beFrank: Photog Bloggers Uni. . .

Thursday, May 12, 2005

Photog Bloggers Uni. . .

. . .I'm sorry, I can't write it with a straight face.

My day is starting late and I'm under the gun to take care of some business, but I promised to kick in with the rest of the photog bloggers on a theme post on our gear.

We're shooting Panasonic DVC Pro cameras and cutting on Panasonic laptop editors. We're a little behind the curve because our station is going to be moving into a new facility in the near future and we'll be refitting all our field vans with brand new gear.

Let me be honest. I know I'm one of the biggest gadget geeks at my station, but I'm a lot less interested in the type of gear I work with than the story I cover. I used to be a lot more into the gear, but these past few years have seen us go through a couple of format changes and at this point I'm resigned to just shooting with whatever they give me. I'm just glad our maintenance guys are top notch. When we go out, generally things work.

Yesterday we had another shooting in Los Angeles. My reporter and I were heading to Compton for a town hall meeting about the shooting from Monday (I'm still scratching my head over the two shootings from Tuesday).

The freeways were crowded with afternoon rush hour traffic and we heard radio chatter about a shooting incident. Helicopters started popping up overhead and we figured we're about half a mile from the scene of the incident. This particular shooting started in cars on surface streets and somehow ended up on the freeway.

We called in our location and got the okay to divert. We're off the freeway and jumping out of the van in less than a minute. They want us on the air and will take us as soon as we're ready.

I'm traveling light right now because my truck is brand spanking new. It's only been on the road for about a week. I'm glad we had a good shakedown run in it. Yesterday's story went from radio call to liveshot in about fifteen minutes. It wouldn't have been a good day for anything to not work the way it's supposed to work.

I've worked three days and I'm three for three on shootings this week. It's making me a little cranky and I can't help but think that it's going to be a long summer.

The way I look at things, to cover the news, I need a camera, a mic, transportation to the story and a way to put it on TV. The rest is gravy. I'm still a little giddy over my new van.

Even if it doesn't show.

ps - Anybody see that high speed chase yesterday where the suspect was shot and killed (it's okay, he had a gun) on live television? I did.

Here's all the photog bloggers that are doing the show-n-tell today.