My Christmas Tree!

My wife and I went and bought a Christmas Tree Thursday night and it's the biggest darned Frazier Fir I've ever spent good money on.

Usually we head over to the nearest Lowes and pick up a tree for their coporate, mass produced prices, but my wife saw a tree lot just a mile from the house with nice fat trees and so we saved the extra 10 miles or so on the round trip and plopped down a little extra on the private lot tree.



It looked really big on the lot but it wasn't until I squeezed it through the front door that I realized just how tall and fat this sucker really is.

In the stand, which only adds a half inch, it was too tall for our 8 foot ceilings so I lopped off about two inches at the top.



We stuck it in the corner and pushed all of the furniture back into place and the wife and my little step daughter tricked it out with all of our decorations on Friday afternoon.



And those presents under the tree are apparently for me, from the wife. I think I need to go shopping!

Is That Thing Heavy?

The title of this post is the single most ask question every Television Photographer must deal with on an almost daily basis, well, exept at VJ Stations where they are carrying sissycams, I mean Handycams.

But now the popular query is the title of another TV Photog's Blog. (and she uses a real TV Camera!)



Angie Moriconi is a photojournalist in Miami Florida who and she uses her name as her URL now, but her actual blogspot address is interestingly creative.

Check out what this award winning TV Photojournalist is writing about and taking pictures of at www.angiemoriconi.com.

Mighty White Oak

I literally when out on a limb today for my job.



I had the opportunity to climb into a 250 year old, grandaddy of a White Oak tree today and Greensboro and it was thrilling.



Sure you've heard of Rock Climbing, but have you ever heard about Tree Climbing? I mean after you turned 10 and didn't climb the dogwood in grandma's backyard.



Recreational Tree Climbing is a relatively new hobby/sport started in 1985 when an arborist took a group of people on a tree climbing expedition at their request.



Much like rock climbing there are ropes, carabiners and harnesses, but unlike finding a bit of rock to grab onto and climb, using on the rope as a safety device, in tree climbing the rope is the climbing and safety device.



As I climbed 20 or so feet into the mighty Oak with Tobe Sherrill of Sherrill's Tree Climbing and Supply, I learned everything I could about Recreational Tree Climbing in 2 short hours, all while gathering all the footage onto my XDCam and my personal DVCam.



I was able to get pretty comfortable standing on the limb and even stepped off a time or two and swung around and then stepped back up onto my perch.

According to Tobe, trees like these are the best kind to climb because of the long spanning architecture of the oak's massive canopy.



Tobe Sherrill has climbed huge Redwoods in California and Spruce's in Washington, I've climbed this Oak, and the dogwood in my Grandma's backyard when I was 7,8 and 9.

Sherrill says despite the massive size of those supersized west coast trees, some of the best trees for climbing are right here in Greensboro, NC.

I feel priveledged.

XDCam - The Disc

It's has been 14 months since I was handed my brand new Sony XDCam and I'm still in love. Shhhhhh, don't tell my wife.

To all TV Photojournalists that still use tape, whether it's Beta or a DV derivative, I just want to say, I am sorry. I just read Newshutr's post about a problem with a machine eating his freshly shot trailer fire and a chill went down my spine.



Because even more impressive than that awesome digital picture and superior low light capability of my XD rig is the robust and eternal nature of the XDCam Professional Disc. At $30 per disc they seem a little pricey (not that I have to buy them), but considering they hold 90 minutes of footage they are at par with $10 Betacam tapes that hold 30 minutes of footage.



But what really matters to me is that if I were using a Betacam tape I would only be able to re-record on it about 5 times before ugly trash started showing up on my tape, and I'm not talking about the kind you find down at the local trailer park. When I was using tape they used to have to pry old, debris trashed, head clogging tape, out of my hands or I might have used and re-used 15 or 20 times, sometimes several years from it's first use. I used to always get razzed for putting trashy video on the air.



Now with the XDCam, there is limitless amounts of re-recording onto the disc with no ill-effect to the quality of the digital image. I am still using the very first set of discs I recieved with my XDCam. I have put roughly 50 passes on my most used disc with no problem. And I am not aware that any of my XD toting co-workers have had a single problem with a discs.

That $30 dollars is starting to seem like pennies now. Not that I have to buy them, but you know what I mean.

North Pole

On Black Friday I didn't get to hang out in any malls or on the side of the highway in the cold, but I did get to take a trip with my reporter Caron to the North Pole.



We found out it's in Blairs, Virginia, just north of Danville about an hour north of Greensboro, just off of Highway 29 on, appropriatley, Toy Lane.



Inside the Massive warehouse from floor to ceiling are boxes and boxes and stacks and stacks of toys and toys and....even more toys. Everywhere you look...toys and people running around on forklifts sorting the toys. Every kind of toy you can imagine is moving around the building on it's way out to a household somewhere in the United States.



As a distribution warehouse owned by EToys Direct, this is just a holding center for the toys that are being ordered online from not only EToys.com, but also K-Mart Online, FAO Shwartz, and Sears Wishbook.

About 100,000 toys per day are pulled off these shelves and put on the correct truck for delivery.



There is one toy that is actually manufactured in this building. The MyTwinn doll has become a hot property in the past couple of years, this year rolling off the production line at the rate of 1000 per day.




At $140 bucks per doll that's a good bit of dough being pumped into the economy of this region.

The 200 workers on the MyTwinn Doll line and 1800 employees of the warehouse part of the operation surely appreciate the economic stimulation.

Thankful...Even at Work!

My pal Lenslinger is Thankful he's not working this Thankgiving and day after, but due to my untimely regard for proper vacation paperwork, I'm working both Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday, giving up my Thanksgiving dinner with my wife, her parents and my sister and brother and law.



But still, I'm thankful. Thankful to be working in a great job. Thankful to have an understanding wife and wonderful kids. Thankful that I get to do stories on Thanksgiving like the one I did today.



My story was about these two cuties' father. He's a soldier in the Army at Fort Bragg and this is the first year in 4 that he's been home for Thanksgiving. Last year he was away at Officer Training School. In 2003 he was in Iraq. In 2002 he was in Afghanistan. So this year is certainly special for his wife and children and the rest of the family.



The only monkey wrench in the whole Thanksgiving Day plan was his unit's Mission status restricting him to within 50 miles of Ft. Bragg, so coming to Greensboro for dinner at his wife's Mom and Dad's was out of the questions.



So Mom and Dad made the 90 minute trip, and so did intrepid reporter Caron Myers and myself. The hook for the story wasn't just that he was home for the Holiday or that he couldn't leave town, but that he invited his whole squad of soldiers to come to his house for Thanksgiving dinner. The soldiers are his extended family and they also couldn't leave town.



A 21 pound turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, ham, pickles, deviled eggs, homeade bread, multiple desserts and 60 minutes of XDCam footage later, Caron and I found our way back to the live truck and began the journey back to High Point with Caron firmly planted in the back seat listening to our interviews and reviewing our footage.



By the time we arrived in High Point at 4:15 we had a 2 minute masterpiece ready to edit and at 6pm my Brother-in-Law, Sister-in-Law, 2 year old niece, 6 week old nephew, Father-in-Law, Mother-in-Law, Wife and 6 other soldiers made their appearance in a great little story we're calling 'A Soldier's Thanksgiving'.

I certainly am Thankful that I was able to spend Thanksgiving Dinner with my Family, even if I did have to eat(while shooting video mind you) and run.

Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Black Friday, which I plan to be shopping at bright and early before work!!!

Rewards and Awards of the Job

Sometimes it's just hard to wipe the grin off my face. I mean look at these old pictures... this has to be the best job in the world. I get to go places and do things and meet people that most people would never have the chance to do.



And then I get to share my experiences with the world through the magic of broadcast. Each and every day is a reward of it's own, especially when I can touch a life or share crucial information.



But it's weeks like last week when all the hard work is rewarded...by a group of my peers....and my grin gets bigger.

Early last week I recieved a 3rd place award for an In-Depth Story called Chainsaw Justice in the NPPA's Quarterly Clip Contest for Region 6. This was only my second ever placing in an NPPA Contest, which I consider the hardest to place in, so that made me happy.



And then Friday night I was nomintated for my first ever Emmy Award....twice.

I received 2 Mid-South Region Emmy nominations. One is for the category 'Feature Non-Hard', for a story I did about a group of pre-schoolers watching a Fire Department burn a house for training. The other nomination is in the category 'Camera-News' for my work as a TV Photographer.



I'm pretty darn happy right now. This is something that's been a goal of mine for a long time.

Spare Time?

Spare time is something I don't have a lot of lately!



News doesn't stop and in fact I think it get's busier just when we need it to be slow the most. The cold weather causes the pace of house fires to pick up and for some reason at this time of year it seems like people lose their ability to drive safely.



And then there's sweeps. Four times every year, February, May, July and November, TV stations around the nation gear up with special reports, fancy graphics and marketing schemes to draw attention to their product. All of this to get as many viewers watching as possible so that the advertising rates for the following year can be boosted, or kept steady.



For photographers like me, sweeps means lots of work shooting and producing special stories that are more involved and longer than your typical nightly news story. I have clocked in a lot of overtime since the middle of October working on 4 different stories, two of which have hit the airwaves already. Just last week I capped off a 55 hour week by working a nearly 20 hour day preparing a story to air and shooting high school football.



And outside of the news, I have taken on a new responsiblity in my spare time. I have been tapped to be a basketball coach for my son's little league basketball team. I don't know a lot about basketball, but I am planning on staying at a Holiday Inn Express soon, so it shouldn't be a problem. I have 5 'how to coach' books and have found a bunch of web sites that have tips and hints.

We have had one practice and have 3 more before our first game. Wish me luck!

Bicycle....

Ummmm....I don't know where to start....It's a chrome (the kind in a can from Wal-Mart) bicycle. I saw it at first from a distance. The highly modified, 10 speed in low gear with its pedals spinning at an ultra high pace but the bike barely moving.



The man riding the bike sauntered into the Greensboro Police Department where we were awaiting an interview with a Lieutenent. Dressed in a 3 piece suit, but not quite ready for church, nice leather shoes, carrying a 3 inch ring binder and a hard hat on his head, painted the same discount chrome.

He looked serious about whatever his objective was. As a lone TV Crew hanging out in a public building we figured we would get an up close with the man in the silver hat, but he strolled by without so much as a look our way.

He wandered around GPD headquarters not really seeming to accomplish anything. One police Lieutenent had a look of great concern about the man but then confessed that it took him back to his childhood, reminding him of the Mr McBeevee episode of 'The Andy Griffith Show'.

It was a truly strange sighting. Unfortunatley no picture of the man.

Rolling Billboards

As a TV News Photojournalist I have the pleasure of driving around town, gathering up all the news the viewers can stand, in a marked up, vinyl lettered, advertising toolbox, that we bottom dwellers like to call 'Rolling Billboards'.



So it's appropriate at certain times of the year when the pretty faces that you see on Fox 8 end up themselves, as 'Rolling Billboards'.



Let me explain the telephone call that I received this morning. While it's not unusual for my wife to call me several times an hour a day, the frenzy in her voice told me I'd better listen.



Seems she had just seen two overtly giant sized, smiling news anchors...the same ones she sees on the 5,6 and 10 o'clock news.



I laughed at her, explaining that I have the same dream about three times a week.

But when she called me back giggling, saying that they had followed her to Wal*Mart, I thought she might be high.

"Honey, that's funny. Are you OK?"



But seriously,I have seen this before. About 4 times a year these funny looking trucks can be found traversing the streets around our TV viewing area, giving drivers quite a shock to see their living room talking buddies in supersize.



The drivers of these Rolling Billboards tell about drivers wandering into their lanes whilst gawking at Nico or Jeff or Julie or Neill. And the kids, they don't quite know what to think, craning their necks to every portal on the car while the the truck is out of site.



As the pilot of the pint sized version of the rolling billboard, often with the real thing on board, I can relate to my wife's frenzied fascination, and the kids starstruck stares, when spotting the Fox 8 truck, whether a real news unit or a real Rolling Billboard.



So now Jeff Varner, Nico Bella and Julie Luck are getting their inaugural rides on the fancified advertising machine.



Coming to a street near you!

Now Playing...

Remember the Superbowl commercial this past February where the girl is 'testifying' in front of the FCC panel pops out of her top?

Yeah that one! Do you remember who the ad was for?

I didn't think so. I, however, do remember.(effective ad, eh?)

It's the web domain name registration service www.godaddy.com

And NOW, I own the domain name www.TVPhotogBlog.com.

Earlier this year I purchased a domain name from GoDaddy. Www.ChrisVideo.com went online this past summer with the help of hosting from Go Daddy.



Just a week or so ago I bought www.be-a-sport.com for a local civic group I have volunteered to do a website for.

And most recently and most importantly, after nagging Lenslinger that he should register his moniker, I have finally registered my blog with it's own unique URL.

SO....NOW PLAYING....www.TVPhotogBlog.com

OF COURSE, my Blogspot address is still OK to use too.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE GO DADDY AD AND MANY OF THEIR NEWER ADS!!!

Terms of Use - Creating Hyperlinks

Every Commercial Website, and most non-commercial websites that I've visited recently have a Terms of Use Page. The link to the hyperlink page is usually in small, microprint near the bottom of the page.

I'm sure each and every one of you have trudged through the legal babble that make up the terms of use. And if you haven't, shame on you, because apparently it's the first thing you are supposed to do when entering a website according to many Terms of Use pages.

For Example -

Walt Disney's term's of use pagewhich cover's all of it's TV Stations, ABC, ESPN, etc., says "PLEASE READ THESE TERMS OF USE CAREFULLY BEFORE USING THIS WDIG SITE." There are 4175 words in this whole terms of use document.

There are 3080 words in the KNBC-TV terms of use. It begins with "Your Use of the Service and this Web Site is Governed by These Terms of Use
Please take a few minutes to review the Terms of Use. By accessing and using this Web Site, you agree to be bound by each of the Terms of Use and all applicable laws and regulations governing the Web Site. If you do not agree with any of the Terms of Use, you are not authorized to access or use this Web Site for any purpose."

At CNN dot com's legal page it takes 2814 words to tell you, for instance, that "CNN is a distributor (and not a publisher) of content supplied by third parties and Subscribers. Accordingly, CNN has no more editorial control over such content than does a public library, bookstore, or newsstand."

I feel sure that even if you did go to the terms of use page for curiosity or whatever, that you wouldn't even actually understand what you were reading. I don't, until the 5th or 6th read through. (btw
- any lawyer's reading this can disregard that last sentence per applicable provisions of literary architecture that are not applicable to the legal or contractual nature of this blog.)

One disturbing find I made searching through some of these terms of use pages was the forbidding by at least one company of creating text hyperlinks to any of their companys' websites across many different divisions within the company. Their terms of use ask that you send an e-mail or even write a snail mail letter(on some of their divisions) to a legal department to get permission to create a link to their site.

Since they restrict linking to their sites I just won't say who it is and certainly won't link to this company. I find this policy strange, if not outragous, being that the internet would not be able to sustain without linking. It's also odd that the company with this policy has recently bought up a bunch of internet based media properties. I can't imagine a situation in which they could handle every request for a link approval.

It's kind of like if McDonald's made the terms of eating a Big-Mac that you not tell anyone the locations of their restaurants.

I did manage to find some legal precedent to this denial of hyperlinking.

The American Library Association likens hyperlinks to the the Dewey Decimal System for catologing books. It's not an infringment on the book to tell the public where the book is. The linked article notes a case from 1997 where, "in an opinion striking down a Georgia Internet statute, a federal district judge suggested that the practice of linking is protected by the First Amendment."

But the article also warns of "deep-linking" past the front pages of websites to a specific place on a website. The home page of the website may have advertisements that could be inadvertantly bypassed by the deep-link.

Poznak Law dot com tells of how Microsoft settled out of court with Ticketmaster for deep-linking past the Ticketmaster home page.

It boils down to not infringing on copyrighted images, not plagerizing another site's materials, not linking another site in a defamatory manner. A simple hypertext link to another website is not something that it going to generally get you into hot water.

Any way, all this talk of Terms of use has prompted me to create my own terms of use page which you can find here.

Don't forget to read it in full! There are only 2659 words in it. Feel free not to understand until you've read it over 20 times.

(There are 748 words in this blog post!)

Guilford County Jail

What does Guilford County need to do to resolve the overcrowding problem at it's jail?

According to a letter sent to the county be the State of NC jail inspector- Something, within 30 days or the state will step in...and could take over OR EVEN close down the jail.


Without directly saying, "I told you so!", BJ Barnes reminded the commissioners he's been harping on the overcrowded conditions at the jail for 11 years.


County Commissioner Bruce Davis also seems to have decided that a jail has to be built. He aknowledged that something has to be done, and in his opinion, it's just a matter of choosing one of the several plans that the county paid a consultant almost $200,000 to conger up.


Davis' main concern is making sure the taxpayers of Guilford County want to pay the bill. He says the county can come up with the money, whether it's through tax hikes or bond referendums.


Barnes, trying not to let out a grin, knows he may now be several steps closer to getting that new jail. That or the current one will be shut down and all the Guilford inmates will be housed in other counties. Guilford might need higher taxes and bond money just for that.