Diagnosis: Lifer

What is Viewfinder BLUES?

It's that feeling you get while freshening up a widow's porch, rearranging the rocking chairs so that sunlight will glint off the tears you're about to capture.

It's that sudden knowledge that you're gonna spend the rest of the day camped out in an electrified dumpster with promises printed on it.

It's the sensation you get when the woman who called your station demanding something be done about the problem in her neighborhood tells you she doesn't want to talk about it on camera.

It's that deep-seeded realization that no matter how many heartfelt epics you serve up night after night, the viewers just want to watch the hot chick wiggle through her stand-up.

It's that dull throb you feel behind your temples as a young colleague who's yet to master the fundamentals wonders how long it will be before he wins his first Emmy.

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But it is so much more. It's a self diagnosis, the kind of thing you come down with while spinning your wheels at the intersection of Pixels and Grit. It's also an excuse: "Hey I'd like to help with your telethon and all, but I got a wicked case of Viewfinder BLUES. Doc says the only cure is warm beer and a few 'WKRP in Cincinnati' episodes." And for better or worse, it's become a bit of a lifestyle. Don't believe me? Look around your newsroom. Surely you'll find an aging photog or two bitching about how the free ice cream at that last ribbon-cutting was too cold.

I get that guy. Hell, some days, I AM that guy. But by twisting grist into pithy epistles, I've found a way to live with this affliction. It's no cure, mind you. I still lapse into torpor on a regular basis; feel sorry for myself 'cause I stayed at the party too long. That's my hang up, not yours. And while I still have no good answer whenever someone asks me why I haven't written that book yet, know that I haven't given up on the idea of starting it one day. For now I'll forge ahead, knowing that, if nothing else - I got a title that says it all....

Besides, 'Live Shot Miasma' just didn't sound right.

Legends of the Maw

Bonfires, lock-downs, cockfights ... you never know where you'll run into (or over) a colleague.  And since it's chaos we seek, we never let it stop us from catching up. Just ask David R. Busse, a Senior Fellow with the Lenslinger Institute. Busse has seen it all, all right, but he hasn't done so alone. And when he spots a colleague across the maw, he doesn't let said bedlam interrupt his visit. Such was the case the other day, when protesters stormed the campus of the University of California-Riverside...

"Your correspondent, now 55 and proud of the fact that he recently shed knee braces and takes ibuprofen only on really busy days, jumped in the fray and moved up the stairs with the mob, certainly the only person on this campus at the moment wearing a Cabela’s baseball cap. As crowd turned the corner near the top landing, they were met by a brace of helmeted University police in full riot gear. The upward mobility of the group quickly stopped.

In younger days, your correspondent would have pushed his way to the 18-inches or so of tense air that separated youths from hickory batons. About the time he began to ponder that move, and among drum-beating, chanting and loud discussion of the moment, there was a tap on the shoulder, and someone muttering “Hey, Busse…” (pronounced bus-eee in case you were wondering).

It was the familiar voice of Kurt Miller, veteran news photographer of the Riverside Press-Enterprise newspaper, and a person with whom this correspondent had covered fire, flood and, now, insurrection, for more than three decades.

The chanting continued, but among the shoving, jostling and drumming, two veterans managed to catch up on the goings-on among respective places of employment, family stuff, retirement plans and other such weighty matters…cocktail party conversation among the jetsam and flotsam...

Ten minutes later, the protesters retreated, cops held their ground and peace returned to that side of the building. Your correspondent began to think of deadlines and image ingestion issues. A packed lunch also awaited in the back seat of Minicam Unit 51 and somewhere in that lunch bag were a couple of ibuprofen tablets."

With friends like that, who needs painkillers?

Schmuck Alert: Get a Leg Up!

Okay, show of hands... Who here hasn't fantasized about ripping off a tripod leg and going all Billy Jack on somebody? I myself have concocted whole action sequences in my head while pacing about some deserted sallyport (look it up). But to actually do it? In broad daylight? As cameras rolled? Gentility forbids! Besides, you know what kind of tensile strength it takes to wrench a limb off a modern-day camera stand? I'm w-a-a-y too lazy for that. Plus, I got CLASS - a mental condition not shared by the crazy bitch, er, distraught family member who - in under sixty seconds - brought more shame to Detroit City than any twenty members of the Kiss Army combined. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to step away from this paragraph and collect my thoughts.

Ahem.

You know, we've seen a lot of savagery here at Schmuck Alert Central. Handcuff tantrums, slow-motion moonshiner spit, a veritable parade of ill-advised dropkicks... But in all our days of screening rash of acts of video, we've never before witnessed the kind of tripod atrocity as the wanton utensil sacrifice depicted in the clip below.  As with many crimes against the camera, it happened outside a courthouse. That's where the families of both the victim and defendant in a murder case left an arraignment Saturday afternoon. Free from the supervision of the courtroom's drowsy bailiffs, the relatives waste no time cursing each other and the predictable collision ensues.

Third verse, same as the first.

Or so we think, for after a few moments of rampant apoplexy, one young lady sheds her pink jacket and does something wholly unexpected. She makes a beeline for the nearest tripod, body-slams the damn thing, then throttles that weak-kneed beast in front of God and everybody. This is a new maneuver in the annals of news crew abuse and quite possibly, a sign of the apocalypse. I can only wonder what's going through the photog's mind as he pans from the general chaos around him to the methodical dismemberment of the three-legged creature he takes with him everywhere he goes. The mind reels. Worse yet, the woman manages to separate said leg, no easy feat I assure you. She then brandishes it a bit before finally following her family down the street, all the while twirling the broken leg like some demented drum majorette from Hell and leaving the rest of civilization speechless...

Schmuck!

Weary from Prattle

Things they don't tell you at The Photog Academy: You're gonna grow old staring at a podium. In fact, you'll gather most of your news standing still. But you won't have time to daydream. No, you're gonna learn to spot a CEO at a thousand paces, sidle up to his lackeys without really speaking and secure a one on one interview with the boss they hate. First though you're gonna wait. You're gonna lean against a back wall and fantasize about trap doors, sprinkler systems and giant hooks. You're gonna edit in your head while some guy in a thousand dollar suit reads off a napkin. You're gonna rock back forth in your sensible shoes until you're up to your fanny pack in' off the cuff' remarks. You're gonna learn to field strip a press kit down to the bare essentials, then go back to eyeballing the refreshment table. You're gonna curse the corporate hack running the audio bord, plug in anyway and record sound you know will never make air. You're gonna scan the room for big wigs you know, zoom in on a pair of hands and hold your fire until they start clapping. At one point, you're even gonna look over at the competition, lock eyes as if your both prisoners of war and quietly pray for an asteroid to hit the building. These are just some of the things they don't tell you about at The Photog Academy.

Next time, the TRUTH behind noon live shots. (HINT: It's all about The Price is Right.)

Give One Pause

 
Thanks to the camera-shaped growth on my shoulder, I spent my twenties inthethickofit. Crumpled cockpits, brazen blazes, inelegant weather - nothing short of a restraining order would keep me from savoring the latest imbroglio. But after years of gorging myself on handcuffs and house fires, I lost my taste for top stories. So too do most photogs foolish enough to mistake A/V geekery for a career. Hey, CSI: Schenectady may make every murder look like a garden party, but your average homicide scene is a stone cold drag - and not just for the stiff under the sheet. Callous? Youbetcha. That's what happens when you spend ten years staring at politicians and body bags. Next thing you know you're the crab-ass at the crime tape, bitching to all who will listen how the Medical Examiner in your old market would have been here by now. If that guy sounds a lot like you, do us all a favor:

Go deep.

That's what Richard Adkins is doing... I think. Truth is, I don't know where exactly dude is, though judging from the above photo, I'd say he's due east of the Lenslinger Institute. And while I have no idea what he's focusing on down by the shore, I damn well know what he's looking for: Respite, relevance and perhaps a cool reflection shot. Throw in a boat ride and you have the makings of a most satisfying sortie. Will it make the first few minutes of the very next newscast? Will they pay me more if it does? No? Then ease up on the inquisition, would ya? My man's trying to steady his shot. How else if he gonna tell the story he's formulating in his head?  Chances are he's got the thing half-edited in his frontal lobe. See, long before he hunches over a tree stump with his laptop and little yellow lunch box, he's got a good grip on the narrative taking shape in his cerebellum. And I'm pretty sure it doesn't call for some failed thespian in a trench coat doing his best Robert Stack.  

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But for the true cameramanthropologist, propping up spokes-models and turning interns into auteurs is a surefire recipe for brain rot. Lead stories may get all the cool graphics, but they're painfully pedestrian to produce. I myself can pound out a pretty gripping update on the latest drive-by shooting without breaking a sweat - provided the sheriff begins his briefing on time. And that wall of flame I erected in an instant? Strictly point and shoot, chief. It takes a lot more skill to find your kill, be it a one of a kind character in some backwater town or some human cartoon no one ever peruses. Consider it the Church of Kuralt - a denomination we Carolinians are especially fond of. And while our man Adkins would never compare himself to Father Charles, he squats at the very same altar, knowing that if redemption can't be found in those counties less covered, chances are a languid lunch is in the offing.

Can't get that at the crime scene.

Private Glancer

He had the eyes of a fighter pilot and the legs of a dancer. At least that's how Sam the Cameraman saw it back in 1936. Trouble was, not everyone was ready for a newsreel man so prone to pirouetting. So Sam tried to lay low, which was a tough gig for a jet-setting fellow like him. Once, while perched on a car roof covering the National Air Races, a passing beat got the better of him and the dancer in Sam came out. Years later, an investigative committee would point to a visiting pep band for sparking the melee that followed. But Sam must shoulder some of the blame, for it was he who tore his eye away from the action, removed much of his restrictive britches and attempted to introduce a Depression-era crowd to the concept of 'Jazz Hands'. Tragically, a group of Merchant Marines was also in attendance that day and, after watching the oddball photographer break several social mores at once, pulled Sam off that sedan and beat him senseless. Sam survived that brutal attack, and while he continued to schlep glass across much of the Twentieth Century, he never so much as broke out another Foxtrot... Hmmm? That's NOT how the whole thing went down?

Oh well. Leave it to Amanda Emily to let 'the facts' get in the way of a good story.

Slumdog One

And now for a look at technology, we go LIVE(!) to Mumbai, where a crack squad of broadcasters is demonstrating the latest in third-world news-herding... It's a sat truck! It's a billboard! It's a dusty micro-van cloaked in logos and motor oil. Whatever you call it, remind me not to whine so much the next time someone leaves Slushee guts in the center console of Live 4, would ya? At least that thing's been inspected since the last century. Speaking of the last century, a reporter lady from India's News Leader was gonna speak but she was overcome by generator fumes and had to go lie down.  That's a shame too since she had some hard-hitting facts about Tim Tebow and the wonderful things he's done for the people of New Delhi. Oh well, let's meet her crew. Say, are those viewers leaning into that passenger side window - or is someone trying to trade that hoopty for two sand-bags and an ox-cart? Hey, I'd pull the exact same stunt if my mobile newsroom had the life expectancy of a Ford Pinto on an grease-covered overpass. As far as I'm concerned, you have every right to upgrade your conveyance - no matter what hemisphere you call home. Just take my advice and burn those clothes while you're at it. After all...

...it ain't just credibility that thing's oozin'.