Achieving Snowgasm

Sure, it was barely an inch of sleet and slush, but that’s more than enough to trigger a snowgasm here in the South. Fact is, my bosses (and my kids) been jonesin’ for a precip-hit since last winter piffled so completely. Of course they don’t have to bundle up and trudge through the muck of a paralyzed Piedmont. No, that’s my job. And it’s a job I often enjoy - despite my habit of belly-achin’ about it on-line. But we’re not here to stare at my belly button again. We’re here to examine the societal impact of regional inclemency - it’s indirect effect on mobilization, attitudes and foodstuffs hoarding. Something like that, anyway.

Before the first flake ever wafted downward, the grown-ups back at the shop had worked themselves into a wintry-mix frenzy. Rundowns, line-ups, radar sweeps and snow codes - I’m pretty sure I saw someone erect a parking lot igloo out of half-gallon milk jugs and ghetto bread loaves. Silly house cats. Don’t they know all that continuing team smotherage doesn’t come without a little pain and deprivation? To help themalong a little, I unplugged all the snack machines in the break-room. Okay, so I didn’t. I did think about it though - until the cell phone on my hip began vibrating and I was thrust back out onto the tundra. Stupid cell phone…

It’s difficult to understand just how one seventh of an inch of slushy snow can flip a sport utility vehicle, but I’m here to tell you, it can. Of course this inverted grocery-getter wasn’t the only stranded auto to pass through my lens this morning. It was however, the piece de resistance - an indelible image that - if it wouldn’t change the world - would certainly cause a few head scratches around the Piedmont’s collective coffee table. Even still, viewers would have a hard time fathoming the amount of effort put into a five second shot. To capture this particular frame, I had to double-back three exits down, drive upstream in the breakdown lane and wear a really itchy pair of long underwear. I know, I know - Too Much Information.

But fender-benders alone wouldn’t satiate the News Gods. No - they wanted footage of kids playing in the slush - I mean snow. A simple enough request I guess - but considering schools hadn’t been cancelled I wondered where I’d find such blatant truancy. I needn’t have worried. Why not? I got skillz - well honed photog powers of perception that more than make up for my shocking lack of orienteering abilities. Thus, after only about ten minutes of driving around aimlessly, I stumbled into a target-rich environment - an urban playground full of hyped-up city kids. Shouldering my axe, I waded into the crowd and bagged shot after shot of sporadic snowball fights. All went well until I stuck a lens in one kid’s face and sparked a riot of adolescent posturing. Shout-outs I can take, but when the first slushballs came raining down, I tucked away my fancy-cam and ran away like the fresh-faced schoolgirl I never was.

I’m okay with that.

Acrid Plumes and Other Hazards

Whenever I'm feeling uninspired here in the Piedmont, I hit the web and peruse the work of far-flung colleagues. Try it sometime. Whether you're a house painter or a proctologist, chances are others in your field are posting videos, stories and photos of your particular profession. For news dorks like me, it's hard to decide where to start. Blogs, YouTube, Flickr - all boast extensive imagery of broadcasters in action. Lately, I've been scouring this vast material for nuance and meaning, hoping to learn a little bit about myself as well as all those others battered souls behind the lens. While I've yet to stumble across too many revelations, I have made what I feel to be an important observation: We photogs hang out in some pretty stupid places. Chemical spills, structure fires, suspicious package gatherings...if there's a glowing puddle of ooze, a choking smoke-tower or a ticking lunchbox - you can bet there's a news shooter nearby, leaning in for a closer look and cursing his superiors.

Hey, I'm as guilty as the next ex-scanner addict. Sixteen years in the biz I've raced to hurricanes, clamored to stand-offs and weaseled my way into more sticky thickets than alot of self-professed adrenaline junkies. Why? It's what I do. Hell, it's what I've always done. Back in my early twenties, though, I never stopped to think what might happen when hopped-up lawmen drew weapons on low level crack dealers (in hopes I would get their good side). No, back then conical projectiles and burning textile plants never really semed to bother me. I was too busy learning the politics of roadblocks to ever ponder what peril lay beyond the squad car. How come? I was immortal - mentally impervious to shifting winds, deranged gunmen and flying debris. Throw in the glow of a thousand microwaved live shots and it's a wonder I ever had kids - let alone gifted offspring who are already smart enough to be mortified at the feigned breakdance prowess of their goofball father. But I digress...

Since the scanner days, I've slowed my roll considerably. Though I still suffer the whims of the Spot News Gods, I tend to deal in fluffier fare. It's not that I'm skeered, mind you. I just got enough sense to know plenty of danger, boredom and strife will come my way in the normal course of a news year - I ain't gotta go lookin' for it! Besides, your average feature piece packs its own hazards. You ever schlepped a fancy-cam though a Boat Show and endured the sales pitch of a thousand BassMasters? Ever got down on the floor with a pack of pre-schoolers whacked out of their gourds on Skittles and Juicy-Juice? Ever walked a TV camera through a coliseum full of delusional American Idol wannabes? It may not merit combat pay, but suffer the spoils of your typical goat rodeo and see if you don't slink away with a few more mental scars (and a funky smell on your clothes). Why, it's enough to make a weary lenslinger pine for simpler times, when the worst aspect of covering the news was the threat of being shot, poisoned or drowned. At least then I had my youth.

(A dip of the lens to Stuck Behind The Lens, newsphotog6801 and cadencefilm for their excellent shots of news in the making.)

It's Okay...Really

No, I didn't sell my site to a Beastie Boys fan club, nor have I given up on the idea of blogging altogether. I've merely run out of things to write about. For now. See, for every evening that I rush home with some half-cocked thesis pulsating in my frontal lobe, there comes the occasional stretch when I. Got. Nothin'. That time would be now. A year or two ago such a dry spell would have sent me spiraling into a sullen abyss of self-pity; certain that whatever writing mojo I once possessed had shriveled up to a spent husk - leaving me only with misplaced literary ambitions and a penchant for ten dollar words. No more. If there's anything I've learned from two plus years of blogging is that sometimes it flows and sometimes it don't. So while I kid myself that everything's fine while simultaneously resisting the urge to stare holes in my laptop screen - please carry on as if everything is normal. I'll be back within 24 hours or so, totally convinced I have something extraordinary to share with the world - or at least you half dozen diehards who keep clicking back on this site (Thank You). Meanwhile, enjoy(?) yet another photo of yours truly. I may look constipated, but I'm actually just freezing my tripod off. It happens...

Rock the Sure Shot

Though my wife will NEVER understand why, I am a huge fan of The Beastie Boys. The verbal acrobatics, their swaggering nerdiness, the spastic rat-a-tat-tat of their Tourette’s Syndrome delivery - just a few qualities that have earned Mike D, Ad-Rock and MCA a permanent berth in my news unit’s aggression rock CD stash. All of which makes me the target audience for their performance documentary, Awesome, I %&$# Shot That! - which is currently making the rounds of VH1.

For those who don’t know, the hip-hop pioneers handed out fifty Hi-8 cameras to their fans at a 2004 Madison Square Garden concert and edited the images into a mish-mash concert film that has to be seen (and preferably felt) to be believed. Like the Beastie Boys themselves, 'I Shot That' ain’t pretty. However expertly edited, the fan footage is shaky, grainy and inherently shitty. But it works - the glaring disregard for slick cinematography emulates the true concert experience in a way all those sweeping crane shots never seem to be able to.

Rent the DVD and see what I mean, but be warned: to the unitiated, 'I Shot That' will no doubt confuse and frighten everyone within earshot. If you’re a Beastie Boys fan however, its...well, 'like having a delicious me-al...'

Breaking Snooze

What does one wear to a nitric acid spill? That was the question I wrestled with just before six a.m. today as I stood in my closet, clad only in boxers and bed-head. Minutes earlier I’d been positively unconscious - locked deep within a watery dreamscape fraught with confusion. For some reason I was flinging donuts off the side of a pirate ship when my bride elbowed me - causing the pastry-wielding privateers to my left and right to vanish in a most unsatisfying ’poof’.

“Your phone’s buzzing.”

A low string of obscenities escaped my still sleeping lips, causing the wife to mutter her own disapproval, which convinced the cat to make a hasty exit from our pitch black bedroom. Not wanting to squash the family feline, I made a clumsy swipe for the flashing gadget and succeeded in knocking it out of reach. When I fished it out from behind the nightstand, I hit the ‘Talk’ button and immediately heard the background burble of overheating police scanners. Swallowing any further profanity, I made only caveman noises as the morning producer yammered excitedly about overturned 18 wheelers and toxic highways. That’s how I found myself standing and stretching before a sea of wrinkled cabana-wear. For the record, I went with a combination of blue denim and brown leather - a choice based on warmth, not fashion.

Comfy as I was, my utilitarian ensemble didn’t help me get past the roadblock. Neither did the rolling billboard I was piloting. In fact the sleepy-eyed deputy waved me away like any other motorist, forcing me and my live truck to abandon the promise of Highway 52 for the uncertainty of car-clogged back-roads. When the ribbon of slow moving cars ahead of me led me away from the highway, I pulled the first of many ill-advised u-turns and got the morning producer on the horn. She tried to help, but Mapquest or Google or whatever the hell she was using insisted the road I was on didn’t exist. It was then I squinted through the windshield, summoned all my Jedi-like photog powers and took a hard right on the next available blacktop. The winding road offered only seclusion at first, but a half mile later it brought me in view of the deserted highway. In the distance, I saw an impromptu parking lot of swirling emergency lights. Closer in, I caught sight of a competitor’s live truck mast slowly rising in the morning mist. For the first time since gaining consciousness an hour earlier, a smile crossed my furry mug. I love it when a lack of plan comes together.

My cross-town rivals barely batted an eye as I my rumbling live truck hove into view. They were too busy readying their own equipment for the hours of updates that would soon follow. Parking my logo’d beast behind theirs, I jumped out and commenced the frantic yet methodical set-up involved in a breaking news situation. Back at the station, a darkened control room full of sardonic colleagues glanced at a dark monitor, waiting impatiently for it to begin radiating scenes of smoldering wreckage and lost highways. Meanwhile I ran desperate circles around the live truck, flipping switches, pulling cables and cursing the buzzing cell phone on my hip. A few minutes later, I beamed an image of color bars to a lofty receive dish perched on a tower 12 miles away. This pleased the cabal of co-workers back at the shop and an excited voice poured from the tiny speaker jammed in my left ear. “We’ll take your shot in two minutes…” the producer said. ‘Great’, I thought, ‘that almost gives me enough time to set up my camera...’

The familiar forms bent around the cluster of tripods hardly acknowledge my presence as I joined them there in the middle of the highway. Consumed with their own mission, they leaned into their cameras’ viewfinders and pushed their glass to the limit. Fifteen hundred feet away, acrid smoke wafted over a sea of police cars and fire trucks. Silence ruled over our small group as photog and reporter alike watched the plume dissipate. Two hours earlier, the bent metal at the base of that smoke had been a mechanized beast roaring up Highway 52 for parts unknown. When a fellow trucker hauling formaldehyde a mile up the road flipped his rig, the driver let off the gas to accommodate the slowing traffic ahead. Too bad someone behind him didn’t. A delivery truck traded paint with a late model sedan, which rear-ended an SUV , hitting another car until the whole lot of them slammed into the vessel in question. All involved managed to escape their vehicles before the fire started but the nitric acid on board the struck eighteen wheeler fueled the flames until a potentially toxic cloud hung over the suddenly crippled highway. Peering through my lens at the truck’s smoldering carcass, it occurred to me that someone else’s morning sucked a whole lot more than mine.

Not that my colleagues or I grew at all verklempt over the situation. Instead we beamed our live pictures and commentary to our collective mother-ships. In my earpiece, I waited for our bearded traffic reporter to mention the Highway 52 tie-up before I slowly pushed my zoom lens through its practiced creep. When the avuncular anchor threw it to a commercial, I backed away from lens and chatted up my friends and contenders. We didn’t talk about the wreck much. Instead we continued conversations we’d abandoned at press conferences a week before, we gave each other shit for parking in the mud, we helped each pull cable and bemoaned the breakfast we were about to miss. All in all, it was very much like the idle banter you shared with your colleagues around the cubicle this morning. The fact that we shared our well wishes, driving tips and dick jokes over the sun-baked pavement of some mild disaster isn’t the least bit odd to us. We’ve all shared similar ribbing at sundry other scenes. Inner city stand-offs, glitzy fund-raisers, early morning drug raids and late night body finds: name the calamity and there’s sure to be a news crew nearby, riffing on the twisted predictability of it all.

That makes us either voyeurs or vultures, I can never decide.

One Burly Journalist

Via News Blues, word of a VeeJay doing it his way. Stanley Roberts was but a KRON photog when the station suits bought into the VJ Principle - you know, the assertion by Michael Rosenblum that TV news outlets should abandon the two person news crew for multi-tasking solo-journalists. Like alot of us, big strapping Stanley was skeptical of the wholesale shift to new age one-man-bands, but - probably fond of his paycheck - stuck around for the ensuing VJ bootcamp. I for one, am rather glad he did. Why? Because Stanely Roberts has clearly found his groove. In doing so he's helped forge a new form of television reportage that has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with bubbleheaded bleach blondes. Witness:

In February, Roberts pitched a series to his bosses, street level examples of citizens brazenly defying the law and logic called "People Behaving Badly". They bit, he hit the streets and less than year later his quirky body of work has captured the attention of viewers in San Francisco as well as YouTubers the globe over. Now, this ain't your father's franchise piece. A bit stilted and far from polished, "PBB" focuses on young Americans embroiled in Darwinism at large. 'Think MTV's "Jackass" meets Candid Camera.' is how the surly editor of News Blues so aptly put it - and who'd disagree with him? I won't - even if the uncoventional camera management at hand does nags a my inner cinematographer. But then again, perhaps that's the point.

Talented individuals have been turning news storis all by their lonesome ever since Al Gore's forefathers hammered out the very first test pattern. Rather un-humbly, I count myself a proud member of that solo breed. But it's a much-compressed POV that's kept me at odds with Rosenblum's VJ model. I wish not to trade in my heavy lens for a toy. Neither do I want to watch a newscast comprised solely of magic laptop backpack schmournalists. VJ's - especially seasoned photogs who write and think - can be potent force-multipliers and bring a singular verve to the drabbest of 'casts. Stanley Roberts appears to be just such an example - a hulking lenslinger with an eye for the absurd. "People Behaving Badly" may not be masterpiece theater but it's a (dutch-oven) blast to absorb - especially when compared to the over-teased, toothless dreck that so often passes for broadcast news these days...

Consider me a fan, Stanley.

Snidely Whip-Pan?

Tonight on an all new episode of Charlie's Angels, the girls take a rare day off from high heeled crime fighting to try out a few new string bikinis by the pool. All goes swimmingly at first - until a shifty-eyed cameraman from a local TV station crashes the party with his shiny mini-cam and scary moustache. Will Kelly drop-kick the photog and look fabulous doing it? Will Sabrina use her gravely voice to seduce the lens-toting drifter into a pair of designer handcuffs? Will a topless Jill pop out of the hot tub and say something lucid? Tune in to find out!