Gnats on the Glass

You there - with the Etch-A-Sketch... Don Ho just rose from the dead and he wants his shirt back. While you’re at it, hand over your health insurance card. It’ll come in handy when they have to chopper you out. 

Nah, I’m kidding, no one’s gonna lay a hand on you. But don’t be surprised if you pop up on indignant photog blogs across the land. See, you’re being a tool. We’ll get to why in a moment, but let me ask you: Would you barge into a Major League dugout during a game and start swinging a Wiffle Bat? ‘Cause you kinda just did. It’s one thing to whip out your tablet-cam and block some granny’s view of the proceedings, but when you start crowding out the pros, you’re treading on dangerous ground. See that dude slumped over his tripod? He may look asleep but twice now he’s committed your image to his memory card (You know, in case you should go missing.) And his buddy with the fishing vest and look of indigestion? He’s already wondering if your intestines will fit in his live truck’s glove compartment. Careful, his elbows are considered lethal weapons in three states.

Me? I’m a lover, not a fighter. But block my shot and the sequined glove comes off. It’s a professional courtesy among those of us who squint for a living and one I’d gladly extend to you and that magic portal you’re clutching. And just so you know, we’re ALL Apple fans. But you’re trying to prepare a four course meal using nothing but a dinner plate and it offends our sensibilities. So keep that sidelines and we’ll get along just fine. Remember, the iPad is a wondrous thing, but so too is the human rectum. If I were you, I’d go with the smart phone instead. Might be easier for the paramedics to remove. Don’t worry though...

 I’ll be happy to call 911.

Debacalypse Now

Once upon a time, a photog's only concern was keeping the live truck between the ditches. Now these TV stevedores have to worry about spreading global viruses. Take the latest case of Charles Ramsey - that whimsical witness who's helped a nation heal snicker and snort at a sadistic rape and kidnapping. Sure, he kicked that cursing anchor kid out of the national consciousness. And for that he should rightfully be heralded a hero. But what about those underpaid souls pointing glass at this latest sensation? Will they be able to move past the part they played in this predictable passion play? Can they sleep at night knowing a passel of catchphrases can be directly linked to the twitch of their collective thumbs? Many can not and as their focus goes, so too does their sanity...

It's why we here at The Lenslinger Institute are proud to announce the opening of Camera Manor, a full service rehabilitation facility for those living with the fact they unleashed a lunatic across the land. Already, scores of wards are filling fast with photogs caught in the grip of P.H.S.D. (Post Hyperbole Stress Disorder). Spotlighting ass-hats may launch a million internet memes, but the scars left on the news shooter psyche don't fade as fast as Balloon Boy, Sweet Brown, Grumpy Cat...

Just ask Hobbs in Room 13. Once at a train wreck, he jammed a camera in a hobo's face. How was he supposed to know hobos yodeled? Well, they do, and before Hobbs could even find his tripod, the yodeling hobo went viral. Old dude eventually got a reality show, even banged a Kardashian. Meanwhile, Hobbs is blinded by remorse. Says he poisoned the planet, added to the inanity and brokered a hobo's third case of the clap. Hobbs took it hard. Eventually we found him in the photog's lounge, sewing his eyelids shut with tiny strips of gaffer's tape. Now he sits in the dark in Room 13, making shadow puppets only he can see. 

But YOU can help the residual victims of telecommunications abuse. Just send a blank check, valid Lotto ticket or complimentary keg to The Lenslinger Institute  and we'll see that the lost souls at Camera Manor hear just how much we enjoyed your generosity. Meanwhile, feel free to snicker at the very next hysterical neighbor who rockets to the top of your Twitter feed. But remember...

A guy with two credits of film school under his belt and three bucks in his billfold is a terrible thing to waste.

Blood on the Moon

In a world where ambush interviews often lead to fisticuffs, isn’t it refreshing when one goes goofy instead? That’s exactly what happened recently when WJLA reporter Kris Van Cleave and photojournalist Brandon Mowry took on a local carpet cleaning company suspected of sketchy bookkeeping and unscrupulous suckage. It could have ended there, with a terse denial and quick eviction of said camera crew. But the man being questioned, whom will call “Dumbass”, turns in a performance so textured. so nuanced, so completely ill-advised, that the resulting clip is playing all summer long at the Dollar Theater in my head. Now, if you’ll kindly stop kicking the back of my seat, we’ll get through this...

The first fifty seconds is pretty standard fare. Van Cleave questions the man about getting his floor covering cleaned as hidden cameras rolled. But shortly before the minute mark, the camera comes out of hiding and stupidity ensues. Flush with the realization that he’s about to make the news, the upbraided sensation dashes from his place of employ, forcing Van Cleave and Mowry to join in pursuit, lest the suddenly agile upholsterer runs completely out of camera range...

And then God blew milk out of his nose.

At least I did, for as soon as Dumbass split the scenery, he took a tumble, biting it hard on the pavement outside and emitting the kind of mortally wounded Girl Scout noise that causes News Directors to shout when the photogs gather around and guffaw at a particularly pleasing sequence. But the fun doesn’t stop there. With a dazzling flash of ass-crack, Dude gets up, breaks left, breaks right and breaks left again before circling a van and finally running off. Mowry and his camera follow, as Van Cleave does an admirable job of keeping the wisecracks to a minimum (my favorite: “Does this mean you’re not gonna clean my carpet?”).



All the while, the reluctant interviewee displays a brazen case of ass and elbows, at one point nearly running in front of a moving car, a risky move that could jettisoned his news debut to the very top of the next available broadcast. Luckily, no one got hurt, though I’ve put a definite kink in my spleen laughing at the raw footage. As it sputters to a close, dude is still running, no doubt to earn his fellow floor covering saboteurs that the jig is most definitely up. Wherever he went, this track-suited fugitive left a definite impression, raising the act of running away like a leetle girl to the level of performance of art. Bravo, Good Sir, Bravo. You deserve to go viral and possibly even score your own reality show development deal. Why this hasn’t been Songify’d already could be the subject of another investigation - one I’d be more than happy to assist with any reenactments. You bring the fancycam...

I’ll bring the ass-crack.

View to a Shill

You can fool some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time, but any photog worth his weight in camera batteries will smell your bullshit from across the crowded conference room. Oh, he’ll keep his mouth shut. But a little while later, he’ll chuckle in disgust as the the dumbest crumb that fell out of your pie-hole comes to rest at the top of his timeline. Pretty soon, said soundbite will echo across the High Valley Homeland or Quad-City Metroplex or whatever else the promo guys decided to call those six wasteland counties no one else wanted. My point is this: if ever you find yourself leaning into a podium and tap-dancing around the truth, keep a careful eye on the man behind the camera. Chances are, he’ll tell you what he thinks with only an eyebrow or two.

Unless, of course, he’s under thirty. TV news shooters born after ’83 will no doubt be so absorbed with their iPhone app, that you could belch a soliloquy from ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ and they’d never once look up from their Instagram feed. If that’s the case, you’re safe until some night-side editor stops hating his life long enough to isolate that moment where your upper lip starts sweating. Consider it a professional courtesy. Better yet, put it out of your mind altogether and just stick to the script. That way, you’ll never catch of sniff of dissension from tripod row. The newbies won’t look up from their friends list and the lifers won’t blink Morse code messages your way. Remember, Nixon LBJ knew he’d lost Middle America when Cronkite questioned the war in Vietnam. You can avoid your own political quagmire if you lay off the hooey when those old photogs in the corner start to sneer.

It ain’t like they can help it. We unplug any facial restraint shortly before we remove their souls.

Bedtime for Bonzo

“If at anytime, we yell ‘get out’, get out!”

“Don’t worry’, I told the zookeeper as I squeezed into a pair of coveralls two sizes too small. “ I’ll be vapor by then.”

The lady grunted behind her surgical mask and turned, leaving me on the loading dock to wiggle into wardrobe. Why is it every time I get to go deep, I gotta do so lookin’ like a mental patient? I once toured the world’s most humid aspirin factory wrapped head to toe in protective gauze. I rode along with forest rangers as they lobbed fireballs into acres of bone-dry woodland. They made me dress like the grown-up from Curious George. And now I was gonna get clinical with a somewhat sedated chimpanzee, but only after a certain inseam cut my package in half.

“Mask. Gloves. Let’s go.”

Inside, no fewer than eight anxious young humans gathered over an examining table. Once I wedged an opening in the wall of overalls, I finally laid eyes on the patient, and got more than a nose-full. Sprawled out on his back, the adult chimpanzee looked to be sleeping off a bender. All around him, masked figures poked and prodded. One smeared gel across his furry chest, another studied the grooves on his fingertips. Me, I settled into my viewfinder and free-rolled. Letting the time-code spin, I zoomed in, held a shot for ten seconds and found another one. A pungent funk fell over the room and I couldn't decide whether it was the inert simian before me or my own stinking breath beneath the surgical mask.

That’s when the monkey moved.

Okay, so a chimp isn’t a monkey, but taxonomy goes out the window when the sleeping beast before you starts to stir. The vets and zookeepers (hard to know who was who behind those masks) reacted calmly, shsshing in his ear the way a parent might do with a murmuring baby. It wasn’t the first time I witnessed the conviction of the zoo’s caring staff. Nor was it the first time I eyeballed the exit that day, just in case our not so little friend woke up with a sudden thirst for cameraman throat. The chimp was no threat, of course. Any of the masked staffers around me would have gladly garroted me to a pulp had I so much as bled on their majestic beast.

I tried to remember that as I rotated around the table, taking careful note not to trip over any electrical cords and plunge the room into some kind of post-apocalyptic abyss. With my luck, I’d come to in the grizzly pit as a strangely sentient pack of black bears argued over who got to nosh on photog liver. Just as that daydream got really weird, a throaty rumble snapped me back to reality.
 
“Finishing!”

Every human in that small room suddenly stepped up their movements, except the one zookeeper who’d been leaning against the wall the whole time, cradling a shotgun. That dude never moved, but the hirsute hominid on the table sure did, raising his powerful arm and growling deeply as the coverall crew pushed equipment out of the way and closed in around him. Sensing a closing shot in the making, I backed up to the wall and fished my wide angle lens out of its pouch. If they were gonna manhandle the animal out of the room and into a cage before he started singing show tunes, I was gonna be there to record it. Or so I thought.

“ALL NON-ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL LEAVE THE ROOM!”

‘Wonder who that could be?’, I thought as I tightened my wide angle into place. That’s when one of the female keepers reached over and damn near pushed me off balance.

“ALL NON-ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL LEAVE THE ROOM!”

I half-stumbled out of the room, wondering what ever happened to “get out!” By the time I did get out, I was laughing from behind my mask. I hadn’t meant to wear out my welcome, but I was one shot away from a perfect ending and the lure of said resolution held me in place, no matter how many testy veterinarians or waking apes there were in the room.

At least I know my place on the food chain.

To Serve Man

Ever wonder what it's like to be an 'Executive Chef'? Me neither, but when the suits insisted that I find out, I ran from the newsroom before they could changed their minds. After all, they could have said 'Toenail Curator',  or 'Llama Jockey' or 'Septic Tank Specialist'. That would really sucked, as the bosses wanted me to wrap an entire reality show around said profession. Okay, so 'reality show' may be a stretch, but a fifteen minute chunk of reporter-free TV was going to take a lot more focus than the kind of slapdash minute and a half I usually fill. Luckily, the grown-ups found a most excellent specimen in one Leigh Hesling. A culinary journeyman with down-under roots , Chef Hesling came complete with an army of underlings, his very own catch-phrase ("Loife changing stuff!") and two of the most tricked-out kitchens in the Greater Piedmont Googolpex.

When it comes to photog-friendly environments, I'd rank restaurant kitchens somewhere between daycare playground and helicopter cockpit. They're just too many sharp edges and slippery floors, not to mention a platoon of beefy dudes in funny hats who will gladly body-check you into the nearest fry vat, should you get between them and their tub of mushroom truffles. Speaking of scalding cauldrons, I'd rather soak my frontal lobe in a red hot crock-pot than ingest one more frame of culinary wonderment. Maybe that's because I've spent so much time locked in an antechamber, stewing in my own juices as visions of twice baked souffles danced across multiple screens. The resulting piece ain't exactly news, but neither were the past six imperiled animal epics I slammed together. At least THIS shoot came with a handful of jumbo shrimp!

(Wrapped in bacon, no less.)

Doom with a View

All that I know about NASCAR can best be summed up with the words "Boogity Boogity", but one need not be a racing fan to have seen the horrific crash at Daytona this weekend. Me, I've only been to one such race and it was only because my bosses were paying me to be there. Which is why I so identify with one particular person in the above frightening frame. There, just left of center, a figure trying desperately to get away from the point of impact does so under heavy glass...

Okay, so it's no surprise a dude with a fancycam would be at the right place at the wrong time. In this case it's an ESPN cameraman named Craig. I don't know Craig, of course, but I'd like to buy him several rounds of his favorite drink and listen to what he has to say. Chances are he'd tell me it all happened too quickly to process. And while you don't have to have a face full of viewfinder to be overwhelmed by inertia and debris, it does provide an additional degree of disbelief.

Some blame the tiny black and white screen shimmering in the middle distance. Stare at it long enough and you begin to feel you're watching television, not making it. These days, however, those screens are bigger, closer and drenched in every hue under the sun. You'd think that kind of color and clarity would remind the operator that what they're seeing is all too real. You'd be wrong.

Twice in my life big things have tried to kill me and the camera on my shoulder. I'd be lying if I didn't tell you I'm always on the lookout for number 3. And while that kind of vigilance comes with middle age, I'm as susceptible to the lure of flickering pixels as I've ever been. See, there's a real kick to watching life through a tube. The laminated ID around our necks affords us unparalleled access. The cameras we so cradle take us even closer. As a result, we photogs feel like a part of the scenery - be it a flimsy fence surrounding a racetrack or a ribbon of yellow tape enveloping a crime scene...

What's my point? Don't know that I have one. But what I'm sure that I possess is a similar world view to that Craig the cameraman. Some folk might seek therapy after such a grisly incident. Most photogs, however, wear that kind of trauma like a badge of honor, a notch on their camera strap that bleeds street cred and chafes when no one's looking. I'm guilty of it myself, but the older I get, the older I want to get.

So do me a favor. The next time you're incredibly close to something sketchy, enjoy the view. But if that little voice in the back of your head begins screaming, do heed its plea. It's only your common sense, telling you to exit, stage whatever. Do so, for no piece of video is worth your name on a grave. Sure, people might marvel over what you captured there at the end of your life. Hell, they'll remember that shot forever. But make no mistake...

They'll forget YOU.