NAB 08 - (Not so)Live from the Floor with Lenslinger and Turdpolisher

In what seemed to be a weeklong trip, Stewart "Lenslinger" Pittman, Rick "Turdpolisher" Portier, and I made the trek to Las Vegas for NAB 2008.



We hung out with friends old and new, roamed the NAB floor, partied with fellow photogs at the B-Roll Bash, got way to little sleep and have now all returned home with hundreds of pictures and hours of video.



Now comes the hard part....making something out of all of that material.



Coming up in the next few days to a week check out this site, along with Turdpolisher's and of course Lenslinger's for in-depth and sometimes amusing (to us anyway) stories from the floor of the Las Vegas convention center and NAB 08.





Some of the topics on tap include - 3 almost famous and righteous dudes, the little car that could, the capital city sprinter mobile, how to light video with AA batteries, why supermodels are better than a camera dolly, how Abe Lincoln got through the Gettysburg Address and best of all, an in-depth interview with B-Roll.Net owner and founder Kevin Johnson.



(and now to sound like a cheesy TV tease...) All that and more coming up as quickly as I can compress video and press publish.



For now...Here is a link to the pictures the 3 of us took. Check 'em out while I get cranking on the video.

Fauxtographs

In an interesting,almost Candid Camera kind of way, a new trend, fad, thingy called "Fauxtographs" has emerged from cyberspace and it could be the new practical jokester's best friend.

I discovered "Fauxtographs" at Vimeo, a YouTube-ish web site for videophiles of a more A/V geek nature. More about that in a minute.

A "Fauxtograph" is really a video but in the name of getting people to pose for a photograph while capturing video of them cheesing for what isn't a photo.

These "Fauxtographs" on the "Fauxtograph Channel" of Vimeo are pretty darn funny. It's amazing the faces people make just to let someone capture a staged image of them.



Fauxtograph in "The Basement", on the night where Billy almost died. from emeryzach on Vimeo.




Now, about Vimeo.

Vimeo's been around since 2004 but doesn't quite have the member, upload, or view numbers that YouTube gets.

Part Facebook, part YouTube, part 80s Cable Access Channel, this video website is a niche player where video geeks can show off there latest projects in high quality web video, whereas YouTube seems to be more like a Worlds Wildest Videos TV Show.

Photojournalist WeaklyThe Grizzled Veteran

In Jamison Forst's second installment of "Photojournalist Weakly" we find the Grizzled Veteran, native Minnesotan, Matt Jensen on the cover.



Hippee at heart, photojournalist by profession and photoshop artist by neccesity Jensen can work a Non-Linear edit bay 'till it smokes from exhaustion. Matt has been known to find the creative juice in any reporter's monotone verbatim even if it drives him to pulling his hair out. But try to find him on an edit day past 6 and good luck.

In next week's installment...Sat Man Dan. Another veteran..this one like's to shoot the bird.

Frankensticks

My tripod was well aged when I started using it 10 years ago. Other than routine maintenence it's never failed until recently when the tightening mechanism on the bottom of the head wouldn't stay tight and keep the head level.



It didn't take long for the engineering department to give me the bad news. It was terminal. Several parts in the bowl that keeps the head attached to the tripod legs were stripped, broken and hard to find because of the age.



After several weeks of borrowing other photogs' tripod on their days off I finally got a permenant loaner after another photog's tripod was fixed when parts came in.

But the permanent loaner sucked. The old ass Gitzo legs would slide down under the weight of my XDCam making it a dangerous situation at best, a disaster at worst, and I've been down that road once before.



With a mind for finding a solution to any situation I asked for permission to have my old tripod back...but with the head from the loaner.



With permission granted, engineer Marty and I created what we've now dubbed "Frankensticks".



With a little WD-40, some good Gitzo legs, that heavy ass, grease leaking, O'Conner Head, and a mix-match of parts to create a better handle, I now again have a permanent tripod.



Of course there's a nasty rumor about new tripods in next year's budget. But after all today's work, I don't know that I could part with it.

Cuts at KPIX and other CBS O and Os

I recieved a phone call tonight from a friend in the know. He's lucky to still have a job but he's still worried.

About 30 KPIX employees including 5 reporters (plus or minus depending on who you believe) and 5 Freelance Photographers were laid off late last week in a round of reported $1 million budget cuts at each CBS Owned and Operated TV Station.

KPIX's Sacramento Bureau has also been closed down amid the penny pinching.

At the CBS Station in Dallas word on the inside is that 60 employees were given the perverbial pink slip.

The Chicago Sun Times is reporting 17 staffers cut WBBM - CBS 2, including a news anchor and sports anchor.

The article says,

"The latest wave of cutbacks hit the CBS-owned station as part of massive companywide reductions at the network's owned-and-operated outlets"

In this B-Roll.net thread there is chatter dedicated to the recent rash of job losses in large markets from Minneapolis to Denver, including someone I've learned a lot from, the new NPPA Editor of the year Shawn Monatano at KCNC.(CLICK HERE TO SEE HIS AWESOME REEL)

Big money pits like Miami aren't even immune to the wave of job cuts. This from an unsourced paragraph copied to the thread by a B-Roll Contributor...

"In Miami, WFOR-4-CBS laid off fired about 15 staffers, some in sales, most in news, including chief photog Curt Calhoun, veteran editor (30 years) Dan Roujansky, freelancer Christina Puig, and reporter Evan Bacon, a 21-year veteran of television news."

That's a lot of good, experienced TV people on the streets. Hopefully they'll land in the right spot.

-----

Side Note - I was googling around and I found this article and I thought I was reading something current until I noticed the 1987 published date on it. It's worth a read.

On Stage with Barack Obama

Sometimes I think my job as a TV News Photographer is equivalent to holding tickets to a front row seat to US and World History. Of course most ot the stuff we shoot is forgotten in days, sometimes minutes but today will be quite the exception, especially if Barack Obama is elected president.



My part of the Obama coverage was to work with Chad Tucker for our 5 and 6 o'clock reports from the event.



With our live web stream, one camera had to be wired to our live truck to feed back the video, but that wasn't me. I was the roaming camera to get other video, not just of Barack but also the reactions of the 2000 people who filled the auditorium.



I wasn't sure at first this was going to be an easy task ,as the media was relagated to 2 risers set many, many rows back from the stage. But just about 45 minutes before the program was to began I found out about another location the media could be.



The 'cut' area at stage left was a designated area for the media to get cutaways (side and rear views looking back to the audience) of Mr. Obama during his speech. So I made my way to the 'cut' area and I was surprised that more TV folks didn't get shots from this area. Plenty of Print Photogs but only 3 or 4 TV guys used the cut area.



The oversized American Flag must have been purposely placed because it made a great backdrop for patriotic pictures and video.

The crowd chanted and clapped and whooped and hollered and Obama made his points trying to persude this biased crowd and the many more watching from home to make him a most historic presidential choice.



After the event, pushing well near our deadline for a 5 o'clock live report we gathered with the other local TV stations onstage, behind the now drawn curtain for a little more of a private moment with the Presidential Candidate. He answered a question or two from each and tried to reassure through our electronic means that he was indeed the best choice for President.



Who am I to say? And I shouldn't and won't.



I was just in the moment thinking about this assignment being a front row seat to a truely historical event in the making.

INTRODUCING Photojournalist Weakly

From the creative mind of a colleague of mine and Stewart's...Jamison Forst has created a series of faux magazine covers dedicated to the lowly Television Photojournalist.



In this first edition of "Photojournalist Weakly" Stewart "Lenslinger" Pittman poses gayly, yet manly, as he ponders where the digital image may turn up in the future. Now he knows.

The cover speaks for itself.

Stand by for Volumes 2 and 3 that have already been created with 2 other photojournalists as the featured cover models.

A Sign From God?

Sometimes we need a little help on our daily assignments and whether that comes from a call to the assignment desk for directions or stopping at a convienence store to get a feel for a neighborhood it's almost a daily occurance for someone to step in with important information to help us get our story.

Today the help we received was a little more ironic, mysterious and maybe a little divine in nature.

Chad Tucker and I were on a late afternoon hunt for a story that was our backup for the day after the players for our first story weren't available until Monday. We drove 50 miles to Danbury looking for the father of the 2 boys who drowned in the Dan River in September of 2006.

The boys' parents are suing DSS for placing the boys with the paternal grandparents who, the suit says, were unable to take care of the boys and that factor and others allowed the boys to wander to the river causing their death.

With no listed phone number we stopped at his house and his parents gave us the information that he was in a nearby town working and they didn't have his cell number. They took our number and said they'd have him call.



As we proceeded to gather information for our story and the afternoon clock ticked away, we knew we didn't have much time to get this story done.

After a quick trip to the courthouse we sat at a convienence store near his house. The people in the store know him and they said he has been working building fences. I looked in the phone book but there are a lot of fence companies so I wasn't going to go down that path.

Almost jokingly Chad and I both wondered aloud about needing a sign from God. About 5 minutes passed and I noticed something that hadn't caught my eye earlier. A fence business sign, with the last name of the man we were looking for. The sign included a cell phone number!



We called and sure enough it was our guy. He came and met us for an interview and then he asked us how we got his number. We told him we got it from the sign and he looked puzzled and we re-explained that it was the one by the store. After a minute he suddenly remembered the sign and we all laughed it off.

But I've got to wonder...why didn't I see the sign sooner and why didn't he remember his own sign?

The Story aired at 5:30

The Lawsuit can be read HERE

Conversation with a Gangster

The weather was the big news today so you might not have seen this one.  Reporter Caron Myers and I did an interview today that has me scratching my head and police in Alamance County high fiving all around.

The guy in the picture is Thomas Earl Newman Jr.  He found himself in an altercation Monday night and he ended up in Duke Hospital with multiple lacerations.  The other guy is in jail for the attack.

Both Burlington Police and Graham Police say the altercation was gang related and that both the attacker and the victim were gang members.  That got our attention and so we headed to Alamance County to see what was up.

While I was getting footage of the area where the fight happened, Caron did the obligatory 'knock and talk' at the address where we were told people involved in the scuffle lived.

What I heard in my earpiece gave me a chill.  It was Newman behind the apartment door....and he was willing to talk on camera.

You can watch the whole thing at this link:  WATCH RAW INTERVIEW, but to sum it up...Newman told us he is a a member of the GKB (Gang Killer Bloods) and a part of a cleanup crew.

The gang specialists in Alamance County tell us that a clean takes care of retaliation efforts.

The cops in Alamance County that saw the interview say it's some of the best interaction with a gang member they've ever seen.(hence the high fives)

Newman said he wouldn't seek revenge personally but that the 'crip' gang member that attacked him with what he called a "crocidile dundee knife", would get his.

 

Introducing..the New Girl... ...and her Frat Sisters

Our newest reporter, Roxanna Haynes, hit the streets today. Lucky for us she brought her 4 frat sisters with her when she joined the team.



Uhm, no. That's actually four of our finest - and I mean that sincerely - photojournalists nicely photoshopped in with Roxanna in the blue shirt.

Some of my fellow photogs couldn't resist the urge when the saw this spiffy picture on her desk last week. A snapshots and few keystrokes later and the Frat Sisters were born.

We put the new 5x7 print over the original in her frame and it was a waiting game. It took a little prodding by the newsroom administrative assistant but when Roxanna finally saw it she was laughing with the rest of us.

Like the caption says..."Welcome to the Family"

The Legacy of Eric White

Whitey may be gone, but like a good man, he left a helluva legacy.

High School Newsman

This hit's home...and one day I'm going to pull out the VHS collection, digitize those bad boys and prove it but first here's Network News Proof that a teenager with a passion will do what it takes to live the dream.

This 16 year old has his own News Webcast, from his bedroom....CBS's Steve Hartman featured him on Assignment America...

(BTW - I love that CBS has embeddable video)



And then young Mr. Harris turned the tables on Steve for his own show...




AND one of Rodney's latest News 14 Webcast....

VJs Coming to the LA Times

In a Recent post at his blog Michael Rosenblum congratulates Tim French for his new job at the LA Times. Tim's new job as Rosenblum tell's it...

"...he will both be a VJ, but will also work on a team that is going to train, as I understand it, more than 100 LA Times staffers to be VJS."

Goodness...that's enough to give Britney Spears a nervous breakdown.....nevermind.

Anway does LA really need 100 more camera totin’ newbies chasing after celebrities, amblulances or even, God help 'em, real news?

Doing the math in the LA Metro area the 100 VJs would be 1 for every 170-thousand people. So if we added a VJ system here in the Greensboro DMA we'd only need 9 VJs at the local paper.

And as Michael says...

"Well, Los Angeles is a big town, and it’s nice that at least one local media
company things you can cover LA with more than 11 crews! I think the LA Times is
going to give the local news guys a stroke. And about time. "

I doubt the local TV Guys give a shit. They have more than 11 crews on the streets. (We have more than that here in little ol' Greensboro). And anyway. 100 VJs would produce way more TV than could be broadcast in any given news day...much less be watched online.

Some stories BEG to be covered as a video story as well they should…but 100 stories a day…even 50…hell even 25...most people don't have time for that.

At some point, regardless of the economy of a one man crew, 100 staffers with cameras waters down the product to the point it’s not worth it, both for the viewers trying to wade through a muck of mosty average video and for the company that ends up with a drowning business model.

I will watch closely to see what they DO choose to show as video stories because sometimes organizations like the LA Times and other historically print journalists forget (or don't realize)that although every story can done in print NOT every story can be done (well) in video.

Only Video Stories done well, that are interesting and somewhat entertaining really matter because the rest won’t be watched.(and this isn't about quality..it's about good content) I mean just look at what get's numbers on YouTube and other video sites.

I can shoot the hell out of a City Council meeting and get all the right shots and all the right interviews but that doesn't hold a candle to a great story where people area actually doing things and not sitting on their asses.

A Picture's Worth a Thousand... ...Effects?!

It's funny how a simple picture can inspire people.

I posted this picture on B-Roll.net of Eric White standing in the middle of the yet to be opened Urban Loop around Greensboro.



But then Rad had to open the can of worms, wondering outloud for a truck to be photoshopped into the picture.




And then this thing took on a life of it's own...










And I even played along making one of my own..though I am using an inferior program.

Whitey's Final Days

Eric "Whitey" White is in his final 3 days at WGHP and then he'll be movin on to bigger and better.



It was kind of like de ja vu getting up on the bride in the 40/85 work zone again....and it may just be the last time Whitey and I spend a work day together.



But it won't likely be the last time we hang out. We had a good time last Friday night midnight bowling with everyone from work...




...but we hope to have a good outing in Nashville again next year as Whitey works there and I only visit once a year.



Good workin' with ya Whitey!

Lucky Trumps Good

I love it when a plan comes together.

Really. Well, Sort of.

I had a scheduled edit day for a consumer story that airs Friday but some surprise winter weather dumped several inches of snow - depending on the location - on the Triad of NC and therefore pulled me out of the edit bay and onto the streets...sans-reporter.

I was tasked with finding kids playing with whatever happened to be left of the snow as the sun shined down and the temperature cracked 35 degrees.

I was less than optimistic but I had a plan. My plan was simple. Get lucky. That's it.

I knew where the heaviest snowfall was so I drove to north Greensboro in search of a kid laden neighborhood. After driving through a few neigborhoods I finally found one where the houses looked promising.



I turned down a side street and then another...and that's where I saw THEM. One adult, two children, one sled. I crossed my fingers and wished silently that they were headed to a hill and not home from one.

My wish was granted. I gathered my footage over the course of about 40 minutes, getting as many different angles as sled runs they slid. After a few quick interviews, two impromptu snowball fights and more neighborhood children coming out to get on TV I had more than enough for good TV.

Back to the shop I had to log the disc, write the story, get a pretty voice to read the track, and edit. And I had given myself plenty of time...which is unusual for me.

The story aired at 5 and since weather was our lead, it was our lead story...a very featurish story about how kids spent their snowday.

Watch the Story HERE

Puppymills Undercover

It's been a busy January and now February. I've been working on an investigative followup to the 1000 dog puppymill Hillsville, Virginia that was raided in November by local Animal control and national Humane Society officers.



In late January reporter Angela Rodriguez and I traveled to Hillsville incognito to shoot undercover video of the puppy place. We watched as this puppy was purchased by a representative of Virginia P.A.W.S.



The puppy buy was a bit more in-depth than that, with Angela and I posing as a couple looking for a dog with the other lady acting as a relative who ended up purchasing the dog for P.A.W.S., an animal welfare group.

It was quite interesting as we became buddy buddy with the employee who handles dog sales. He told us more and more as we talked. Good Stuff.



We took the dog to a veteranarian about 70 miles away and he gave the dog an objective lookover. We didn't tell the vet how or where we got the dog nor that we were doing a news story and he still pegged the dog as a puppymill pup.

The dog has a deformed sternum and a severely enlarged heart and may not live a full healthy life.

We took our undercover video to the prosecuter, county manager, and animal control officials in the county where the puppymill is and although they bregrudingly allowed us to roll our cameras while they watched they seemed interested in what they saw.

The owners, say the employee, plan on building back up their breeding stock. They keep small dogs and pregnant dogs outdoors with no heat. And until the animal control officer saw our tape, the puppymill had not brought their wire bottomed indoor puppy cages up to code by providing a place for the puppys to lay.

The animal control officer visited the place just 2 days after watching our footage and the kennel quickly made the code adjustment.

As I wrapped up my fourth trip to Hillsville (alone this time) I was confronted by the family after I broke my cover to shoot the B-roll needed for the story. As I rolled disc the family started quizing me about my presence near they land and I quized them back about their intentions and the future of their kennels.

A quote directed toward the Humane Sociedt that struck me as defining--- "We're going to rub their noses in it because we're tired of them messing with us." They said they'd get as many relatives to get individual kennel permits as needed to get their stock back up to the 1000+ range.

The 2 stories we produced from this effort can be seen here...

"PuppyVille"

AND

"Tricks of the Puppy Trade"

BUSY or LAZY

I suck.

I've been neglecting the blog again but I've also been very, very (and one more), very busy with work and personal stuff, including the barn I'm still building that should have been done by Christmas.



And there I am having fun. What was I thinking?

Double Vision Twins?

I had an interesting conversation with WFMY's Frank Mickens today. But the confusion leading to the conversation with Frank is what makes it funny.

That's Frank on the right. He is a reporter and sometimes fill-in anchor at the CBS affiliate. On the left my colleague Charles Ewing, our weekend meteorologist who also works as a news reporter a couple of days a week.

When I arrived at my second story today I introduced myself and asked for the principal of the school. I was informed she was interviewing with another news crew. Another of the women in the office said she was already being interviewed by Fox 8.

I was a little stunned, but dumber things have happened. It wasn't impossible for another crew to have also grabbed this assignment but I was skeptical.

If we're already here I gotta know who. The woman told me, "You know, the weather guy, Charles..." So we walked to the computer lab where the other news crew was. To my relief it was Frank Mickens, not Charles, conducting the interview, which meant I still had to do my job.

After I was nearly done Frank stopped me to pass a message along to Charles. This caught my attention considering the events leading up to this moment. Frank told me that people kept congratulating him on the birth of his twins. That would be people kept congratulating Frank, confusing him for Charles, for the birth of Charles' twins.

I'm confused.

He even confided in me that the ladies at the school weren't sure he wasn't Charles. I nodded in assurance as I looked him over searching for the resemblance.

Charles, twins with Frank, who gets compliments on twins that belong to Charles? Hmm.

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Quotable Quoate Mike Huckabee

Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee blew through Greensboro this afternoon to pick up a few checks to finance his campaign effort.

I met him at the door, camera, reporter and gaggle in tow.



The smooth talking Arkansas Governor threw out quotes and quips left and right and sometimes up and down but during his 15 minutes of Greensboro fame he left us with this little beauty that, if not for a writer's strike, would be great late nighte fodder I'm sure.

Huckabee said, "The reason that we're so afraid of Iran is because they've got enough oil money to build a reactor. Do you think they could build a reactor if all they had to sell was rugs? I don't think so. So because of our deopendence upon their oid and the saudi's oil we find ourselves once again scared to death of what they can do with the money that guess where they got it... from us."