The Water Tower Bounce

There's not a TV Photographer out there who hasn't positioned a Live truck knowing it's only going to tune in to a certain recieve site....and then with a deadline approaching, the engineer back at the shop says those 5 dreaded words..."Another truck is on that site", followed by, "Let's try the other sites"



Yeah...that happened to me today. I needed a certain neighborhood for my Live shot and I found the look, parked the truck and knew I could only hit our transmitter tower site....only to be told to tune in to the station short stick site. Ugh!



After a few minutes of pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan with no signal seen on the other end it struck me that I was right next to this water tower...and it's height and large surface may just bounce the signal right into our reciever's dish.



I panned and tilted up to the water tower and bingo...they had a signal. A little bit of fine tuning and we were good to go for a 5 o'clock shot.

When News Breaks Winston-Salem Cops Shot

When news broke Wednesday morning that 2 Winston-Salem Police Officers had been shot news crews from around the Triad Converged on the scene at Peter's Creek Parkway and at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, where the injured officers were taken.



That's where I first landed, with Shannon Smith taking the helm in front of the camera, delivering details, freshly gathered, trickling in.



After the noon I headed over to the Police Department for the 2:30 press conference where some of the details of what happened were going to be released.



Our Ops Manager Timmy Hawks and I carried, dragged and hauled 3 cases, 1 cable reel, a tripod and extension cords up to the third floor fo the PD so that we could use our portable digital transmitter to send a live signal back to the station to carry the press conference LIVE. Photojournalist Kenny Cravens manned the camera at the other end of a short cable run.



With that accomplished it was time to look ahead to the 5 and 6 o'clock newscasts.




Main Anchor Neill McNeill joined us across the street from the scene. The "us" was our Winston-Salem Crew, reporter Brent Campbell and photojournalist Kenny Cravens who were on scene from the get go....producing several stories through 5 and 6 o'clock.



Photojournalist Joe McCloskey (took a lot of these pix for me)and reporter Shelby Baker brought the second Live Truck and worked out of it to produce a few stories in short order.

Another Crew was still back at the Hospital keeping up with any updates at that location.



With 3 crews, 3 Live Trucks, Neil anchoring from the field and 1 recieve site in range we parked two of the trucks side by side and Brent went Live along side Neill on top of one truck as I shot from the other.



The view from on top of the truck was perfect to get a look down into the parking lot of the scene across the street....and other than the case with the LCD monitor taking a tumble all the way to the ground....everything went smoothly. (TV Still works if you can believe that!)



Live at 5, 5:30, and 6 with several teases in between and we were done....though I think this story will last for several News Cycles.

Anchor's Away Cindy Flies Loops

I accompanied our morning anchor Cindy Farmer to Winston-Salem on Wednesday to story that only comes along every so often.



Well really, everytime an airshow comes along the PR machine spins up to give journalists a little airtime in exchange for a little, well, airtime.



But as a photojournalist it's the luck of the draw to be chosen for the assignment.



The assignment was to hop in a plane with no door and videotape Cindy in the Aerobatic Extra S300 as she and Major John Klatt did looptie-loops, barrell rolls and hammerheads. No Problem...just strap me in.



They did. I was attached via a full body harness and a tether to the plane's frame.



My only intructions from the airshow staff...don't cross through the threshold of the door...it could pull you out of the plane...and we don't know if we could get you back in. They laughed.



Anyway...Cindy pulled her G's and I rack focused and snapped zoomed to a tee. And to make it even better they provided us with a tape from the in-cockpit video camera and it came complete with audio. SCORE!



So with all that footage and audio in hand, I spent today locked away in an edit bay and this is what it became....



And then of course there are what we call Web-Extras....the extended versions of our day...

Here's more of the footage I took from the Chase Plane....



Here's more of the footage from the in-cockpit camera...



Here's Cindy's attempt to take the controls...



And what did Cindy think of the flight? What do you think since she can't wipe that grin off her face?



See more of the picture we took HERE

Camera Guys are Hot So Says Sandra Bullock

So the new Sandra Bullock Movie, "All About Steve", opens next week where she plays a woman obsessed over a network news cameraman.

CNN did a story recently at the movie's red carpet premier and she says all TV Camer Guys are HOT!

Stories that Touch the Heart

Some Stories that we do are just special. Not because I shot good video. Not because I gathered great audio. Not because I wrote and edited the video and audio into a nice little package.

No. Some stories just touch the heart in a special place. It's when you make that connection with the subject of the story.

Today was the third time I've interviewed Evelyn Harris. Her son Josh was a Navy Seal and he died in Afghanistan in August 2008....last year this week.

His death was just 3 months after the death of my cousin Davy who's convoy ran over an IED in Afghanistan in May, 2008.

I first interviewed Josh's Mom and Dad at a Friday Night Football Game at Lexington High School where he played football in the late 80s.

I saw his parents again at the Memorial Day festivities in Thomasville where they were guests of honor and were presented a special plaque.

Josh was an artist. He went to Davidson College (the 4 year college near Charlotte) and majored in Art. He then went to UNC Charlotte to get his Masters in Architecture but decided in his last semester to join the NAVY and he set his sight on becoming as SEAL.

After his death his family was looking through his art and found a lot of art that they'd never seen that Josh has just stored away.

Today I met up with Josh's Mom and his twin sister Kiki. They were at Davidson County Community College bringing Josh's newly framed artwork to put out for everyone to see how talented Josh was.

Murder in Greensboro

Although I spent my Tuesday afternoon at the Hickory Trails neighborhood murder I had other assignments the rest of the week and never had to go back for a follow up.



This is the same neighborhood where a bullet came through a wall and hit a little girl just 5 days earlier....and the murder was just a short walk behind that apartment.



This morning I saw an email with a link to a video. A city council candidate went over to the neighborhood to see what was going on after the city mangager squashed an official city gathering in the neighborhood as "too dangerous".



"Balderdash", I can imagine this particular city council candidate saying. Upon arriving in the neighborhood he found himself face to face with neighborhood teens who were more than happy to lead him to the grieving mother and then took him to the scene of the crime.



(disclaimer - As a working journalist - I'm not, don't and can't endorse a candidates running for office....even if I don't live in his city....so don't take this post as any kind of endorsment.)

Leaving Las Vegas Maximum Altitude

On the Flight Home from Vegas this week the Pilot warned of some storms we'd have to avoid.



With my trusty GPS attached to the window I was following our flight across the country. When we got to about St. Louis the pilot throttled up and began to climb from our 36,000 feet cruising altitude.



As I watched the numbers rise I wondered what it would be when we leveled out. It was what you see in the following picture. Almost 41,000 feet....the max crusing altitude of the newest 737s.



Not too much later we passed over some kick-ass thunder boomers....I've got a video clip I'll add later.