A NEW Photog Blogger

Let's welcome to the Photograblogosphere Pixel Wranlger, a photographer from Oklahoma City who says....


"I've stumbled across a handful of TV Photographer blogs lately and,
frankly, it left me feeling a little left out. So here I am... Let's see
where this takes us... "

He also has a web/Blogsite with a boatload of GREAT pix and movies featuring the birth of his little girl. It's great stuff!

101 Things You Didn't want to know about TV News - #101

I figure there may be a few souls out there who don't work in TV News who scratch their heads at some of the silly stuff we write. You know it...the jargon...the protocals...the setups. So I am starting a list of basically useless information I am calling '101 Things You Didn't want to know about TV News."

Number 101.....

When you see a TV Crew, attached with cables to a truck with a large round dish on top...



...or a tall mast with a small dish on top if it...



...they are either-

A-planning a LIVE Shot.
B-Doing a LIVE Shot.
C-Done with a LIVE Shot.



We get the silliest questions sometimes after liveshots like, "Hey, when is that goint to be on?" I have to laugh.



So the next time you see a TV Crew around the hours of noon, 5,6,10,11(or 24/7 for cable)...



...just wave and say high mom, because you just might be on LIVE TV.



I told you, you didn't want to know!

Next time...Number 100..."Does that mean how loud it's supposed to be?"

Begining - Middle - End

Begining...Middle...End. These three words are the mantra for good story telling.

Whether you are an acclaimed author hammering out the critical details of a steamy romance novel, a 4th grader penciling in the mandatory handwritten essay, a reporter covering the latest breaking news or even a Television Photojournalist piecing together pretty pictures and salicious sound for your(my) next award winning story, those three words hold court over the way we view life.



Those three words define the way I spent the last month covering the trial of Jerry Stuart who was convicted last week of first degree murder in the death of his girlfriend April Greer. I covered the begining of it, the middle of it, and the end of it.



I didn't make it back over to Graham but once for the middle of the triad. And I spent one day during the jury deliberations wating patiently for a verdict in the case.



And then I was back at the end. The jury was out, trying to hammer out a sentence. It ended just before noon on Tuesday throwing major monkey wrenches into our plans for a Live Report at the noon hour.



We made it happen. Live at noon with the freshest sound, hot off the disc from the courtroom camera. The jurors and the families were dismissed. Jerry Stewart is now at Central Prison. And the lawyers and the judge and the whole court staff get to start over at sqaure one for a new, and most likely, less media involved procedure.



The End

Photog Bloggers Unite(2) - Television is Furniture

My wife bought me a T-shirt for my birthday a few weeks ago from the B-roll dot net online store.

The quote on the T-shirt says, "Film is art, Theatre is Life, Television is Furniture."


If Television is furniture, and I am a TV Photog (who blogs) then what kind of furniture am I?


I'm definitely not the kind of furniture you go to Wal*Mart to buy.

Not that there's anything wrong with that because I once was that kind of furniture.


And Wal*Mart Furniture has become considerably better in the last few years.


I'd have to say that I am probably Thomasville Furniture.


Since I live in Thomasville and the plants that still make furniture in the U.S. are just down the road from my house it's kind of a natural selection.

But to be more specific, I would define myself as a a solid oak dining room table. I am fairly conservative and quiet when not in use. Just sitting there ready for the job at hand.

Like the table can be used for eating, gaming, working or just gathering, I am a master multitasking. When something needs to get done I feel like I a more than capable platform for whatever the job.


Like the quality furniture that Thomasville turns out, I was created by hardworking folks who have seen hard times and good jobs come and go.


I even share the Asian connection with furniture.(My camera, DUH!)



Hopefully I will endure the ages, not a here today gone tomorrow piece.


I would like to gracefully age into a fine antique be passed down through the generations with memories of dinners and stories and pictures past revived into conversation every now and then.


Here's the all the photog bloggers. Take a moment to check out what kind of furniture they relate to.(Here's my guesses about what kinds of furniture they may be....)

Be sure to check them out!

lenslinger A huge wallmounted bookshelf full of insightful and enjoyable books of all different flavors.



newshutr's viewsA Burkline Recliner, nice and cozy, kickin' back and relaxin when not working hard.



beFrankA contemporary and hip entertainment center with all the latest in Televsion viewing neatly tucked against a wall of art.



kazz's worldHmmmm..this one's tough...but I'll say he's a buy it in a box assemble it at home computer desk with a nice cherry finish, like you can get at any electronics store.



little lost robotA black veneer entertainment center with room for a kickin' sound system and huge HDTV. All of the accesories are on the shelves, proudly displayed for all to see.



smittyA bedroom set including the King Size Bed, Chest of Drawers, and Dresser, all mohogany of course.



erin winkingA metal finish computer center with a place for everything and everything scattered about waiting to be put in it's place.:)



colonel cornA sleeper sofa that is willing to accomadate the assignments that other pieces of furniture would thumb their noses at.

IMPLOSION - The search for a unique angle(w/ VIDEO)

When you have 4, 5 or 6 different crews at the same event, covering it from every possible side of the building, on top of adjacent buildings and all looking for the same story, finding different angles can be just a wee bit tricky. The most obvious angle to a story like this is the reaction story. But I guess in a way it's all reaction, so it's really to what level each crew gathers reaction and from whom. And no matter how much you plan ahead, you never really know what exactly you are going to get.



Lenslinger detailed his duty of having David Griffin all wired for sound, while holding the box that was wired to the building, while allowing his mother Griffin to push the button setting off the company's first ever blast in it's home town.

Ms Griffin had worked at the, now defunct, company whose building she was imploding, yet her time with the company pre-dates this building by almost 2 decades!



I myself was after the nuts and bolts of the story. In other words, WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHY AND HOW for the whole event. I found some older folks who worked in the building. I found some kids poised and ready to cover their ears and strecth their eyeballs wide open in exhuberence. And I found a man who helped build the building some 33 years ago.



And after it was all done I picked up where Stewart left off, as the matriarch of DH Griffin got her first close up look at the newly leveled building.

And then the elder David Griffin joined her, awed at the site of a "mighty fine pile of steel."

As we all worked the crowd, we all found these little angles for our individual stories. We all saw different things that appealed to our video appetites that we hoped would feed yours.

I didn't take too many pictures on my quest to find and gather the perfect nuts and bolts....but I did get to shoot a short bit of video on my handy, dandy, digital camera while my pro cam was locked down on a nice reaction shot.

So sit back, relax and watch the video. Push play on the video box below or click HERE

NASCAR All Star Challenge

When NASCAR comes to Charlotte...I mean Lowe's... Motor Speedway for it's two week stop for the NASCAR All Star race and the Memorial Day classic, Coke 600, you can bet that I will be there for all or part of the festivities.



A majority of the time you will find me roaming the pits, camera in tow, chasing down pissy NASCAR drivers while trying to get a bit of sound here and there to make my next NASCAR story my best yet.



This past weekend was the NEXTEL All Star Challenge. I didn't work, I took the family.



Let me stop right here for a quick expainer though... I was planning on taking my WHOLE family, that is, my two sons, my two stepsons, my stepdaughter and my wife but due to the death of my sons' step-grandfather, they couldn't go with us.



And my younger stepson opted out for a long anticipated sleepover at one of his friend's.



So instead of seven of us piling into the Caravan, it was just the four of us.



Jeffrey and I spent most of our time at the fence, snapping photos and booing each others favorited drivers.(The bum likes Jeff Gordon for Pete's sake!)



Jeffrey made me take like a gazillion pictures of him until I had Gordon in the piture behind him. That's not easy when they are goint 200 MPH!(and you can't even tell it's Jeff Gordon, way out of first place, by the way.)



But then Tony Stewart decided he wanted to start another feud between Kevin Harvick and Joe Nemecheck and the ensuing red flag period gave us an opportunity to pose in front of the motionless cars that had stopped up on the high banked track.



Kaitlynn is my littlest NASCAR fan. She's picking it up really early...although I don't think the finger she's giving is intentional, so I hope she doesn't get called to the oval office(NASCAR equivalent of visiting with the principal).



After the red flag a group of nice people invited us up onto their school bus. Yes I said school bus, this is no euphamism.



They paid $800 for it at an Auction and spent more than that building a viewing deck onto the top of the High Point, NC built child mover. Due to a blown head gasket, the bus is only good for 5 miles at a time, so it's a good thing that the owner of the bus only lives 5 miles from the track!



But the view was great and that is what really matters.



You can see clear to the front side of the track with just a short section that is out of view.



I'm going to have to find myself one of these buses.(that's probably a joke)

The traffic going home wasn't. This was the picture at 11:30 AND Midnight!

The Big LINK

Please take a moment and check out this week's Big LINK.

Road Trip with Pictures

I am lucky that I don't usually have to rise at the crack of dawn for my job. But then again, there are those days that I do get to witness the sun rise...and it's really tough, because I stay up so late.



Thursday was one of those mornings. Road Trip. I was headed to Graham, NC, and I needed to be there by 7:15. Not for the Greer trial sentencing phase, but for a school story at a local school that will air in a week or so.

I shot the story in short order and after a short wait I shot some standups with the Anchor when she arrived after getting off the set from her morning show gig.

The next item on my agenda was a trip to Raleigh, but first I had to go to back to High Point and pick up Bob Buckley...after all it's his story we are shooting!

All of this time on the highway got me to thinking....I've been to Raleigh once a week for the last three weeks! That's a lot of driving.



Two weeks ago Chad Tucker and I were in Capital City interviewing Attorney General Roy Cooper about his bill to protect your social security number.



Last Tuesday, I got all dressed up to go see Governor Easley drive a stock car. Oh Yeah, they did some legislating too.



Today our agenda was the NC Sports Hall of Fame induction.




Several triad faces are being inducted.... from left....Elvin Bethea played football at NC A&T, Add Penfield lives in Ashboro and was the voice of Duke Football and Greensboro Patriot Baseball(before they were the Grasshoppers, Bats, etc...), George Whitfield was the baseball coach at my alma matter Goldsboro High School(way before I was there), Woody Durham voice of the tarheels, Anson Dorrance and Peter Fogarassy.



After A&T, Elvin Bethea played in the NFL.



Penfield has retired as the voice of the Blue Devil's but is still sharp as a tack.



Woody Durham. What more do I need to say.




It was a busy day but a nice break from the usual, although it's becoming quite regular.



But I did make it home just in time to catch my youngest son's baseball game.



He hit a single, a double, a triple and made a few nice plays in the field.

(like catching a pop fly with his eyes closed...)



It was a good game until a storm moved in and the heaven's opened up.(no pix due to concern for the moisture threshold of my camera)



And then the day was done!

Except that I shot video of the rainstorm and had to go back to the station with the 45 seconds of cars whizzing through standing water sending up rooster trails that would make the best ski boats jealous.