped shape the very globe it covered. The man rode with Pancho Villa, shot vital footage of the U.S. gunboat Panay as it sank beneath him, recorded the German invasion of Poland and covered every earthbound skirmish from the Spanish Civil War to the protracted one in Vietnam. Not bad for a high school dropout. His mid-career memoir, I Witness, was a best seller of its day and while I'd read about it before, I never expected to be holding such a delightfully dog-eared First Edition of this sacred text. Thanks, Amanda. Know that it will soon join other seminal works on my shelf of mentors' memoirs - just as soon as I finish parsing every word...

Then, I'll post a review.

"You Cannot Out-Light God."

Run my mouth as I do, there isn't much I can add to this spectacular photo. Which is a good thing, since I know precious little about it - other than friend of the blog Sean Browning took it of reporter Jennifer Bjorklund nearly five years ago in San Antonio Heights, California. Sooooo, say it with me... "D-u-u-d-e." There. Don't we all feel better? Oh - and the title of tonight's entry? It's a maxim every good TV News photog lives by - whether they credit a supreme being or simple celestial alignment for The Golden Hour. Me, I blame the ancient Egyptians. Everybody knows those cats sported totally tricked-out light kits.