SOT in the Dark

I don't know who John Hanley is, but I want him to follow me around with a camera. Maybe then I'd have such a striking workplace portrait as young Jeremy Cohn, Ontario photog and friend of the blog. I mean, LOOK at it: the red and blue strobes, the jaunty thrust of the microphone, the silent knowledge that whatever Toronto Police Sergeant Glen George is sharing with our young friend is totally devoid of emotion, detail or color. You can't get that kind of detail with an iPhone! Or can you? I'm still using chapstick and a 20 year old Etch-A-Sketch to capture all my images and that's NOT just because I'm on vacation - which I am. Now if you'll excuse me, the Bourbon is kicking in and I really have no business operating such heavy machinery as this antique laptop... After all, I could spill my drink.

(Oh yeah, Photo by John Hanley)

Some Discomfort May Occur

Okay so not EVERY day is a blast of Raid to the face, but the average news shift is brimming with contusions, feuds and delusions - not to mention ample opportunity for prolonged social scarring. I’d tell you all that I‘m legally allowed to share, but first, lemme axe you…

Ever stalk a Pepsi Man across campus because it was still Summer and the closest you were going to get to good footage for your Sodas in Schools story later that day was some chucklehead in knee socks wheeling a case of Throwback Dew into the cafegymnatorium?

Ya ever make a fat lady squirm, glare and lose all sense of rhythm, just by wandering into her Zumba class with a Sony on your shoulder? Pop on your top-light and she may very well soil that Danskin.

Ever stumbled mumbling and dumbfounded into a VIP Tent at a Golf Tournament, so overcome with the smoldering stick and glacial pace of a PGA Event that you can’t help but sweat all over a table full of moneyed housewives as you demand to know who schedules such a brutal slog in August anyway? Better have your credentials…

Ya ever silently congratulate yourself on the gazelle like grace it took to clear that park bench seconds before you land wrong on your left ankle and crumple into a broken pile of cameraman parts? Better hope your buddy from the other station wasn’t rolling…

Ever broken off the grab-ass and chit-chat long enough to watch weeping parents walk by clad in black? Days after the attack on the USS Cole I joined family members of the fallen Sailors along with President Bill Clinton for a somber dockside memorial service. I’ll never forget that slow parade of anguish.

You ever zoom in on a dude who looks like he’d just as soon slice your throat, then looked away and whistled, knowing that nine out of ten people still think a cameraman has have his eye glued to the viewfinder for the damn thing to be rolling? Keep it to yourself.

Ever stood on your tiptoes for thirteen solid minutes while your partner of the day fumbles his way through every mistakes listed in Interviewing 101? AGAIN?

Ya ever feel your stomach turn to slush as the pilot beside you decides to throw the Go-Kart with Wings you’re riding into some sort of inverted arcing slow-motion pass over the stadium you’re supposed to rolling on? And you thought that bean burrito would HELP.

How DO YOU clean flecks of Taco Bell out of windscreen, anyway?

Schmuck Alert: Just Spray It!

Just when the Schmuck Alert was growing passé, some tool in Connecticut breaks out the bug spray. Meet Sean P. Quail, loving husband, t-shirt enthusiast, irrational dill-weed. How else do you describe a guy who grabs a can of insecticide out of his handy-dandy dashboard insecticide-holder and aims straight for the Fourth Estate? Oh, I know - SCHMUCK! NOt to mention Defendant, as this sensible gent now faces reckless endangerment, third-degree assault, and a few other charges. It all started when Quail and his beloved exited an Enfield Courthouse after she faced charges of receiving stolen beer. A waiting scrum gave chase; what happened next would be hard to believe, were it not captured on videotape.

(But that's the funny thing about camera crews: they tend to record stuff. Bear that in mind the next time you reach for the RAID, America.)

Reporter George Colli and photographer Alan Chaniewski caught the worst of the wasp and hornet spray. While they rushed next door for first aid, police pursued the would-be Exterminator, arresting him a short time later. It's unclear whether Quail will be rewarded with his own reality show, but we here at the Lenslinger Institute wouldn't be all that surprised. We're just glad members of the media escaped serious injury, for no matter how annoying that logo'd lens might be. no one deserves a face full of distilled bug-death, except maybe Sean P. Quail - who remains a danger to his community and a most repugnant schmuck.


Schmuck!

Float Like a Bee...

Suspended without pay after accusing his department of racism, Greensboro Police Officer A. J. Blake finds himself the talk of the town. Me - I'd never heard of him. Then again, I don't watch a lot of news. Never have, really. Oh, there was a time in the Nineties when I'd flip back and forth, but these days I'm more apt to blast some Lonnie Mack than sample an actual newscast. I get enough of that at work. Even there, I dodge top stories like a deadbeat Dad. (You might too, once you've quizzed more victims than you can remember.) Long ago I swore to use what little power my lenses packed for Good, not Evil. I didn't go out and buy any Lycra, mind you but over the years I did learn to leap the assignment desk in a single bound. Even today, you'll find me at the back of the broadcast, where froth trumps atrocity and live truck keys rust on the hook.

But that's not what I logged in to talk about.

No, I merely wanted to explain how a seasoned photojournalist can find him (or her) self backpedaling across a parking lot, not entirely sure which gentleman he (or she) should sic his (or her) lens on. That's exactly what's happening in the above fuzzy frame. That's me screen-right: lips pursed, feet a flutter, miniature lens pointed at Officer Blake...Well, his attorney, anyway. Truth is, at the time I didn't know A. J. Blake from A. J. Foyt. Seconds earlier, I'd been lounging on the lawn outside the Police Department, joking with a certain still photographer about the low energy level of the half dozen protestors when a clamor erupted behind us. Actually it was just the scuffle of a competing news crew, but since photogs don't move like that without a damn good reason, I scrambled to my feet and joined the chase...

...Where I found three distinguished individuals doing their best to get from one building to the next. I fell in before them, matching their pace stride for backward stride, all the while zooming out wide enough to claim the person at the center of my lens was in fact the dude I was meaning to shoot. 'Perhaps I should have watched the news last night' I did not think. I did, however, ponder the context of the protest I'd been sent to, searched my limited memory banks for all related data and triangulated the gait of the photog beside me - who assumedly knew the appearance of his quarry. I'd like to say my mental acuity led me to center in with certainty, but to be honest a crosstown colleague noticed my vexed expression and rather mercifully said...

"Brown shirt."

That's all it took. I zoomed in on the younger man like I knew who he was all along, hoping to keep him in focus long enough to fill the opening moments of the very next newscast. Hey, just because I specialize in fluff doesn't mean I've forgotten how Hard News works. What ever Z-block fodder I'd foist upon viewers later in the day wouldn't mean diddly if the opening moments of the show didn't feature the man who was only a few yards away vanishing behind a heavy metal door. So I stepped up my game, hopped over a cement planter and wedged myself between the dude and his destination. As he passed by me, Blake and my camera made direct eye-contact. No telling what he was thinking as he peered into my lens, but had he been able to se into my head he would have found nothing but love for the unnamed accomplice who tipped me off to his identity. Next time I see the guy I'll be sure to thank him myself...

Provided I recognize him.

Men at Werk

As blunders go, it was pretty mundane: a misplaced stencil, a hurried work crew, a distracted applicator... but no matter how pedestrian the elements of this error were, the resulting hubbub has been nothing short of galactic. And I missed it. That's right, when a local road crew effed up the S Word, I was off covering something totally dull. By the time I returned to El Ocho, evidence of the spray-painted typo adorned the bulletin board. I caught sight of it and promptly harrumphed, but then I moved on quickly, unaware that the foolish SHCOOL sign was not just the latest web flotsam to wash ashore, but was actually laying in the middle of the road just a few miles away. But while I lounged in an edit bay, others pounced.

Citizens, news crews, still photographers and a stoner or two. All rushed to the spot where the consonants flip-flopped. A great gawking began. But as with everything these days, the rubberneckers aren't the only ones to enjoy the view. For every smart-ass that showed up to gloat, a camera or smart phone came along for the ride. Soon both pros and amateurs alike were foisting their lenses at the sun-baked flub and squeezing 'til their fingers tingled. You probably know the rest. The pixelated image of this lowly spot bounced across the heavens, as newspapers, websites and more than few TV stations clamored to capitalize on one road crew's orthographic error. Little could they know when they laid down the paint, they'd provide fodder for the (inter)national consciousness.

Not bad for a handful of guys who can't spell.

There Will Be Mud

Just as America was trying to push those gnarly tar balls out of its collective consciousness, yet another tragedy has struck the Gulf Coast, Okay so maybe it's not a tragedy, but it IS disturbing. I'm talking about the great Lens Schism of Twenty Ten. Sure, details are sketchier than an intern with genital warts, but as this recently unearthed snapshot proves, something is happening along our mottled shore. Theories abound as to exactly why, but it's clear from this photo (and a sharp drop in area fast food sales) that certain members of the media are turning on each other. Perhaps predictably, it's breaking down along long-held grudge lines. Example:

In coastal Alabama, a vacationing family reported watching two newspaper employees chase a TV news cameraman through a Waffle House parking lot. Witnesses aren't sure what started it, but they say the two ink stained wretches were trying to garrote the news shooter with the lanyard from his own press-pass. Actual bloodshed was avoided when the portly trio became overly winded and retreated to neutral sides of the breakfast bar .

Up the road in Thibodaux, a pair of hapless newlyweds left a still photog and a videographer arguing in a fancy reception hall. Party-goers reported hearing girlish screams and the clang of foreign made metal. When the young couple returned, all they found was a steaming pile of entrails, cargo pants and dirt-weed.

A postal carrier in Mississippi was slightly injured when she tried to break up a scuffle between a local print photographer and a network sound-man. No one's sure what started it, but eyewitnesses say the out of towner got the better of his older foe by wrapping his boom pole around the man's throat. It may have ended there had a group of passing fireman notpummelled the two men into submission with their wet, musty turn-out gear.

Some might call it natural selection. Others say it's survival of the fittest. Fans of the original Highlander flick can only think of it as The Quickening. Whatever you name it, one question remains: WHY? Did the recent oil spill upset the natural order of things? Was the brief uptick in freelance opportunities enough to push these fragile egos into apoplexy? Or is the widespread bouts of rage between newspaper photogepahers and their moving picture counterparts somehow connected to all that Kool-Aid that BP was pushin'? Hard to say, but until the matter is resolved no crime tape is safe. Experts worry it could lead to widespread discord, should the unadulterated rage spread to people the public actually cares about. At this printing, the U.S. Government is denying any involvement, but reports of black helicopters and and a roving band of mysterious census workes are causing worry all along the Gulf Coast...

Personally, I blame Anderson Cooper.

Artful Lodgers

I'm not sure what I was expecting the other night when I arrived at a house to shoot a story on body-painters, but Madelyn Greco wasn't it. A plume of shocking pink hair, cleavage 'til Tuesday and enough effervescence to fuel a Girl Scout troop, you could say the lady packed a visual drop-kick. With little more than a giggle she beckoned me inside the rambling home and my gear and I followed. By then it was damn near sundown and I'd already shot, written and edited my way through a full workday. In short, I was tapped. But stepping inside that house felt like taking a mild stimulant (if not a hallucinogen), so I trudged inside and waited for my eyes to adjust. When they did, my fatigued orbs feasted on the kind of eye candy that gives prescription lenses cavities. Paintings, sculptures and enough photography of decorated body parts to make even a seasoned lenslinger eyeball his tripod.

But I wasn't there to get off on the decor. I was there to work. So Madelyn - who I wasn't surprised to learn enjoyed a local following as a burlesque dancer - ushered me to an inner room. There, a mysterious figure stood hunched over a slender blonde woman and slathered paint on her far from repulsive stomach. Actually, 'slather' is the wrong word. Rather, Scott Fray applied deliberate dabs of color like the incredibly talented artist he is. About that time, Madelyn squeezed in the room, said something I didn't hear and joined her fiance in turning an attractive young woman into the kind of creature you might see spinning in circles outside Burning Man. Slowly I looked around at my three new friends and smiled. Clearly, these people needed a cameraman in their lives...

So, I did what I always do: I made small talk while convincing the trio to ignore me. Once I'd set up a single light (it was late and I was feeling lazy), I shouldered my miniaturized axe and moved in. As Fray and Greco worked on their art, I worked on mine - though fatigue, distraction and one tiny ass workspace prevented me from obtaining the kind of wide shots I'd yearn for later in an edit bay. Oh well, if I didn't match the creative duo's advanced technique with my own, I more than made up for it in the interview. Actually, that was on them too, for Scott and Madelyn displayed a trait not often found in unbridled artistic types. They were ... lucid, tangent-free, cerebral. Best of all was Scott, who - when not deferring to his more telegenic partner - let loose with a treatise so reasoned, so focused, so cogent, it was the kind of verbiage you'd expect from a court-appointed attorney, not some dude who paints otherworldly splendor on ingenues' private parts. As for slathering anything on ME, there's only one problem...

Too furry.