First, Happy New Year!
If I keep track of the years by the stories that I do - and I do for the most part - 2006 was a great year. I went to Virginia to see Crash Test Dummies, to LA to hang with Chris Daughtry and learned that dogs have feelings too.
What I didn't really have a lot of was run and gun, action packed, spot news. Somehow I missed out on most of the good stuff this year. I have a feeling that's about to change.
I'm back from vaction as of 7 o'clock Monday morning (yes, New Years double pay, I mean, day.)
Yeah, 7AM. I'm on call for this first week of the year and overnight 4 inches of rain pushed creeks in Winston-Salem out of their banks and into peoples homes. About 25 families were evacuated from their apartments and it was drawn out enough that I was able to get there and have plenty of semi-hectic action to shoot.
Of course being my first morning back, I wasn't fully prepared. I was missing one of my 3 camera batteries when I picked up my gear Sunday night and one of the two I did have I found out wasn't charged until I was on the scene of the flood. So I had to shoot with ONE half ass battery and hope it didn't die at a crucial time. And of course....It did.
I had a lot of good stuff but firefighters were about to bring a couple out of their apartment through the rushing water and the battery went dead. It's more complicated than that though. These 2 year old batteries are dying when the camera says they have 50% capacity left. I think it's a camera issue, but never-the-less the camera is powering down. I turned the camera off, let it sit unti the couple was coming out and I was able to get enough of the shot to make it work.
I had already made a dozen update calls back to the station and I did a live phoner at 8-30 and after this couple was out and my battery said goodbye again I hit the road back to the bureau to feed tape for the end of the show and to get fresh batteries .
I later met my reporter for the day, Eric White, back at the scene and we gathered more video, sound and information and went live at 5 and 6 with 2 pkgs. (and not a single digital picture to show for it....I suck!)
Welcome to 2007!
2 comments:
Hey man...nice pack. But out of curiosity, why do you leave all the drops on the lens? They were pretty intense during the firefighter interview. Is it for dramatic effect? I was always told to wipe it down.
I know that interview looked like crap. That was the best sound that fit the story and the worst picture. It was just raining so hard at that point that it was bad seconds after each wipe and add to that that I was standing on the right of the camera doing the interview alone.
I thought about covering the shot but I wanted it to be clear that it was the Fire Chief.
Thanks for looking.
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