It is a well put together, comprehensive look at the presidential election from the time the candidates started campaigning through Tuesday.
Simple graphics, great photos, great video, compelling sound, poignent storytelling.
The visuals (stills and moving) were compiled from a variety of sources over a long period of time. Interviews were conducted with voters in many states and there was even sound with photographers who shot some of the pictures for the NY Times.
This is a key piece of work for defining how to mix, mesh and use multimedia to what has to be close to it's fullest potential. (for now)
Very informative, very interesting and it streams out in excellent quality.
Yeah, I know, it says Hanging Rock in the title. We got to Pilot Mountain and it was a 45 minute wait to drive to the parking lot at the top of the knobby rock. The hell with that. We spent the next 45 minutes driving to Hanging Rock.
The 40 minutes after that we spent meandering the Hanging Rock trail for about a mile to get up there...
...on top of that rock.
It's a trip I make with the kids at least once a year and I wish I had time to do it a few times a year.
The view is spectacular and sitting out on those rocks with no fence to catch you if you fall is a thrill, if not downright scary when you have 3 boys and a little princess to worry about.
Nevermind the dog pulling us all around by that hotpink leash.
When a VP Candidate comes to town, prepare to hurry up and wait.
Not just us media either. Everyone involved tries to get in place as early as possible, deal with mandatory security sweeps and then sit around until the guest of honor is escorted in with the upmost in executive security.
For those of us there covering the event for televised, web or even print (I guess)coverage there's really lot to do before Biden takes stage, depending on the demands of our respective outlets.
Print journalists run around interviewing spectators, sometimes even using mini-cams to gather video for the web. Radio journalists find sweet spots to gather actualities of the day. And the laptops, they do fire up, generating ones and ohs to send out over the pipes of the internet in conjunction with impending event.
We in TV, with all our equipment having been set up and declared off limits for the next two hours meet up with other crews and help out with other live shots and maybe grab a bite to eat if there's time.
At go time, when the national press comes casually strolling in, that's when the Sh!t hits the fan and there's real work to do.
The cameras are hot, the live truck is, well, LIVE, and the candidate is just about to make his grand entrance. About that time a Biden staffer tells everyone on the cut riser (that would be me and a few other TV and still photogs) to come with him for the grand entrance shot along the collumns and row of neatly draped American Flags.
I had to unplug from my camera from feeding a live picture and go, with little warning to our truck-op who was switching the event.
It was worth it though, a great shot that the two other local stations begged us to give them as pool footage....NOT. They simply didn't have a Photog on the cut riser.
The speech was about 40 minutes of the usual political retoric and the crowd at the private university was generous with fervor for candidate Biden.
After the speech was over and the live feed was through I went with Brent to get the obligitory react sound from the attendees and then he took the disc to write the 5PM (LINK TO 5) and 6PM stories.
I grabbed Kenny's camera and took a bunch more pictures while Biden gripped and grinned every last person left crammed up against the steel barrier fence.
It was kind of amusing to me because with a still camera in hand I had different access than my TV brothers looking for a closeup.
TV was shooed back to the cut riser while still photogs were politely escorted to the catwalk to get the over the shoulder point of view of Biden and the crowd.
Of course then I was stuck there until he was finished and all I could do was keep snapping photos - a hundred or so - while Kenny rolled up cable and gave me the stink eye for not helping. (Sorry Kenny - but thanks for use of the camera)
Finally freed, I helped gather the rest of the cables and I even jumped in to edit since my cut riser shots and Biden walk in were the b-roll to which the story was weaved.
Just another day. Imagine doing all that as a one-man-band, or VJ or whatever you want to call it. Even the local cable news outlet had 3 or 4 people out there and they're all about a VJ.
I got Sarah Palin duty today at Elon University in Elon. I can't and won't be partisan since I work for an FCC licenced house of unbiased repute. Really, we try to give everyone a fair shake. Let's just say we leave the leaning (left or right) to our cable cousins. (And do any of you ever agree 100 percent with a cousin, or even your Mom and Sister for that matter.)
Anywho...I arrived at Elon University's baseball stadium at 9:15 and hauled my gear past the Secret Service Bomb dog and set it in its spot on the riser over 2nd base.
My Camera, Tripod, 2 bags of equipment, and a portable microwave transmitter stayed in that spot - the security sweep zone - for the next 5 hours while I milled around outsite of the forbidden area.
But we were forward thinking and we had a second, and even third, set of gear to shoot with out in the common area where 1000 or so of Sarah Palin's closest freinds and at least one not fond fan stood in line waiting to stand in the sun for the next 5 hours.
And since my digital camera is dead I don't have pictures to prove it, but our local paper does and thanks to their nifty embed feature here are some excellent pictures of the day.
Enough with the great pictures. Hank "Bocephus" Williams Jr was the opening act for Palin, and I don't think it's partisan for me to say I love me some Hank Jr.
Hank picked and sang his way through a melody of his classics, including the reworded ones for the McCain/Palin campaign.
During Palin's speech it got rowdy once when an Elon Poly-Sci student who favors Obama got boisterous and needed the assistance of the local law enforcers to be compelled to leave. What am I saying, he was cuffed and stuffed.
Overall, Palin said the same 20 things everybody's already heard before. At least that's the response I got from the 10 soccer moms, 15 high school students and 5 overly exposed (by the sun) men I interviewed after the event. But those who attended were still more than thrilled to have been in the presence of that Governor from up there near Russia.
For our part, from a journalistic standpoint, we put together a Live Story at 5 and at 6 about what Palin said and how people reacted.
Technology-wise this as a good day too. We used our Portable Digital Transmitter to link us to our Sat Truck. We sent a Live Video Feed of Palin's Speech into our Sat Truck which was turned around and fed into space and down to earth and transmitted live to the internet. We also used the portable unit for our 5 and 6 o'clock lives. Without that unit we would have had to stay much closer to the truck AND the riser for the Palin Speech was a good 500 foot cable pull.
A reporter who I helped bring on board at WGHP in 2002 and worked with exclusively in the Davidson County Bureau until about 3 years ago, is leaving Fox 8.
Lenslinger and I have both written funny stories about our outings with Caron over the 7 years she has been with us but this time the story is that she's indeed decided to follow the Public Relations money trail. And I'm not sure I blame her...More money, 8 hour workdays, holidays off, what's not to love? (Beside's being able to traverse the Greater Piedmont Triad with a camera and mic and talk to all kinds of interesting people everyday?)
Caron's threatened to call it a career in news several times before but this time I think she's found a fit with a group of professionals who will really appreciate her outspoken charm and endless energy more than even this hungry photog ever could.
She's a hard nosed, deep digging reporter who's TV work has to be shallower than she could ever dig to meet the time contraints of Broadcast News. Caron's never met a stranger and is never afraid to knock on any door and talk to whoever answers in whatever neighborhood. She prides herself on her electronic rolodex and could probably open a 411 call center from it. She had a rapor with the law enforcement community that couldn't be rivaled by even the most bubbly blonde talking head.
And even though I probably haven't properly thanked her enough for everything she's ever done for me as a friend and co-worker I have to say that the experience of working with Caron Myers had been life altering. Whether it was when we flew to Miami for the retirement of her famous NASCAR husband Chocolate Myers, or all the time spent accompanying her to death's door, every day with Caron was entertaining, if not, enlightening.
I also have to say she's led me by the hand into the NASCAR machine. Lunch with NASCAR Legend Bobby Allison, an interview with the late NASCAR Chairman Bill France Junior, several interviews with NASCAR Team owner Richard Childress and many other lasting contacts within the NASCAR Community are just a perk of working closely with Caron.
The biggest thanks I have to give is for all the work Caron and Chocolate did to host my wedding at their house in Lexington. They spent untold time preparing their yard for the 2004 event, leaving no stone unturned. For that I thank them both. I will one day figure out a way to repay that debt!
Even though she only has three days left inside WGHP, I'm sure we'll be in contact for school stories, and I'm certain I'll visit her at the lake....at least every 4th of July
I wish her the best of luck in her new position entertaining bored reporters on slow news days....and who knows...maybe she'll pull and Ingram. (that's an inside joke that I can't talk about :-))
For now, I leave you with this...a glimpse at how Caron and I bent the time space continuuum.
I was answering some questions from a college student the other night about what sparked my interest in photography and it reminded me of a picture of me with my Uncle James.
Uncle James had brought this new fangled video camera to town with it's umbilicaled recording deck. In the picture, there I am with hand on hip in my knew high striped tube socks, taking in all the 1984 technology hoping to get my hands on it.
Flash forward 19 years to 1994...I'm a 1 year rookie News Photographer...getting to do things people pay to do...and they're PAYING ME TO DO THIS!
I was flying front seat in the open cockpit stearman with the Red Barron demo team on a media flight to preview a local airshow...and help them sell pizza. I was living the high life. A local still photog took the picture from the other plane and we traded video for photo.
Funny thing is...the only thing that stands out for me that day was that a package of stickers flew out of my pocket. The were neon orange photo mailing stickers that said "Photos, Do Not X-Ray".
That was the first of the many special experiences for me that make up the life of TV News Photographers everywhere.
I have gone on to do a lot of things you can't even pay to do in airplanes, racecars, motorcades and more.
I don't really know what sparked my interest in Photography, I just know I love it, stills and TV, and that it may not pay like a banker, but I'm the richest guy in the world for the things I get to see and do.
I've heard about it but never seen it...the long lost episode of Dirty Jobs in which the crew crashes a boat and sinks $100,000 worth of video equipment.
I was wasn't expecting to see it tonight while watching the episode about gathering Alligator eggs...but when it came to that point in the show I knew instantly what it was and I sat up and paid attention.
(watch to the end for a rundown of what they lost)
I spent most of this rain soaked, warning laced, former Tropical Storm Fay filled day, shooting consumer features on the outskirts of the metro area but when that was (not quite) done (but enough to call it a day) I was promtly dispatched to a swollen creek in Greensboro.
Buffalo Creek was up to the bottom of the bridge and rescue workers were in the water when I arrived. 15 minutes 'til the top of the 5, we were already on the air with a fresh tornado warning, one I was hoping I was headed to until I saw every rescue vehicle and dive team member for 20 miles hovering over the raging river.
I covered my camera and extened my sticks and joined them on the bridge peering into the water, looking for, well, I didn't know what.
As I moved off the bridge "for my safety" at the request of GPD I found that the grassy area just to the other side of the creek was a better view anyway.
You can see it up in that picture...dive team members were going under water SANS SCUBA and popping back up under the bridge in the dark air space between iron bridge beams.
With just 2 minutes until the station wanted a LIVE PHONER for the top of the 5 a Fire Department Spokesman gathered the media to give some information. 2 separate callers had seen someone near the bridge and they both thought that person had been swept away in the water. The divers at the bridge and personel downstream found nothing.
With that info fresh out of the mouth of the spokesman I stepped away from my camera as it continued to roll on the impromtu presser and gave the facts over the phone as the camera phone picture was up on the screen. My two cents and 4 questions later I was headed back with the video to air in the 6.
Just another day. (not that we have a former tropical storm stomping through here everyday)
When I was the local pool Photog riding in a press van in the Presidential Motorcade in October 2006 I saw Tony Snow and thought, 'Cool, Tony Snow, now there's a man with his hand in the pocket of the world.'
I didn't know too much about him, not that he graduated from Davidson College in 1977, that he worked at a newspaper in the very town I work, (the same town we were in when I popped this picture) and that when I was just graduating from high school he was already playing presidential polictics with George Senior.
What I did know was that he would convey the information like no other press secretary, was a friend to the media like no other and loved his jobs, whatever he found himself doing.
At the time I took that picture, I didn't even know he had cancer...and today when I read he died, I didn't even know he hadn't beat it completely.
It's become almost a tradition for me and my family now. We head down to High Rock Lake to see what I think is one of the best Fireworks shows in this part of North Carolina.
In the past 3 years it's been and even better view for us because while everyone pushes and shoves for the best spot to park on the Highway 8 bridge or along other surrounding roads, my friend and coworker Caron Myers has the best seat in the house, and we're always invited.
The view is great from the Deck or out in a boat...because of rain this year we stayed on shore.
Caron and her famous NASCAR husband Chocolate Myers started building their lakeside cabin about 3 or so summers ago. It's grown from a lake retreat into a full time home that you'd have to see to believe. (I didn't get any pictures...darn.)
But on this day, one of the best things is their proximity to where the fireworks are launched from....in the lot two doors over. To watch the fireworks you have to look almost straight up.
One drawback is falling debris. It's so close that if the wind is blowing just right or not at all pieces of unburned morter shells and still glowing ash will fall on you. Ask my wife, she took a chunk to the leg that drew blood!
