little lost robot

That’s right: my office. I’ve been given my own workspace back in the Creative Services department, as I fill-in for one of our promo-producers while she’s away this summer on maternity leave. I’ll be splitting up my work week by shooting news stories the first half, and following it up by begging random photogs for the video I need to cut promos during the rest of the week. Enough about all that…back to my office…

It’s actually a small, closet-ish space, but I’m certainly not complaining. I’m loving it. And while today is my first official day working out of my office, I’ve wasted no time getting it all decorated to my liking. I’m keeping it mostly professional. Back when I had a mancave at home, my computer workspace was covered with all kinds of geeky memorabilia - making it look like a wealthy middle-school kid lived there. My place at work is much more tasteful. Here’s a quick by-the-numbers tour:

1. Dazzler (issue #1 -mint) - Who doesn’t love a laser-light superheroine on disco rollerskates? Dazzler might not be the most popular mutant in the Marvel universe (something the jackasses in the comic shop remind me of on a regular basis), but she did save the X-men from the Hellfire Club back in the day. So there!

2. Lost promotional poster – It’s signed by half the original castaways. I know it’s an ABC show and I work at an NBC affiliate, but they have yet to give me a Heroes poster…

3. Dolls Action Figures – The Punisher and Captain Kirk remain vigilantly at red alert over by my desk lamp.

4. Robot 2000 – I think it’s pretty obvious that I’d end up with one of these on my desk, right?

5. Top secret May sweeps plans - I probably shouldn’t talk too much about this one.

6. Photos – This is a bunch of cute photos of me and my wife arranged on a weird sputnik-looking thing I got at Urban Outfitters.

7. Cobra Commander – He’s a long way from his serpentine lair, but there’s important stuff in my office that he needs to oversee (meanwhile his subordinates plot against him in his absence).

8. WYFF Photog Staff Photo – This is so I don’t forget where I come from, even though I’m still slinging a camera and tripod half the week.

9. Flowers? – I got this lovely bouquet from my wife to place on my desk. I’m keeping it in front of the television, so that I’m not tempted to watch Rachel Ray and Judge Judy all day.

10. Lotus Notes office suite - Just terrible.

Today’s shooting assignment took me to the sleepy, little town of Jonesville to shoot video of a controversial church sign. The pastor wanted to call attention to the fact that Barack Obama has a similar last name to Osama Bin Laden’s first name - a similarity that perhaps makes him a Muslim, despite the fact he’s a practicing Christian and has denounced the Muslim claim about a trillion times.

To my surprise, many of the church’s neighbors found the sign offensive, and one lady even asserted, “No, I don’t think that they are brothers.” Personally, I find the sign offensive on several levels, and many for reasons of bad grammar and punctuation. Perhaps the pastor doesn’t have a question mark tablet. I’ll let that one pass. But, “Humm?” Pretty weak. [All that said, the pastor was a really nice guy and we were thankful he granted us an interview.]

Here’s a sneak peek at the WYFF photography staff photo for this year’s NPPA magazine mention. [Perhaps you may remember me bragging about it: we won the Medium Market Television Station of the Year award again this year.]

Zellmer took the photo, and he’s such an awesome photog that he was able to be in the photo at the same time. Now, doesn’t that blow your mind?

I’ve had a ton of folks ask me if I’ll be in Vegas for the NAB show this year. Sadly, I’ll be missing it for once - in the same year that all my other peeps seem to be going. I won’t really miss checking out all the expensive tech toys on the convention center floor. But I will miss kickin’ it with the other photogs at the b-roll.net bash. Instead, I’ll be following Lost Remote’s always-exceptional coverage of the convention, and hoping that Kevin Johnson or Lenslinger will send me a random camera phone pic from the show. I’ll also be playing a lot of Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 in which I’ll be fighting domestic terrorists that have taken over the same (virtual) convention center.

Had a pretty busy day at work, shooting stories about truckers that may (or may not) be on strike. However the real highlight of my day was when I was sent to video a county council meeting, where the sheriff talked about all the prostitution and violence in the area. At one point they shifted gears and gave a fascinating powerpoint demonstration about gang violence, which took a morbid turn when they showed all these gory photos of slain gang members. I’m talking blood and brains. Also, the presenter showed a video called “the blood dance”, showing gang members dancing around and throwing signs. I made a mental note to look up that video later on Youtube and then change out the music the gangsters were dancing to with something more riduclous - someone already (brilliantly) beat me to it.

I’ve done a pretty good job avoiding covering the Leatherheads movie (aka “Clooneymania”) that was shot in the Greenville area last year. I put together my paparazzi story, but that was sort of a mocking thing, so it don’t think it counted. Well, today my streak came to an end when I was sent to video George Clooney and Renee Zellwegger receiving their honorary keys to the city this morning.

The actors were rather charming, but the thing I was really impressed with was having a key tripod position right in front of the stage. I’ve been to crappy local government stories where we don’t even get to set up so close, so this was a nice change. [To all the other videographers: I was hoping to get a bunch of good nat sound for my pieces today, but all I had when I got back to the station was this endless audio channel of women screaming. One long, endless scream.]

I spent a good part of my day at one of the local peach farms, shooting video (and live shots) as they braced for tonight’s freezing temperatures. Actually not too bad for a Monday, considering that a story about blooming peach trees - mixed with meterologist Jennifer Valdez - pretty much shoots itself.

And we had plenty of time between evening live shots to pose with the plastic dinosaur that lives in my Porta Brace cover.

In other news today:
I had a nice chuckle when I got home from work, received a strange package in the mail, and opened it to reveal an interesting surprise: my five free promotional HD-DVDs! My small HD library just doubled, although sadly, will never increase beyond this point.

Also I’m thrilled to see the first character stills from the live action Gi-Joe movie online. Snake Eyes looks great, but I’ve always though of him as kinda overrated. I can’t wait to see Destro or Cobra Commander (even if he’s being played by the whiny alien kid from 3rd Rock From the Sun).

Today I spent a majority of my day at the BMW factory, covering their news of recent expansion. However, the real highlight was when I was given a BMW cupcake.

This particular model is the X3 Cupcake, an expensive high performance dessert. [This next sentence is where I was going to talk about the cupcake’s “handling” and “efficiency”, but got tired of the automotive metaphors before I even got started.]

One of my favorite memories from work last year was when a majority of the photog staff got together to pose in a photo for the NPPA magazine, followed by a pizza party. It was to celebrate our photog staff’s win as Television Station of the Year (Medium Market) in the Best of Photojournalism awards- something we get to celebrate again this year!

The judges comments were really nice this year, and I was happy to get a shout out about my “Juan the Paparazzo” story. Our entry, along with other, way more awesome pieces are on the Poynter site.