cat typing

When is 27 cents an Omen?

2012-01-04T17:11:00.003-05:00

The other day, I put $30 of gas in my car. Or at least, I tried to. The pump snapped off at $29.63, well short of full, and the computer in it took that as completion. It reset and wouldn't restart.

It wasn't worth the effort to worry about it; I simply went back to the cashier and got my 27 cents in change.

But then, on the rest of my drive in to work, I began to wonder: What does it mean? Or does it mean anything? It's a bit of a Rorschach test, I guess.

Dear girls...

2011-09-03T21:51:00.009-04:00

This is a picture of my father in his room at a local nursing home.

I imagine that sentence, illustrating that picture, brings a wave of reaction. Some of you, I hope, are going to give me the benefit of the doubt here, and wait until you read the rest of this. As for those who've already made up their minds, well I dunno.' You can only think what you think.

He's 89, a retired college professor and president. He spent 30 years working for higher education groups in Washington, DC, before moving with us to Lexington to enjoy a quiet retirement.

Unfortunately for him, the move also came shortly after my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. He spent 16 years caring for her in ever greater ways, until finally moving her into a local nursing home for 24-hour care. Then he visited every day, sitting with her for hours. It was only at the very end -- she died in 2007 -- that he began to reduce the time he spent there, as she had essentially ceased to react at all.

Now, nearly 90, he's begun to show signs of dementia. Still functional and alert, he nonetheless lacks short-term memory. I explain to people that he seems on a 30-minute reset.

He focuses his attention, his hopes, his anxieties, his desire for attention, his dependency on me, an only child. Time passes quickly for him, or not at all. For me, it is on an infinite loop.

It's a truism that as one ages, gains responsibility, becomes a parent, one learns how ignorant we all are in childhood, in youth. I never really understood how much stress my father drove himself under until now. It's not that as I deal with the stresses of earning a living, of parenthood, of caring for elderly parents, I sympathize or understand. He seems to carry more.

"Mae," he said to me recently, referring to my mother, "always called me a worrywart." When he lived with us, as his symptoms increased, he would continuously wander about the house, fretting and moving things in an effort to "help" or "tidy up." Sometimes it made sense, as when he would move the children's toys from the living room to their playroom. Sometimes not. Interesting things would sometimes end up in the refrigerator or freezer.

He complained of being "lonely" and feeling trapped. He would appear, like the ghost of unconfessed sin, hovering about in some sort of expectation at regular intervals. When he stood one night after dinner and turned to Jennifer to announce, "My legs won't work," it was almost a relief to check him into the hospital for observation.

Now, in a local nursing home, I visit daily. At first, he complained of elaborate conspiracies in "the administration," forcing him to be careful what he said. Questioning revealed Byzantine details of competing forces between groups in favor of rigid rules and others wanting a more open approach to education.

Yep, education. It took a good hour of listening, in between demands that I bring him home immediately and accusations that I didn't care, before that came up. Turned out, in his mind, he was forced to chair any number of committees, committees he didn't really want to work on because they were dealing with such delicate, stressful issues. Anything he might say would alienate or infuriate some faction. He had driven himself so long, so hard, constantly under such stress, that he now can't function without it. Now in a place where nothing, literally nothing is required of him, he has to create stress.

With this comes a form of blackmail. At irregular but frequent intervals, he puts on his most reasonable face and asks in his most appealing tones if, perhaps if it's possible and it wouldn't be too much of a disturbance, he might join our family and maybe, but only if it wouldn't be too much of a problem, live with us. Often this escalates to a moment much like that in the picture, teary and childlike, convinced that he is "unwanted."

This picture is agonizing to me. Oddly, this is one of the reasons I really like it. It generates a visceral reaction in me; it summarizes the personal pain, the intense desire to do something, while simultaneously understanding that there is little I can do. To bring him home means to take on a full-time job of caregiving, one I do not have the time to do with a full-time job to earn an income (insufficient as it is) and to care for two children. I just do not have the time to entertain that hovering figure of unconfessed sin, let alone deal with physical emergencies on the scale of that night we went to the hospital.

But it makes me think. It makes me think I should write a letter, a real letter like we used to write. I'll use one of my old manual typewriters, address it to my daughters, and begin it: "Dear girls."

In it, I hope to explain that I understand what it's like to care for an old parent, to feel the pull of obligation to do whatever it takes at whatever cost, no matter how hard the contervailing pull of job and family and of all the other demands of daily life. I know about the juggle, and I hope that I am a help rather than a hindrance, as I know my father once hoped to be a help rather than a problem. I think he still hopes that, as he says it, in his way.

But here's the point: I absolve you. I don't want you, no matter how pathetic, manipulative and demanding my words at the time are (and I know they will be; at 5 I was a narcissistic, self indulgent little brat, and I'm positive that's who I'll become again) you should feel free to ignore me, lie to me and otherwise shove me to the back burner. You have your life to live. I had mine. I won't drag you down.

Afterword: It's taken a remarkable amount of time to write this. Despite the date it's marked with, I've only finished on October 11. Much of it is from the time consumed as I describe it here, but much also from the need to compose well, to think about just what I wanted to say and how exactly to say it. In a way, I want to be understood. However, I also can't explain why I want to write this in the first place. Why do I care if others know this?

Here's a theory: it's because I do really like that picture.

2011-08-27T10:50:00.006-04:00

"Of all kinds of birds, of all kinds of beasts, and of all kinds of creeping things, two of each shall come into the ark with you, to stay alive. Moreover, you are to provide yourself with all the food that is to be eaten, and store it away, that it may serve for you and for them." This Noah did; he carried out all the commands that God gave him.

-- Genesis 6:20-22

Later, we learn that Noah was afloat 150 days or so. One hundred and fifty days worth of supplies for eight people (Noah, his wife, and three sons and their wives) and all the animals of the earth. Now the ark was a damn big boat, but can you imagine what it was like on Day One, with all that stuff stacked up everywhere? I'm beginning to sympathize.

We moved recently, and it was as usual a panic. No move in my adult life has been organized or calm. They're always planned to be, but in the end there's inevitably a house full of stuff still, and I find myself tossing things into any box available in the middle of the night before the morning I have to be out. Then there comes the phase we're in now: living in a warehouse.

All those boxes, all that stuff, has to go somewhere, and as we have been downsizing with each move lately, there's more stuff than house right now. Hallways, porches and living areas are stacked high with boxes. Business files share corners with delicate china, boxes full of random kids' drawings sit atop ... well, I'm not really sure what's in that one, but it seems to be very carefully wrapped in newspapers.

The other day, as I slid sideways between to towering walls of boxes in the central hall, it occurred to me that this was like being on a boat at the start of a long journey. Nuclear submarines, for example, gain headroom in their gangways as their months-long deployments go on, as supplies are stored under the removable deckplates. As the food gets eaten, the deck lowers.

But this seemed more than that to me. (And, yes, I am putting the best mental spin on this I can -- I have to stave off the depressing knowledge of how this came to be and what I have to do yet somehow.) It seemed to me to be the chaos of the ark, when the supplies to feed every creature on the earth for an unknown period had to be stowed on a primitive -- big, but primitive -- ship.

Seriously, picture the situation. Bad enough to have every sort of creature pooping and just generally stinking the joint up (I try to imagine the smell of a barn or a zoo, enclosed), but also all the supplies, stacked everywhere. It helps me pretend things aren't so bad...

A Short One ...

2011-07-25T02:23:00.002-04:00

So I'm out the other day with Bob Grebe shooting a short feature on the nearly 100-degree weather. We go to the Mill Mountain star, which has an overlook providing a perfect view of the haze hanging over Roanoke below.

On the deck, among other signs, there's a small one giving the address for a webcam attached to the star, which provides a view of the deck. Bob calls his Mom in Pennsylvania, who goes to the site. As I'm shooting the view, I hear this in the background:

"No, it's just me and my photographer ... Yes, he's wearing a jacket ... No, I don't know why."

The Way I Live Now ...

2011-07-12T00:27:00.003-04:00

So I'm in Cy Twombly's studio, but I'm forbidden to make any pictures. I think my head might explode.

Twombly, if you don't know, is one of the great artists of the 20th Century, friend and equal of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. He died July 5 in Rome, his home as far as many knew, but I knew differently. Twombly spent about half the year here in Lexington, Virginia, his home town.

I knew he had friends here, a house and a studio. He did many paintings here, and sculptures. He was a regular in local restaurants, and visited openings at local galleries, including one for a show by my wife. He signed the book, and returned later to tell the gallery owner of his particular affection for one of her photographs. (It now hangs at the local hospital, having been bought by the art committee there...)

When I heard of his death, I knew that this was the opportunity to do something right, and I put out a Facebook appeal and started making calls. Eventually, they led me to Butch, Cy's assistant here in Lexington. He painted backgrounds, and did financial stuff, and drove him around (most think Cy never learned to drive), an generally maintained him when in Lexington.

Butch describes himself as a typical Rockbridge redneck, and I think he's not far off. I take real joy in the simple honesty that describes, and Butch is a good symbol for it, even at 62.

He took my call, as he took the call from the local newspaper, and he agreed to meet in the studio itself for an interview. But he said the lawyers had forbidden any pictures of the studio itself. We shot in front of a blank wall, spattered with paint obviously run over the edge of canvas. Naming a local journalist for the weekly paper, he laughingly noted how they would kill to be where we were. "That's not gonna' happen," he said.

It had been a dentist's office in the old days, basically two rooms -- one in front and one in back. In the front, behind tightly shut venetian blinds, roughly eight sculptures stood, painted white like all the others. A large piece laid on a table, painted gold, resembling a tribal mask about --what -- two-and-a-half-feet tall? On one wall, four elevations of a museum in Texas that features Twombly's art.

It was almost more than I could grasp.

Tables filled the remaining crowded space in the front room. Jars of paint of various colors covered the tabletops, about three deep. A palate with paint smeared on it. In the smaller back room, an Indian (?) wardrobe, still in its dark, natural wood color. And the wall where I interviewed Butch, clearly the place where ... well, let's just lay it out there. It was where the Great Man made his Art.

White, it was splattered with paint of various colors. Sharp edges marked where the canvas had been. This was where he painted the giant canvases.

Butch was generous with his time, as everyone who knew Cy had been. And it made for a nice little piece.

"I do exist"

2011-06-19T21:24:00.003-04:00

So this will show me for not writing things down right away, not to mention not posting on the blog more often...

I wake up last night from a dream, a dream I cannot remember now. It was in the early morning hours, the room was dark, but I didn't open my eyes. I hoped that, if I could stay in that soft, comfortable sleepy place, I might drift off again right away. But nonetheless I was very much awake.

I lay with my head at the foot of the bed, because Janey, 5, lay between my wife and me. Down in the empty space beyond her feet, there was more room.

I wish now I could remember the dream. I know it was something extraordinary, in the literal sense, something supernatural if you will. It was one of those dreams where you feel the world beyond the world of cold, waking reality.

Often there's some stress (at least for me) to those dreams, a tension that forces me to seek solutions outside the normal, like in a ghost story. I think there was stress last night, but there was also resolution, a divine rescue, but as I say, I don't remember the dream now in any way but the faintest of emotional echoes.

But I do remember this:

As I woke, I heard Janey's voice. She spoke normally, and I must note that this isn't unusual. A week or so ago, I woke to the charming sound of her giggling with delight in her sleep. Arbitrary words are often spoken. But this morning, I heard her voice in the darkness clearly say, "I do exist."

I knew, as I lay there, conscious but still sleepy and hoping for sleep, that the two were connected, even as I also knew that from outside the words could be as random as the giggle, the product of her dream about, what, some game with her sister? (And a word like "exist" is in her vocabulary, especially as it turns up in video games.)

For me, it was a clear signal, a message that in this time of stress far beyond some spooky adventure in a dream, there is more ...

"Be still and know that I am ..."

-- Psalm 46:10

Let Us Dance ...

2011-04-21T00:04:00.008-04:00

Rehearsal at the Lexington School of Dance in anticipation of the recital in April. I really like this -- shot with the Zeiss 21 on my Leica M4-2, using Kodak BW400CN film -- mostly because I think it has a Robert Frank aspect to it.

I loaded the Leica with some old 800 speed color film for the performance. I was backstage because the show included and Father-Daughter dance, an anecdote-filled experience that perhaps I shall tell later. Here, however, we see a tap number some time before mine, viewed from the wings.

Caty's tap number viewed from backstage. She had to rush off from this for a costume change for our Father-Daughter number later. Caty is to the right, in the rear row, or perhaps best described as second from the left.

And, finally, Caty and, in the shadows to the left, Janey reaching out to her sister. Another dancer has caught me making pictures...

Two performances were scheduled, but on the second night the weather closed in with heavy rain and wind triggering tornado warnings and flooding. The lower level of the theater was flooded, eventually flooding the electrical room and forcing a postponement. I proceeded to claim God had decided one performance by the Daddies was enough, but we have been rescheduled for May.

There Was A Mighty Wind ...

2011-04-17T21:58:00.012-04:00

Meteorologist Jay Webb in the weather center at the station. This is one of the very few times I wish I had shot in color; around him are radar displays in bright reds, yellows and greens, indicating dangerous thunderstorms in the area.

Earlier, a line of storms had generated tornadoes to the south, in Pulaski County. The morning after, reporter Chris Hurst and I were dispatched there for a live report from the scene for the morning show.

The aftermath of the storms left the entire valley shrouded in thick fog. We drove for an hour in a blanket of dawn-lit white. The center of Pulaski proper seemed fine. But for the heavy police presence, one might have thought the town escaped unharmed. We set up by a state police roadblock.

After the morning show, we set out to find the scene of the damage. Local police with the aid of state police had thrown up roadblocks to seal the area off, but we knew more or less where the tornado had struck, and found a road that was open. The scene was devastating.

The white stuff (pink and yellow actually) is household insulation, shredded and blown across the neighborhood when roofs and walls were peeled away from houses.

A teddy bear -- just one of an uncounted amounts of personal possessions scattered about. In the news business, there is a certain standardization to this sort of thing, a regularity to the randomness of disaster. You can count on the unbroken window in the only remaining wall of a destroyed building, or the yard chair tidily deposited in the tree branches. But perhaps the cruelest thing of all is the casual smearing about of the flotsam of life, all that stuff either tidily packed away or perhaps thoughtlessly tossed in a drawer. Now it's everywhere, covered in mud, pitted and bent and soaked with rain: a picture of Mom here, a towel there. And there's always a teddy bear.

Unfortunately, even in color, the brown bear didn't really pop against the muddied background, making it hard to figure out what it was in a short look, so the shot didn't make it to TV. I'm not sure that it's that good a still, either, but I cling to it for some reason...

After filming in Pulaski proper, we headed out to Draper, a small town out in the county. Chris had been out there the night before, when the storms were still raging (he was operating on about two hours sleep as we worked). "I want to show you something," he said insistently as we drove out of town. We went to the Draper exit from the interstate, where a hollow (pronounced, as a general rule, "holler," around here) had been hit by the storm. Trees all down the hillside had been sheared and pushed over.

But now it was a tourist attraction, with a constant series of cars pulling up to stare, people parking to climb out, gawk at the scene, and take pictures with their cell phones. Across the highway, a gas station had been utterly destroyed, but it didn't draw the attention of the cutoff trees in the tiny valley.

We parked the car at a sheriff's roadblock and walked in to the scene of a trailer home that had been lifted from its foundations, reduced to its component parts, and then deposited some 20 feet away.

It's hard to wrap your head around a loss at this scale. Fortunately, the owner was out at dinner when the tornado struck, and was left unscratched. But everything he owned, all of his physical life, had been crushed, scattered and soaked.

I often try to put myself in the place of story subjects. I think we all do: How would I have escaped the killer? Where would I have taken shelter from the flood? How could I cope with the loss of ... everything? I don't know. Oddly, it reminds me of the challenge of cleaning an out of control, cluttered room. I often find myself paralyzed by the enormity of the task; where to begin? Where does this guy begin?

Once Upon a Time...

2011-03-18T07:25:00.005-04:00

Ronald Reagan waves to the press as he leaves Marines One on the South Lawn of the White House in 1984. Reagan here is returning from a trip, surrounded by aides (Press Secretary Larry Speakes is at far right, Michael Deaver walks toward the President, third from right) and Secret Service agents. A return from Camp David was a much simpler thing, with fewer people, no briefcases and suits worn rarely.

Scenes From the White House

Some time ago, when I was still on afternoon shift, I was handling the arrival of the President from Camp David, as I did each Sunday. It was a particularly quiet week, and nothing was pending in the news, so few reporters showed up to watch the regularly repeated scene.

On schedule, Marines One, the President's great green and white helicopter, swept around the Washington Monument and down to the White House grounds. As usual, the President stepped down and walked towards the Diplomatic Entrance of the mansion. However, unusually, the press had nothing to ask. The smaller than average crowd of journalists milled about, uncomfortable with having nothing to worry about, yet enjoying the fall sun.

Nonetheless, the President assumed questions were being shouted, questions he couldn't hear over the whine of the helicopter's motors. So, as he always did, he gestured with his hand to his ear, then shrugged. All in response to no questions whatsoever. It seemed almost Pavlovian.

BKY - 7/25/85

As indicated by the date above, this was written some 25 years ago, when I worked in the White House Press Office as a low lever staffer. I took to writing accounts like this as well as practice news stories to ensure my writing skills remained, as well as to document my experiences before I forgot the details.

I'm glad I did in this case, as I have told this anecdote often since, but over the years the details changed in my memory. I recalled the day being cold and dreary, the press pen filled with sullen photographers and only one reporter, dripping with drizzle, only there because they had to be. Turns out to have been a very pleasant day.

I think my writing form has changed little over time, and I'm not sure if I find that reassuring or disturbing. However, I think it lacks some descriptive flair, and in some places is too florid.

The picture was shot with a model III Leica and 90 mm lens on Tri-X. It was the first Leica I ever owned -- bought from it's first owner, an NIH chemist who bought it in Germany after World War II; I still have it.

(CORRECTION: In the caption on the top, I say Reagan is waving to the press. As I look at the image in large display, I can see his eyes are actually turned up to the Truman Balcony of the White House. Whenever he returned from traveling alone, Nancy would come out on the balcony to greet him upon landing. He is obviously waving to her.)

Do I Care?

2011-02-03T22:53:00.009-05:00

It's contest season. Now's that time of the year when, if you're lucky, your employer is pushing you to review your year's work -- because your employer is so pleased with your product, of course -- and enter as many contests as you can ... not because they want the publicity and implied compliment to their product, oh no. It's because they think you deserve a hearty pat on the back. If you're not so lucky, you're ponying up the entry fees yourself, in hopes of creating some buzz and a hot reputation so you'll get a (or some, if you're a freelancer) better job(s).

Most of us fall in between. At my job, they've been reviewing stories and newscasts for the past month or so to enter in various contests, and they suggested that we, as individuals, could also enter whatever we thought also needed to be entered, mostly in individual awards -- like best photographer.

I used to enter in the White House News Photographers Association contest when we were in DC, and even volunteered for the stills contest committee regularly in hopes of better understanding the judging process, so that I might better my chances. (Sad result: it remained incomprehensible; there was no consistent system.)

Eventually, I became jaded, and stopped entering in contests altogether. I said it was more about being trendy and hitting the random style of the year -- especially if the pictures were about some fashionable subject, like gay, ethnic mental patients suffering from AIDS as a result of genocide -- and the whole thing was getting too expensive, and frankly it was a lot of work preparing those entries according to whatever exacting standards were demanded. That's what I said...

But, as I said, the station is pretty supportive. So this year I have to decide: Do I care?

Meanwhile (jeez, these blog entry thingies seem to take longer and be harder than I expected), I was listening to the radio the other day. NPR, of course -- it's the only place I can get news with any frequency. And they, also of course, were in the middle of the "beg-a-thon." One voice explained that she had come in early that morning to work on her daily blog ... and at that moment I'm thinking, "DAILY blog?!" I heard nothing more of her appeal for funds. My mind was once again thrown to the difficulty of finding anything I believe is worth saying here.

I mean, this is not Twitter, where it is perfectly acceptable to simple recount the mundane activities of the day. I believe that there should be something here actually faintly interesting, even if there are only about ten of you reading it.

However, I also believe, as I have said before, that the very point of a blog (or any internet activity, even including plain old websites) is to be fast paced, changing often. You can take years to produce a book, which remains there, unchanged for all time, and a newspaper takes a day, and retains its value about as long, but the internet is ever changing, updating by the second. A daily blog would be about right ... if I did something worth writing about every day.

But instead, I've been plugging away at this for days. I had the initial idea ... but then didn't know where to go with it. I heard the "Daily Blog" comment, and thought that could be folded in. Time passed, and the Oscar telecast came and went, and that seemed relevant. After all, it's a contest of sorts, isn't it?

And so, I must confess, I do watch that show with mixed emotions. After all, it's basically a joke now that everyone knows (or think they know) what kind of speech to give after winning the Oscar. (And, incidentally, isn't it funny that -- no matter what the profession and its award, like a Grammy or Emmy or Clio or whatever -- we always go right to the Oscar as the apex of awards. Why not the Nobel? Anyway...)

So I naturally imagine my speech, and frankly it's a bit more poignant, because I'm actually in the business. I mean, in a long (very long) shot sort of way, I theoretically could, one day, make a documentary so good that it must be shown in theaters so that it is eligible for an Oscar. So, yeah, I'll admit it: I've thought about it. I've given the speech in my head.

And that's the thing. Really, I've about as much chance of finding myself at the Oscars as winning the lottery. (Yep, still buy the occasional ticket. Depending on the game, by the way, that's a chance of about one in 20 million or so. Perhaps God will provide, but I'm not holding my breath.) But I still think it's out there. Is that why I do my stuff? No. Much of what I do would never even rate consideration. I'd have a better chance if my subjects were gay African crack babies driven from their inadequate asylums by genocidal Republicans. Naw, I do stuff like VMI cadets walking to New Market. But I still ... dream?

So, do I care about prizes? Well, I guess on one level: Hell, yes. It's nice for an entire industry to stop for a moment and say, "You're really cool." I want to be the greatest guy in the room. Really, who doesn't?

Then, on the other hand, No. I didn't care about he cool kids table in school. (Actually, that's a false analogy, as I went to an all-boys Jesuit high school, so the whole cool kids thing was ... different there. But the point is valid.) A lot of these contests and stuff (like Oscar and Grammy) are about trends and fashion and who'd the trendiest one this year, not who's doing the most interesting work or what's really, really important. Check out, sometime, the number of people who didn't win Oscars, like Alfred Hitchcock.

So after all that buildup, I have to hope you're asking: did I enter. Well, yeah. Two entries in the AP Broadcast contest, for feature photography. I would have entered in NPPA's contest and WHNPA's, but my dues are not paid up. Maybe next year.

Do I think I'll win? Have I won the lottery yet?

So ... do I care? Well, welcome to my world....

UPDATE

I learned yesterday (March 18) that one of the stories I entered -- the Ferrari one -- has won either a first or second in the AP contest. So I guess I do care.

Also saw the judging results from NPPA, dominated by repeat winner Darren Durlach. His stuff is excellent ... I doubt I would have had a chance. More inspiration to work harder, do better; maybe there's a good reason for bothering with these contests...

Meanwhile, in -- well, in Virginia at least...

2011-01-25T14:19:00.014-05:00

More pictures ... because I can ...

Volunteer firemen from Buena Vista, Virginia, in the final stages of a house fire. I happened to have the camera from the station with me that night in anticipation of Lee-Jackson Day ceremonies the following morning (more on that, more or less, in a bit).

The firemen had gotten the thing under control -- it started as a chimney fire, they said later, and spread quickly. When the firemen arrived, there were flames shooting out the windows. It was a surprisingly large house, up a private road named Hound Haven Lane. I could actually hear bloodhounds braying in complaint as I approached. The eight people who lived there moved in with relatives; the house was completely destroyed.

The owner was none to happy to see me when I arrived, and it is to the credit of the fire policeman -- and older fellow named William (I fear I've forgotten his last name) -- that he moved me on past the dismayed fellow, pointing out that my TV coverage was probably to his advantage. "I told him you're his best friend right now," William explained when he rejoined me.

This is an awards ceremony -- officially a "Freedom Salute" -- for the 1-116th Infantry Battalion, a unit from the Virginia National Guard that recently returned from a tour in Iraq. They all received a service award from the governor and an Army Commendation Medal, as well as a campaign medal and, in some cases, an Infantry Combat Badge.

Each name was read after the various speeches and appearances by important people -- plaques were presented, wives were thanked -- and then after each name, the number of tours of duty, and the awards being presented. It was humbling as, following name after name, "Three tours," "Two tours"...

As with all wars, the soldiers were young men, and the room was full of young wives and small children. It allowed the comfortable like me to remember their sacrifice can be more than just wounds and death...

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonell is interviewed by local TV after making an appearance for Republican candidate Greg Habeeb. It's the same day, actually -- convenient to schedule the rally because the governor was in town for the Freedom Salute.

Yes, that is the camera I'm supposedly running at the moment on the right. However, as you can see, there's not a lot of movement in this situation (and I actually had a reporter to ask the questions), so I felt safe taking this one picture.

That's Habeeb, on the right, talking with his campaign manager before coming down the hall for his own interview. This is the back hall of the small office building in Salem, where the rally had just been held. Habeeb won handily on election night, taking the seat formerly occupied by Morgan Griffith, who was elected to the US House in November.

This is not Lee-Jackson Day, as the participants would be quick to tell you. The Sons of Confederate Veterans had applied to fly Confederate flags on Lexington's Main Street for the Saturday parade from Stonewall Jackson Cemetery, where Jackson is buried, to Lee Chapel, where Robert E. Lee rests with his family in the basement crypt.

The SCV was denied permission to fly the flags on that Saturday -- part of the weekend leading up to the Monday Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday. However, they were allowed to put up the flags for the week previous.

This shows a second pattern Confederate flag in front of the steeple of the Presbyterian church on Main Street, the church Jackson attended when a professor at VMI.

That Saturday -- the morning after the fire -- I covered the ceremonies, eventually putting together a "nat sound" piece. (That's for "natural sound," or a story without any narration. Usually, as it was in my case, it's because a reporter doesn't even come along.)

I don't do weddings. At least, I don't normally do weddings. Or, rather, I never did weddings in the past. This, however, is the wedding of a friend, and Jennifer and I did the photography as a gift.

The bride is seen here in that moment after getting dressed, her bridesmaids having headed out to their places, her father not yet arrived to take her downstairs. It's not even a few minutes, but it's one of those moments that seem to last, hung in time.

Maybe I will do weddings. It was pretty fun...

About Sargent Shriver...

2011-01-19T12:10:00.005-05:00

I guess I'm old enough now that, like every Washington journalist, I feel the need to reminisce about some important figure when he dies. It proves we're important too, you see, because we actually knew him ...

Recently, it was Sargent Shriver, once "dashing and handsome," the vigorous expediter of JFK's noble goals through the Peace Corps, now 95 and suffering from Alzheimer's. I remember him from the mid 1990s.

I had just covered a ceremony marking the anniversary of John Kennedy's assassination. Every year, a delegation of Kennedys and others would visit the grave in Arlington, spend a contemplative moment looking into the eternal flame, and then move on with their day. At a discreet and respectful distance, photographers were allowed to document the little ceremony. Needless to say, Shriver was a regular, and he was there that day.

We went through our motions -- the Kennedys at the grave, the photographers silently making our pictures -- and then all climbed into our cars and drove back into the city. Of course, packing up gear and all, I left later than the participants, so I was somewhat surprised after I crossed the bridge and started down Constitution Avenue to see ... Sargent Shriver. He was standing in the road, next to his car after a minor fender bender.

There's a moment as a journalist and especially as a photographer (because we can't recover the picture by getting on the phone and collecting descriptions after the fact) when you see something like this. I guess you could call it news, or perhaps a feature -- something that the NY Daily News might put on Page Six, showing that the famous and important are just like us. I though about pulling off, jumping out and getting a picture. But then I realized what I saw there was a befuddled old man, standing there with that hopeless look that the elderly can have, that look when the speed and complication of life has overwhelmed them. And on that day of all days...

No, I just couldn't do it. I drove on to the bureau, dropped my film and didn't mention it, even after word came down later in the day that he had indeed had a minor accident. I guess after 15 years, I can't get in trouble for that now...

Epilogue...

2011-01-08T20:51:00.003-05:00

And as I sort the film, I get to this:

What am I supposed to do with these?

I Dream a Perfect World...

2011-01-07T00:01:00.006-05:00

I had the most remarkable dream the other day. It wasn't unusual in its form -- just one of those false awakening dreams. Surely you've had one, where you dream you've awakened in your bed ... only to then really awaken, surprised to find the previous was only a dream? I've had them often enough that I frequently have a moment of questioning the reality: Is this really waking up, or just a dream? How do I know? (And, no, I've not seen "Inception" yet, though I know there's something about a top involved...)

So I woke up, and rolled to a sitting position to look out the bedroom window. It was hard to see out -- the shade was pulled over sheer curtains, though the fuzzy outlines of the buildings outside could be seen. I looked down at the dark narrow plank floor, then tried to see better out the window, to get oriented in the flat, pale dawn light. My wife still slept by me. Our parents were in the small houses nearby, where we'd moved them from our old house in Lexington. There were a few other houses visible through the shade, not as silhouette, but as obscured, fuzzy impressions. It felt real. Totally real. "Well," I said to myself, "It might not be the idealized Lexington, but at least it's Lexington."

Perhaps that needs explaining. I've come to realize that, in dreams, I have idealized or compacted versions of places -- a Lexington with fewer streets, a DC with the areas I frequented all pushed together so they abut -- basically places with all the irrelevant details edited out. Sometimes they're idealized; my dream Georgetown more resembles a set for a production of "Oliver!", with texturally aged, brick townhouses with dark wood porches made of thick, craggy beams, all pushed together over quaint alleys and the canal, than it does the actual neighborhood. Anyway, the point of my thought was that I'd decided my morning felt real enough, even when I looked past the foot of the bed to the large, glass doors opening out to a balcony, a town on the hillside below resembling something in Italy more than southwest Virginia. And that's when I really woke up...

And that all pretty much serves as preface to my organizing my film -- as in the stuff I put into my still cameras -- because I've been doing that around the edges of work and family care lately. You see, as we abandoned our old house, we let the utilities go, including electricity, which in turn allowed the refrigerator in which I kept my film defrost. What ice that had caked into it then, of course, melted, soaking all the film boxes. So now, I have to go through all the film, dispose of the boxes to wrecked by water to save (as well as get rid of what film was ruined), but first get the expiration dates off the boxes and write them with a Sharpie on those little plastic film cans.

Okay, that's a lot of background to get to a moment of revelation...

I walked into my room in the midst of the extended process the other night, I looked down on the sea of film canisters ... and felt an odd pleasure. As I later told a colleague at the station, if you had come to me in college, and said that, in 30 years or so, you will be sorting through scores of film canisters on an Afghan war rug, your Leicas nearby, I would have taken that as a promise of absolute success.

A part of a documentary including Larry Burrows, one of the greatest war photographers. Note about 1:34, the scene of him pulling film canister after film canister out of the box to carry with him into the field with his Leicas. This still gives me a unique thrill, to see an idol doing something so similar...

As with so many things, this seems like the story of the genie: I get exactly what I wished for ... but not really in the way I wished. I don't know whether to be ecstatic or depressed...

Layers Upon Layers ...

2011-01-03T13:29:00.006-05:00

I sometimes bore my friends (and generally bore my children) by seemingly being unable to answer a simple question with a simple answer. "Well, that depends ...," is as likely to be the way I start as any. Today, there was an article in The New York Times that makes me think of that.

Headlined "Scenes Cut From Film Find New Role In Court," it seems rather straightforward at first. Lawyers for Chevron, suing over a documentary about the company's actions in Ecuador, demanded outtakes from the film. Naturally, the filmmakers said no. And frankly I think they're right.

A documentary is -- or at least should be, in my opinion -- an act of journalism. It is reporting on something factually, telling the viewer information that is truthful and accurate. That information may be 100 years old, or about some ongoing issue, but an effort should be made to tell some fact-based truth.

However, to be clearer, I'm not so sure a documentary has an obligation to be objective. A filmmaker does not, I think, have to ensure he gets every side or tell every part of a story. It's still a documentary to, for example, tell the story of an activist for or against something and be sympathetic to his point of view, and not feel any need to include the opinions of the people he's an activist against.

It's fair, I think, to have an openly declared point of view -- to say, for example, that I set out to make this film because this issue bothered me. Ideally, say with this past year's Oscar winner, "The Cove," if you have a point of view, you also have an array of facts on your side.

On the other hand, I'm reluctant to call Michael Moore (despite his Oscar in the category) a documentary filmmaker. He does make films on issues of import, and he is very clever, but he is also fast and loose with the facts. He is not, I think, engaging in journalism, or even activist or "concerned" journalism. His is a work of propaganda. Fair enough -- especially if you agree with him -- but not documentary filmmaking.

So, having dispensed with that aside (see what I mean about boring the kids?), a true documentary should be treated in most ways like reporting. That means sourcing and sources are a critical -- and often closely held -- part of the process, especially in any sort of investigative work ... like, say, exposing what the filmmakers believed was wrongdoing by Chevron in Ecuador.

But here the question gets murkier. The Times reports that the judge let Chevron have the outtakes. (Again, a mistake in my opinion, undermining the capability of future filmmakers to do long-form exposés and get access; who's going to let you to unguarded moments on a "trust me" basis when that trust can be overruled by a court?) And in the outtakes we find ... the lawyers fighting against Chevron in Ecuador engaging in all sorts of questionable practices themselves.

So how did Chevron know to ask? Apparently, they saw a version of the film shown at Sundance that included a scene revealing a technically nonpartisan expert attending a planning meeting with the anti-Chevron lawyers. In the final release of the film, that shot was gone. So what does this tell us? Well, that the lawyers were skewing the "neutral" testimony to their side, and that (most importantly) the filmmakers knew this was a bad thing.

So now the Chevron guys get to work their way through the outtakes -- 500 hours of footage -- and they're finding all sorts of questionable stuff. Says The New York Times: "The clips ... 'have sent shock waves through the nation’s legal communities,' one federal judge said in an opinion. Another court last month called them 'extraordinary evidence' that suggests that lawyers 'presented false evidence and engaged in other misconduct.'" The filmmakers' lawyers say this is all a smokescreen, and we should get back to the point of all the nasty stuff Chevron did.

And now I'm wondering:

1. Why did these guys film all this in the first place? I know it's great to have access, and planning meetings with lawyers are just the sorts of things a documentary wants -- showing something important but otherwise hidden from view. But just who's malfeasance were they trying to document? And if you're on the side of the people you're filming, is it a good idea to actively film them engaging in questionable practices?

And 2. If they did it in all innocence (not realizing until the edit, say, that having the expert in the meeting would look bad), why didn't this become part of the film?

And hence, we return to Point One: Documentary filmmaking (especially about contemporary issues) is an act of journalism. These guys ceased to be any sort of journalist when they consciously concealed these significant facts. (Not being a lawyer, I won't go into the question of what kind of lawyers are involved here.) Truth and reporting are about going where the facts take you, and the facts here took them to a someplace else -- a place they weren't planning to go, but one they found themselves in.

One might argue that the film was about what Chevron did, not the legal case and its conduct, and that's a fair point, except they were busy filming the legal case, weren't they? If they were simply going into the jungle and out to sea, showing what Chevron was doing, well that would be a safe point. But now the film is also about the legal process, isn't it?

To take it somewhere I've worked, let's say I'm doing a film on Robert E. Lee, and let's say I am working on it from the point of view that he was a tragic figure, a fine fellow dragged reluctantly into defending slavery, an institution he abhorred. And finally, let's say I get exclusive access to never-seen-before, very private letters from Lee to his wife, Mary. (All of this is plausible enough -- I had been working on a Lee film, and there are recently released Lee letters, with more to come.)

But now let's say I come across one letter in which he says he finds the services of his slaves delightful, and he wouldn't eliminate such a grand institution for all the lives in either the Federal or Confederate armies. (NOTE: This is not true; it is an example for debate purposes only.) Now, I can tell myself that this is just one letter out of hundreds, and many of those other letters speak to feelings exactly the opposite. Maybe he was just in an odd mood, or I didn't understand the context -- perhaps Mary had sent him a letter lost to the collection, in which she asked what he thought other Southerners believed. Maybe he was drunk (though a noted teetotaler). But, you see, that is all rampant speculation and wishful thinking, elaborate logical constructs to allow me to cling to my initial premise and ignore an inconvenient and uncomfortable fact. I cannot deny that the (fictional, for the sake of debate) letter exists.

So I think there are a couple of ways to go. My first inclination is to simply shift the focus of the story and make the film about making the film. We set out to do Robert E. Lee the gentleman, but found this letter -- what does it mean? My second thought is to make the film planned, but integrate the new information. At no time do I seriously think: Let's just ignore this thing and do what we'd always planned because that theme is a Greater Truth that overwhelms this difficult, little detail.

So what's my point? Well, I guess I have two. One is that a documentary's outtakes are sacrosanct, part of the process, as much as a reporter's notes and a lawyers memos, and should be so protected. And the second is that, whatever "Crude" is, it has wandered into a gray morass in which telling the whole truth seems less important than making its point ... a very dangerous place.

The Best Picture of the Year?

2010-12-30T09:54:00.005-05:00

Saw this on Twitter:

magnumphotos: 2010 is almost over. How about sending us a link to your best pic from 2010?. We'll RT selections. Use hashtag#magnum200k

Thought I knew instantly what I wanted:

This is from Election Night, a moment after the broadcast where the Producer, Assignment Editor and News Director meet with the anchors to review the work and plan for the later newscast. It is a "Decisive Moment" -- one of those instants where everyone sems to be in just the right place.

But then I remembered this:

It's from a concert I videoed (what a ghastly verb, but I feel guilty saying "filmed") by the Rockbridge Choral Society. Again, everything just sort of fell into place; I looked down from the balcony where I was set to begin shooting, and there he was, warming up. I particularly like that little hit of color from the music on the chair.

But now I'm thinking: With all the actions of the past year, all the crises and catastrophes in my life, with all the efforts I've made to make good if not great photos, have I missed something -- blinded by the most recent?

It's a cliche to say it's like asking a parent about her favorite child, and I'm not sure really accurate. It's not that I don't prefer some pictures over others -- I do, returning to particular favorites with a sense of pride time and again -- but that I'm totally involved in what is going on now. My current pictures are my favorite ... unless things aren't working out. Then I hate them with a passionate disgust.

So I guess Election Night will stand ... for now. I mean, I haven't processed the film in my camera yet...

Meanwhile, in America...

2010-12-28T00:00:00.009-05:00

I hope, before 2011 is out, to have a couple of new projects on public display. I have been purposely laying traps for myself, so that I can't escape working on them.

One is Camera Aperta, the book project on the history of photojournalism that I really, really want to get serious about doing. Another is an attempt to document the folk and traditional music scene here in Rockbridge County. To that end, I've been telling others -- mainly those connected to the music scene -- about my ideas. It not only serves to get me more into the circle of knowledge and social scene associated with it, but forces me to get to work. Eventually, all these people are going to look at me and wonder when I'm going to get at it...

But, finally, I hope to start bringing "Meanwhile, in America..." into reality. This doesn't require much in terms of practical application -- just the continued effort to photograph life as I see it while out there -- but it does require me to get my act together in terms of learning web site design. I think this is a project that should be a web site, but one that brings the viewer a book-like experience, reminiscent of Frank's The Americans. This is in contrast to, say, the Rockbridge Music idea, which I think needs a web site that exploits all the aspects of the internet: sound, sight, video, text, look, etc., etc., etc.

And then there's the question of blogging the creation of these things and others, like the continuing efforts to edit the films on the VMI cadets who marched to New Market in May 2009 and Phil Welch's artwork...

Anyway, in the meantime, here's a couple more Meanwhile, in America ... pictures:

This is a search dog waiting for his turn ... after all the bloodhounds. They were doing weekend training in a park in downtown Roanoke, and we filmed a story on it. It nearly killed me. Running after dogs on a scent on a cold, windy, winter's day while carrying (and trying to get a decent shot with) a broadcast TV camera is a lot of work. I was wheezing like a bad accordion at the end of it.

Here we see Virginia Tech's football team during an indoor practice in anticipation of their forthcoming bowl game. Significantly more comfortable, especially as, at this moment, the sports reporter had taken hold of the camera, leaving me to shoot my own personal stills...

And here, the infamous Viking helmet. Bob Grebe was handed two of them while covering a "Viking Festival" in Roanoke years ago, and put them on his desk when he got back to the newsroom. One disappeared sometime in the last year, but this one remains as an odd sort of test. Bob waits, wondering how long it will remain there, on his desk, until it also disappears ... or he is told to get rid of it. If you watch News 7, you can often see it in the background.

As for the book, it is a recent arrival. We receive many books form the authors, hoping to arrange interviews, etc., as part of their promotion tours and so on. Makes for an interesting juxtaposition with the helmet, though...

The pictures were shot on a Leica M4-2 (a recent acquisition, and a story unto itself) with the now omnipresent (in my world) Kodak BW400CN film, using a 21mm Zeiss f2.8 lens.

Amusingly (perhaps to me only), I've put the Leitz 50mm f2.0 on the M4-2 lately, as people around the station have begun noticing me more as I make their picture. It's getting harder to sneak up on folks. However, I now understand why Cartier-Bresson preferred the 50mm, while (given the choice) I'd rather use the 21mm. You don't get the sweeping, dramatic lines and distortion the ultra-wide-angle lens provides, but you get a bit of distance that makes you a little less intrusive and noticeable.

Welcome to my world...

About those Christmas songs...

2010-12-20T23:46:00.004-05:00

I went on a story Sunday that required a two-hour drive each way to reach it. That makes for a lot of time in the car, and my reporter has recently taken to insisting on having the stations that play holiday music on the radio.* So he had to suffer through my occasional random thought processes...

See, the song "Do You Hear What I Hear?" came on. In one lyric, "said the little lamb to the shepherd boy, 'Do you hear what I hear?'" At which point, all I can think is that said shepherd boy looks down and says, "A TALKING LAMB?!" However, I managed to hold my tongue until we reached the lyric about, "a child, a child shivers in the cold," whereupon the song suggests "let us bring him silver and gold," which perhaps might be good to have in the long run (and an able and charming rhyme) but might not be as useful at the moment as, say, a blanket.

The reporter said I never failed to astonish him. I'm hoping it was a compliment of sorts.

At any rate, this is all by way of preface to an actual meaningful thought on Christmas lyrics, though those of a somewhat less pious song: "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town."

About halfway through that upbeat number, the mildly threatening lyric says that "He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake." Now, it seems rather straightforward on the face of it, with a clever use of a stock phrase we toss off -- much like "God knows" -- without giving much thought to its literal meaning, as well as rhyming tidily with the earlier "awake."

But it has occurred to me that the literal sense -- be good for goodness' sake (with that important apostrophe emphasizing the point) -- is a worthy thought for Christmas, as well as the oft-said (and with an equal loss of meaning, if not literal meaning) desire to act like it's Christmas all year long.

In an age when being bad means merely getting caught, when national figures try to convince us that, if they didn't manage to accomplish some underhanded deal, then it's all okay, when we expect rewards for merely doing what's minimally expected, perhaps we should think for about being good ... because it's good. Be good for the sake of goodness ... and no other reason. Really, is that so hard?

*This isn't really fair. For a good part of the ride, each way, we listened to NPR, which is usually my choice. Oh, and there was about a cumulative hour of football. But there was a lot of holiday music, which can get old fast...

Breaking News...

2010-12-14T21:28:00.006-05:00

It has become one of my pet peeves that the term "Breaking News" has been abused -- particularly by the cable news networks -- to the point of becoming nonsense. It already was pretty bad; I regularly joked with friends about how, "When news breaks, we'll fix it!" And one friend remembered a TV station in Pittsburgh that released an expensive promotional campaign for its evening news show under the catch phrase, "If it happened today, it's news to us." No one caught the potentially oblivious meaning of the phrase until it was actually on the air. (I can see how they made the mistake. Read with the intended meaning, it's a pretty clever local news campaign.)

But real breaking news -- that fast-paced, rapidly changing, developing story so perfectly caught by Ben Hecht in "The Front Page" and perfectly portrayed in the movie adaptation "His Girl Friday" -- that is something special, the Holy Grail of journalism. It's the rush that keeps you in the business.

It looks like this:

This is longtime WDBJ reporter Joe Dashiell (on right) and News Director Amy Morris working on a script for a voice over. But I get ahead of myself...

The story for a week has been the murder of Tina Smith followed by the disappearance of her 12-year-old daughter and live-in boyfriend (that is, Tina's boyfriend). Tina was found by co-workers when she didn't come in for work on Monday, but apparently had been killed Friday. An Amber Alert was immediately issued for the girl -- what had happened? How was she involved? Was she at risk as a witness? What was up with the boyfriend?

It became the week-long obsession of every newsroom in the area ... and a few nationally. The Nancy Grace show on CNN featured it for several days (to the general amusement of the local media, who found her stuff shallow and often idiotic), and I spent the better part of a Saturday trying to figure out how to feed footage of news conferences at the Roanoke County police department to both CBS and CNN.

The girl and the man were in Wal*Mart. They could be anywhere. North Carolina? Still in Virginia? Ohio?

And then an urgent notice. Florida! Police were called to a gas station. We went into high gear....

That's Bob Grebe, morning anchor, who's usually condemned to features about the Greek Festival and Haunted Houses at Halloween, working the phones for more details. As I walked through the newsroom -- at loose ends because I had no particular story to work on that day -- he was calling out that I should quickly cut together a couple of 30-second sequences of the footage coming down from the network from Florida, just so the producers putting together the news interruptions -- yes, we actually cut into the vapid morning talk shows with updates -- would have something to show. He was on.

And that's what it's all about. It's why you're a journalist, a newsman. It's what keep you showing up every day for lousy pay and bad attitudes from "civilians" -- those people who think you're out to get them when you show up with a camera to let them tell their version of things -- and basically a guarantee of obscurity. (Seriously, how many journalists can you name? Now, how many idiotic, drug addled, sex-obsessed Hollywood actors?)

It's BREAKING NEWS. It's happening right now, and no one -- but you, after you've called the guy on the spot, or the person who is inside, or the one who has the real details -- knows what's happening. It's happening right now, and you're putting it all together, and you're going to understand it and explain it better than anyone else ... because you get it.

Look at that first picture again. Look at that lean in that Joe is doing -- the search for the right term, just the right word, to make it perfect. Look how Bob's eyes are in the second image -- normally a photo problem, a "blinker," but no, because he's listening with care to every word. Vision would distract him.

Look at this:

It's the calm after the storm. We now know the guy in Florida was just some OD case, not the people we were looking for. The urgency has passed. Amy is putting together a summary for the evening news, but again, look at her eyes -- the intense concentration to find just the right thing, the right turn of phrase, to make the story clear in the least number of words and seconds.

Yet, the story still develops. And tomorrow, there will be another. And sometime soon, there will be more breaking news -- there always is -- and once again, we will all know why we are in this business...

Welcome to the world that has made me show up for work for ... Good God! ... 22 years ...

Stop that...

2010-12-09T17:15:00.008-05:00

These are my daughters in full cry, headed towards an otherwise perfectly innocent Christmas tree, garland in hand, for the grand decoration. Behind them, you can see the house in chaos.

I find myself suffering an odd longing these days. Perhaps it's because, now that I'm on a more reasonable schedule at the station, I'm able to drop the older girl at school as I leave. Or perhaps it's because she's been in a particularly good mood these past couple of days as I've dropped her at school. At any rate, as I drive away and begin the long, stately hurtle down the interstate, I feel this regretful tug, this arch pain of absence, like a homesickness, for the girls -- for their delight and hugs, their giggles and even their demands.

This is not to say I'm normally ambivalent about my children; I do enjoy them, even as I grow frustrated by their refusal to go to bed or their demands, as part of the refusal to go to bed, for one more cup of Orange Crush, and other such ... "delights." But this is oddly special.

It's a fear, and a sadness. It's the palpable sense that time is slipping, streaming away, leaking out through my fingers like so much water. It's the knowledge -- the sure knowledge -- that I won't have this time, this minute, this effervescent instant ever, ever, ever again. It's a crawling, cold horror, like the fear of death, but the fear of the death of ... joy. The death of a moment, the death of a feeling that I would like to cuddle up into, warm and soft and safe. And it's a fear for them, of their loss of being little, and happy, irresponsible and uncaring ... and safe, wrapped in my arms, sleepy and content.

With a sigh, I push it away. I am powerless against this fear; there is nothing to do but ignore it and pretend that this dark, invincible force just isn't there. And I have work to do, and places to be.

Welcome to my world...

The Selfish, Unconcerned Photographer...

2010-11-15T20:43:00.009-05:00

"A blog is a means of sharing your pet peeves and off-the-cuff theories of everything with the entire planet."

-Louis Menand in the New Yorker

I have a confession to make. Though I love Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eliot Erwitt, Robert Frank and any number of others in their tradition, I am not, as Capa's brother Cornell termed it, a "Concerned Photographer." The main thing that concerns me is making a picture ... and making a living at it.

This confession was finally triggered by a number of things, most recently this Tweet:

@magnumphotos: Just launched, the Magnum Emergency Fund site, supporting photographers with a commitment to documenting social issues.http://bit.ly/9yUtSl

My first thought? "Damn, wish I had some 'meaningful' (done with those finger quotes) social issue thing."

Okay, so maybe I'm old and cynical, though I think I've always felt this way. It's just that I'm not in journalism in general and photography in particular to change the world. As a matter of fact, I think it's pretty freaking rare for either journalism or photography to change anything in any significant way.

So, if I'm not here to change the world, just what do I think I'm doing? Mostly, satisfying my own curiosity. I like to know.

And I like to make pictures

I don't know if it comes across here, but I do feel a bit guilty about this. It's like that debate about if there can be a thing as true charity, or if we still do it, in the end, because people thank us and act like we're so good for being so generous. As a matter of fact, this posting is the product of days of work, not because it is such finely crafted language, but because I have struggled over what it is I mean and what it is exactly that I mean to say.

I asked my wife (who is now more than used to my guilts), telling her about what I was writing, and she (as always) explained it for me instantly. "I don't think it's a good thing to be a 'concerned photographer,'" She said. "That implies there is something to be concerned about, that you find some part of the story right and some part wrong, that you're biased. What you are is a curious photographer." I'm not, she explained, going in with a point of view, just a desire to see what is.

Former AP Director of Photography Hal Buell seems to agree. "To take a position of hate or love in order to be a war photographer," he told News Photographer editor Don Winslow in a piece in the November issue about war photography, "is to be an advocate, and advocacy leads to spin and distortion. For the advocate, one side is right, one side is wrong, and the pictures must show that in order to validate the photographer's reason for being there."

Don's piece starts with Robert Capa's premise that "In war, you must hate somebody or love somebody; you must have a position or you cannot stand what goes on." Buell dismisses Capa's thought as "romantic." It was Capa's brother, you'll recall, who coined the term "concerned photographer" -- apparently romance ran in the family. I'll have to ask Don to get Buell's thoughts on the Cornell's ideas. (And, by the way, if you're a member of the NPPA, you're in for a real treat -- Don's article is a work of art as good or better than pieces in the New Yorker.)

So what am I? Curious? Definitely. Concerned? Apparently only about myself. Typical? I dunno'. Maybe all that counts is whether I make a decent picture...

NOTE: This one took a while to crank out. As I discovered with the election pieces, apparently the blog places them as they were started, not finished, so it may appear this was written longer ago than it was. As I post, it's Dec. 5.

Once again, I promise to do more, more often...

Meanwhile, During the Election...

2010-11-05T22:04:00.006-04:00

This is Morgan Griffith, Republican candidate for the 9th District of Virginia, campaigning in Pulaski, deep in the Southwest of the state. It's the Saturday before election day, and I was filming the rally -- which seems a rather grand term for what it was, truly, a gathering of about 30 or 40 people at a landscaping company, standing about amidst bins of gravel and mulch -- for WDBJ. My reporter, Chris Hurst, can just be seen behind Griffith, between him and the garden shed. He's holding a radio microphone, so we can get better audio of the speech.

Griffith was a long shot. Although he was the majority leader in Virginia's legislature, his opponent, Rick Boucher, was a 20-plus-year veteran of the US House of Representatives. As anyone with a passing knowledge of American politics takes for granted, an incumbent is difficult to dislodge. A 20-plus-year incumbent is all but undefeatable. It's a "safe seat."

However, this year, the tide was turning, and Griffith sensed the flow. As he said during this speech, if others in Virginia -- like Tom Periello in the nearby 5th District, a one-termer -- lost their races, pundits could say that the seat was traditionally Republican, and thus the election just a readjustment to the norm. (Periello defeated longtime veteran Virgil Goode, riding on the coattails of President Obama.) But, Griffith said, urging his followers to action -- specifically the action of voting -- if Boucher lost, then it would be a real sign, a symbol that the recent liberal actions really were rejected by all the voters.

This is Rick Boucher that same day, just a few miles away and a an hour or so later, being interviewed by the competition after a rally. The chairs were all full when he and Sen. Mark Warner spoke, and the followers enthusiastic. As I left, I overheard one say, as he walked out the door with a friend in front of me, that he couldn't understand the polls. From what he saw, Boucher should win by a landslide.

However, the polls -- especially WDBJ's Survey USA poll -- showed a dead heat. Our most recent results actually had Griffith ahead by a point. Boucher was adamant, in his speech (when he pointed out our camera) and in an interview afterwards, that his poll results showed him ahead. It was just bad methodology.

That was Saturday. On Tuesday, as the results came in, the "shellacking" -- as the President would later term it -- became clear. And in the 9th District, there was a double surprise: Griffith not only won, he won by a margin large enough to have that election called before the long doomed Periello race in the 5th. As Griffith predicted, I think, his race is symbolic. There was more than a pendulum swinging back to the center here.

and that's how election day went. Welcome to my world...

Excitement on order...

2010-11-05T08:58:00.014-04:00

This is what election night looks like, literally behind the scenes. You can see the teleprompter there, in the center of the scene in the background, Behind the prompter, of course, is a camera.

Election night is an interesting phenomenon in the news business. It's breaking news, but breaking news you can plan for. Usually, breaking news is unplanned, something that just happens, like a plane crash, but an election is constitutionally scheduled. You've known it's going to happen for 200 years.

All the same, it's exciting.

Here we see Producer Cara Stein working with the anchors Jean Jadhon and Keith Humphrey. As you can see from the pile of papers, there's a myriad of details and information to work out.

Of course, if you're the weather guy, it's just another night. Jay Webb, the meteorologist on duty that night, filled his time with texting.

I was the "night shooter," basically on duty in case something unexpected -- actual breaking news -- happened. This year it didn't, so I had some time to make pictures on the set. They've gotten used to me and my Leicas at WDBJ now -- even looking forward to the pictures -- but I had some extra insurance that night: in the background of this image, back behind the desk and slightly to the left, you can see Lawrence Young (no relation), the chief photographer at the station, with his digital Canon also making still photos on the set.

Back in the newsroom, the Assistant Producers gather data and deal with the detail work. If you watch News 7, you'll know that you actually can see the newsroom in the background during the show. Again, this is the view behind the scenes, so it's a reverse view. You can see the lights and set in the upper left corner of the picture.

And here, we're on the air. Actually, we're just about off the air; the floor director (in the center) is indicating to the anchors that there are only seconds left in their cut-in. This is a rather remarkable picture -- everyone on the set gets a little uncomfortable with people wandering around the cameras and stuff while we're live on the air. Trip over one cable, drop something with a loud THUMP! and out it goes, live, to everyone who owns a TV.

It's only my known position -- and some trust that I know what I'm doing -- that let me make the picture...

And now's the moment to confess: I've taken a small liberty with the pictures -- or rather one picture -- in this post. The first image is actually the last. It shows the anchors, Producer Cara Stein, Assignment Editor Dave Seidel and News Director Amy Morris meeting after all the cut-ins, late in the night, reviewing what they did and how well it went. (It did go well, aided by the results quickly indicating the elections' trend.)

But it was the best picture of the bunch; one I'm rather proud of. Stepping aside from the subject of the election, it's one of those pictures where everything falls into place: the legendary Cartier-Bresson "Decisive Moment." (I read recently he came to dislike that term; it drew away from what he really meant to say.) And look at how the lens -- a Zeiss 21mm Biogon -- reacts to the lights shining into it. It's just a ... nice image. Welcome to one of my tiny pleasures ...

A Short One...

2010-10-26T20:40:00.005-04:00

So I pull out of the station with the reporter on the way to a Kidney Walk -- that's a fundraiser for kidney disease research and patient assistance -- when I look into the vehicle's side mirror as we come onto the highway. Back, at the intersection of the branch road we're pulling onto (581) and the main interstate (81), some two or three miles away, I see a big, black cloud of smoke.

Now, a range of thoughts flash through my mind. Black smoke is bad. Aside from indicating there's no new Pope, outside of the Vatican it indicates a petroleum product burning, like plastic or rubber ... as in a car or a plane or something. (Houses tend to burn white -- wood and fabric -- until it gets to the furniture and stuff, and fires being extinguished put out white smoke, from the water.) So my first thought is this is something bad ... and newsworthy.

Then I remember that sometimes heat plants and diesel generators (petroleum still) often put out black clouds when first fired up, sort of like that big black cloud from the tractor trailer when it first accelerates. So I hesitate.

But then I decide to say something. "What the hell is that?!" I say, still looking at the cloud in the side mirror. The reporter, seated next to me, answers with a tone of surprised disdain. "An Escalade," he says, naming the car passing us. I realize he can't tell I'm looking in the mirror.

"No, behind us." He sees the cloud. "Turn around," he says, and we do. An RV was burning on 81. Traffic had just begun to stack up; we skipped around it on the shoulder. Good footage.

Welcome to my world...

Private Lives ...

2010-10-11T09:54:00.005-04:00

So it's been a while, and the New York Times has an article today that reminded me of something. It's about web privacy and how the new HTML5 provides more opportunity for data tracking with cookies, etc. And I've heard these worries before with other systems, like Facebook, and -- with concessions I'll get to in a moment -- I'd like to say: I don't care.

That's right, I don't care. They can follow my boring shopping and reading habits until their eyes bleed, for all I care. As a matter of fact, it's worse than that. I actively hope they follow me. If they can do stuff to more quickly and accurately bring me stuff that I want with less effort on my part, good! My life was just made easier.

I'm tempted to go off on a short side rant about how, when these stories come out, they so often are written in a breathless tone of horror that a business should want (God forbid!) to encourage people -- actively encourage them, by use of all means available -- to buy their products. (Long pause, á la Jon Stewart.) Really? This is a moral crime of some sort?

But instead (that was sufficient, I think, and any more would draw us off in some tangential direction), allow me a short aside on the actual moral crimes possible. The ability to muck around in my life and personal data is not something I want anyone to be able to do with reckless abandon, but I don't mean to say this in contradiction to the above. Rather, what I mean to say is that there are indeed bad people out there: those who would steal identities, blackmail, steal assets, pry into stuff that's none of their business, etc.

Now, this is the very argument that many "privacy advocates" would make in answer to my opening statement, but I think that is a red herring. The bad people are just that ... BAD people. They are engaged in activities that are morally wrong, and generally illegal already. If we didn't have computers and the internet, they would still be doing whatever nastiness they do by whatever analog means available. There was fraud in the 19th Century -- check out Huckleberry Finn -- and even, I venture, in the time of Christ. Some caveman probably ripped off another by lying and saying he knew Ug from the next cave over, when he really didn't.

Evil and theft, like the poor, shall always be with us. The Eeyores of this world can kill any idea by pointing out the ways it can be misused. The fault is not in our technologies but in ourselves; we can't legislate behavior and we can't prevent, by technical means, badness.

So track away, dear businesses, and bring me those obscure products that I just can't live without, but would otherwise live in ignorance of.

Then again, it would help if I had any money. Maybe they'll figure that out, too, and leave me alone ...

The Autumn that Wasn't ...

2010-09-23T08:03:00.006-04:00

"Have mercy on me, God, have mercy..."

-Psalm 57

This was going to be the Perfect Autumn. The Center for Civil War Photography planned their annual seminar to be at Gettysburg, with the main attraction being the reclusive William Frassanito, the dean of Civil War photography analysts. A former photo intelligence officer during the Vietnam war, Frassanito was the first to apply the techniques he learned to pictures shot by Brady, Gardner and others, exploding dozens of myths.

Then, the Leica Historical Society of America scheduled an epic trip to the heart of Leica: Wetzlar, Germany. Factory tours, seminars and the general atmosphere of the town where the Leica was born in the 1920s and is still assembled today, just one year after the premiere of the game-changing digital M9.

Naturally, both would be of great interest to me, just as a general principle, but it was more than that. I think I've mentioned Camera Aperta. It's a Grand Idea -- the equivalent, for me, of the Great American Novel that every journalist is famously working on. However, it's not a novel; it's nonfiction, a work in the first-person tradition of Tom Wolfe, or newer works by Michael Pollan or Jennifer 8 Lee. It's a history of photojournalism by way of the equipment and my personal experience with it. So, for example, when the Leica rangefinder came into use in the 1940s and (particularly) the 1950s, how did that affect news photography, and its style and content, and thus news in general? Where did it come from, and why do people still use it? Why was it important? I plan to deal with these kinds of questions, but in a firsthand, conversational sort of way, a way the makes it more like the chats I have with people who stop me at work and ask advice, or are curious about photography.

But now, they're over ... at least for me. LHSA's Carl Merkin is posting his pictures from the German trip on Facebook (a particularly agonizing one was a view of happy fellow travelers gathered around a table of tall glasses of lager in a tiny cafe, a view of the Teutonic village through the neighboring window), and I await the updates from the CCWP. The seminar doesn't start for a couple of days, but it has been sold out for weeks.

But, as you may know, there's no money (let alone time), so no conference. On top of that, I thought I had the perfect situation when NewsTilt arrived. I would be able to write the chapters and sub-chapters, send them out as articles, and thus provide some income as I ground away at the book. Or at least have an outlet. Not so much, after all.

So, the Perfect Autumn evolves into a disappointment, a reminder that I can't just blow through the drudgery of common life, that a great idea isn't enough -- logistics are required -- that just because I've been able to do stuff, I can't always do whatever I want. A little humility is in order. And a great idea deserves a little bit of effort.

I'm not letting go; someday you'll be seeing Camera Aperta, even if it's a soiled, wrinkled typesheet I force into your hand. But, I guess, it's gonna' take some work...

"I will turn their mourning into joy.

I will console and gladden them after their sorrows ...

and my people shall be filled with my blessings,

says the Lord."

- Jeremiah 31:13-14

Remembering NewsTIlt...

2010-09-18T12:14:00.003-04:00

It's dead, and even my early thoughts of continuing my content somehow have been lost in the chaotic life I've been living lately, but one of the founders of NewsTilt blogged a post mortem.

It's interesting how he sees it, and explains a few things. For one thing, it turns out their plan was nothing like what I thought I signed up for. They thought they were building a great commentary site for each individual journalist -- post the story and wait for dialog with readers. I thought that's what this is. If I wanted a glorified blog, I'd rebuild Cat Typing into that.

I thought they were building something that could perhaps be described as an online catalog of stories available for resale to other outlets. I was very excited about that thought. I produce material enthusiastically and often, but am a terrible marketer. If someone was going to do all the marketing (and incidentally, all that complicated internet coding crap, which I could learn but don't want to), then great: a perfect match. But in reality, not so much.

I've got to say, he raised my hackles a bit with the comment that the journalists weren't "hungry to succeed," but I think he's just choosing his words poorly. I think his idea of product is just different from mine, perhaps most sharply shown by his frequent admission that he isn't a big news reader. I am a constant news reader. I am a journalist by definition; it's not my job, it's what I am. I am one of those people who, as Christiane Amanpour described it, will run towards the big scary thing everyone else is running away from.

He is a computer guy. He clearly thinks that short stories, delivered quickly and frenetically online, with lots of reader commentary and interactivity is journalism. I thought NewsTilt was an opportunity to work on some of those big think pieces that I had been meaning to get around to. I wanted to do New Yorker, while he was building Gawker or TMZ.

And, apparently, they were expecting me and my fellow contributors to drive readership to NewsTilt, where I expected NewsTilt to drive readership (or rather secondary outlets, and thence readership) to me. See above: I thought it was a marketing scheme. If I could somehow create vast legions of readers, why would I need NewsTilt? Again, I'd just monetize this site somehow. (And, by the way, thank you once again six followers. I know where my readership is...)

The pity is I'm back at Square One, still with product and no outlet or marketing scheme. When I finish moving and various other things, I guess I'll go to Word Press or some such place and rebuild my site with the former NewsTilt content, but then what? How do I go about monetizing this stuff?

Anyway, I forgive him for implying that I wasn't willing to produce product and wasn't hungry for success. But am I the one he mentioned as an Emmy winner when speaking in the same breath as a Pulitzer winner?

Meanwhile, In America...

2010-09-07T21:40:00.014-04:00

Okay, I know I'm no Robert Frank. (Makes me think of The Online Photographer's immortal comment about how to shoot with a Leica. He said, when suggesting using a 35 mm lens, "I know Cartier-Bresson's favorite lens was a 50. You're not Cartier-Bresson." I can't find the link, but this is the start of the thread...) But I'm still stuck on my concept of "Meanwhile, In America ..." -- a modern, more upbeat version of Robert Frank's The Americans. So now you must suffer through more pictures of the sort I would do for that project...

Here we see the talent and producer (Kim Pinckney, the one holding the papers, is the producer) of WDBJ's weekday morning news show, Mornin'. (Yes, absent the G -- it amuses me.) They are looking at the ratings. They're number one.

Inside a Roanoke, Virginia, firehouse, shortly before it was closed and replaced with a new, more modern facility nearby. The stairs lead from the garage-like area where the fire trucks are kept to the living quarters for the firemen.

Jefferson Street, downtown (it always amuses me to say "downtown" in a town of 7,000) Lexington, Virginia.

The owner of Roanoke's Putt-Putt golf course, during a tournament involving both amateur and professional players. Yes, professional Putt-Putt golfers. Really. There's a tournament circuit, just like Tiger Woods plays, but with giant gorillas and giraffes and windmills and stuff. That's not why he's laughing; he was once a pro himself.

The president of Roanoke's Tea Party, shortly after I interviewed him for WDBJ7 at a July 4 rally in Elmwood Park. As I've mentioned before, I think the Tea Party movement is something to be respected and attended to, not ignored and dismissed. I still haven't grasped what it is -- and I asked him for the opportunity to talk some more in hopes of getting closer -- but I sense a geological force (not a "shift," as I think it taps into something quintessentially American, whatever that might mean) that the Tea Party represents.

I think there is a really important article, or story, or book maybe, to be done about this -- one that isn't snide or superior or disdainful. Something not written in the tone of an educated elite regarding the boobocracy as if they were animals in the zoo. Something not written by today's H.L. Menckens.

I had read about George Plimpton's fascination with fireworks a long time ago, but it stuck with me. I saw my opportunity this July 4, and convinced the station to let me cover the setup for Lexington's fireworks. I was surprised; just two guys, a lot of wood planks, some PVC tubes for mortars, and boxes and boxes of explosives shipped all the way from China. (That was a somewhat scary thought, I've got to say, when I learned it. There must be shipping containers full of high explosives [!] on the Pacific as I write.)

The guy in charge, shown here, just started when a friend suggested he help out on a show. His day job is as a barber. He's going to beautician school now, to expand his business.

Pray and Play, and effort by a black evangelical church to occupy youth in a poorer neighborhood in Roanoke. I ended up covering it when the minister called the newsroom one Saturday seeing if we were interested.

A gospel rap group, associated with the church, was also there. I gave them my card, and I hope they call. That would be a good story, I think.

This is Josh Harvey, a friend, playing organ for a wedding in Lee Chapel on the Washington and Lee University campus in Lexington. A nice picture of a nice guy.

All of the pictures have been shot with a Leica M3. For some I used a 34mm Leica Summicron, some a Zeiss 21 mm Biogon. Most were shot on Tri-X, though Josh's is on Plus-X, and I shot one roll of Fuji B&W film because it was in the fridge. (I'm working my way slowly through everything in the fridge, as I can't afford to buy new film. I'm also now out of negative sheets.)

NOTE: Keep checking back. On my first upload of these pictures, it's ten o'clock at night and I don't have all the data -- like names and dates -- in front of me. I plan to keep updating these entries as I get the chance.

Also, check back on previous entries. I've been adding pictures as I get them processed and scanned.

Damned if I do ...

2010-08-22T10:22:00.007-04:00

So I'm browsing the competition's website, when I see that the city will be closing a street in downtown Roanoke that morning so a crane can be used to work on the Dr. Pepper sign. The sign, about 20 feet across, is one of three iconic signs over the city (the others being an H&C Coffee sign in neon and, of course, the Mill Mountain star). It's the classic Dr. Pepper clock, with the hours of 10, 2 and 4 writ large -- the ideal times for a Dr. Pepper according to the soda's early advertisements. Now the sign is showing some wear.

Anyway, once the morning show gets underway, I drive down there to see if it's at all visual, and I've got to say that this is when my inner devil and angel war. The angel hopes for something really spectacular: a rosy dawn breaking behind a crane lifting some large piece of the sign. My inner angel is often disappointed.

The devil is looking at the fact that, even though the temperature remains high and the air thick with humidity, a light to medium drizzle is falling. Simply walking through it becomes a sweaty struggle. The devil wants to go down there and find nothing but empty streets and a homeless guy. The devil has a higher success rate than the angel, perhaps explaining his continued longevity.

What I find is something more typical: a scene that splits the difference. The road is closed, filled with a giant crane that does reach up to the Dr. Pepper sign. The light's okay, though the sky ranges from overcast white to threatening gray ... but not in any useful photogenic way. It's visually interesting, but not really amazing. So I get out the gear and shoot it.

My typical approach for something like this is to start far back and get the overall scene. Then I move closer and closer, getting more detailed shots, but also moving more into areas where I might be forbidden. By the time I walk right up to the crane the operator steps out and welcomes me.

He explained what they were doing -- a platform needed to be welded onto the front of the sign so scaffolding could be put on. The scaffolding would then allow repairs to be made to the clock face. He showed me all the parts. And then he repeated the phrase with which he greeted me: "You want to go up on the roof?"

Crane owner and operator Barry Blount explains to me how the Dr. Pepper sign used to be on a neighboring building, but had to be moved when the Taubman Art Museum was built. Shot on my Leica M3 with 21 mm Zeiss lens.

I'm looking tentatively at the crane when he explains that I would take the building's elevator and then climb up a ladder through a hatch. He guided me there, and up I went.

Stepping from the polished interior of the building (watercolors on the hallway walls, small oriental rugs on the floor) to its infrastructure (concrete stairwell with a 12-foot metal ladder bolted to the wall) is always interesting, but my mind was on a quandry. That camera and tripod are big and heavy, and 12 feet is way to long to simply push them up and out. I'd have to climb the ladder with one hand, then lift each item past my head and out onto the roof. But I'm game.

I start with the tripod. If it doesn't work, I can simply drop it with a minimum of damage. Step, step, grab. Step, step, grab. My right arm hangs out to the side, holding the tripod. Each grab involves me wrenching my body forward, hanging momentarily free before I grip the next rung up and prevent the inevitable fall backwards.

Yeah, it's a bit scary, and a lot of work, but I get to the top and swing the tripod through the hatch to the roof. Now, I think, I could climb out, go over to the guys on the roof, borrow a rope and haul the camera up that way. That involves, even after befriending them, climbing down and up and down a couple more times ... or I could just go down there and do this -- exhausting and painful though it is -- once.

Yep. That's right. Down I go, pick up the camera (which, it occurs to me, is heavier than the tripod) and start up. Step, step, grab. Step, step, grab. The camera pulls a little more, so that grab is a little harder, a bit quicker. Still, I'm going okay. I'll be okay. Look, I'm just below the hatch. Now I'll just bring the camera up and over ... and just in the nick of time.

Or not. I can't muscle it past my shoulder. It's just too damn heavy, and the space at the hatch is just too tight. I lift and angle, twist and heave, my muscles screaming with each attempt, but I just can't get it over my shoulder. And now I have a problem.

I'm a good ten feet up, hanging on with one hand while being pulled away by the camera. I'm too tired to go up, and I can't go down. I just can't let go of the rung, or the camera will pull me away and down we both go to the concrete floor. Nor can I just wait and rest, as this thing is heavy and my grip is getting weaker all the time.

It's one of those moments when one turns philosophical. You review how you got to this place, how stupid you were. What people will think, what will they do. And, really, I don't want to die. I'm sort of detached ... and panicked. Seriously, what do I do now?

Well, one thing at a time. I bring the camera up and across my chest, so I can use my left arm to help support it. Unfortunately, I can't switch hands -- no way to support it well enough without actually holding on. But now I can step up another rung. And another. Finally, it's high enough, and the camera goes up and over the top.

Idiot.

But alive.

I wish I could say it was all worth it, that the pictures from the roof were spectacular, but it was much like earlier -- alright, but not great. I did wish I had brought the Leica up, but then I realized the situation would have been even worse. Instead, I made do with a couple of pictures from the street afterwards.

I borrowed a rope to lower the gear down.

Welcome to my world, which continues despite my best efforts ...

UPDATE: They've done the repairs now.

And then I got to drive ...

2010-08-11T07:50:00.021-04:00

So yesterday I just missed a story, arriving too late, which is rare enough to be worthy of mention, but that's not why I bring it up here. It's worthy of note more because of the scene when I arrived. It was a Shriners picnic for disabled children, and after covering a heritage festival, I just got there too late. The kids were all but gone, and the area was being cleaned up. By clowns. Real clowns, in the baggy pants and big shoes and stuff. I pulled up to one, and he explained it was all over. It was just surreal.

But a while back, I had another strange experience, from start to finish.

Every year, Roanoke has a Motor Madness weekend. Classic cars cruise up and down Williamson Road -- a major avenue into town -- on Friday night, and then on Saturday they park the cars downtown, closing off several streets. While I was shooting the display for the station, I came across a red Ferrari. Perfect. Bright color, easily recognizable to the viewers, sleek and pretty.

As I shot it, the owner, Dan Ragland, struck up a conversation. We talked for a while -- probably longer than I should have hung around, but it was fun -- and in the process he told me about a garage he uses outside of town. It's just a little country garage -- literally called "Jake's Garage" -- where Dan has basic maitenance done on the car. On top of that, this is not the only Ferrari that goes there, and on the following Tuesday Dan said three would be there at once.

Well, by that time I have my notebook out, taking down names and numbers, and by Monday I had the Managing Editor sold. Calling (I just looked up "Jake's Garage in the phone book), I talked with Bill Conner, the slow drawling owner and sole mechanic, who was okay with me coming by, and everything was set.

Jake's Garage just outside Roanoke. Two Ferraris wait outside.

Finding the place turned out to be easier than I thought. It sits on a major road running out of Roanoke, and the bright red of a Ferrari that had been dropped by earlier that morning marked it as the place to be.

Ironically, that easy marker made my heart sink a little. Part of the story all but required me getting footage (and sound -- that unique growl of a Ferrari engine) of the cars pulling in. But no worry: two more were yet to come. Soon, Dan pulled up in his, and a bit later the third -- this one a white hard top -- arrived. I shot like crazy.

The thing is, I tend to be a very passive journalist and photographer, and oddly, despite the somewhat calm atmosphere of a story like this, a lot is really happening all at once. Features are made by catching telling moments, and you never know when that moment is going to happen ... unless you sort of take control of the situation and ensure things are occuring only when you are ready for them. I don't do that control thing well, or at least happily. So, I was jittering here and there about the garage, catching Bill as he did some work while organizing everyone into their interviews.

Finally, I began to feel confident we had pretty much what we needed. The car owners were ready to head out. All that was left was to get some cover shots when Dan turns to me and says, "You want to ride in it?" Uh, yeah.

I climbed into the tight passenger seat, setting the TV camera on my shoulder (as much as an excuse for my joyride as for any useful footage ... but who knows?) and we pulled out. Dan really likes his car. He accelerated out the winding country road at rocket speed, shifting so quickly that it would push me back in the seat each time he changed gears. The landscape blurred past in the viewfinder. I shot about three angles as we went down the road; it wasn't easy in the tight confines of the Ferrarri cockpit with my massive TV camera. Then he slowed and turned into a small sideroad. "You want to drive?" Uh, yeah.

Here's a bit of trivia you're not likely to know: A Panasonic AJ-SPC700P television camera fits perfectly into the under-hood trunk of a Ferrari convertible. Something to keep in mind. Anyway, it had no clutch -- reminscent of the Sportamatic transmission my uncle had on his Porsche back in the 1970s (that was a great little car) -- but it did have paddles on the steering wheel for shifting the gears, like a Formula 1 racer. So now I'm in heaven, especially as I manage to pull away without causing the car to lug. (Dan said that's typical for first-time drivers; apparently it usually takes a few tries to understand how much gas to give her when pulling out.)

We drove up the side road a little, into a development with only a couple houses built, then turned around and headed back to the main road. I hesitated, but he said I should just drive it all the way back. Uh, okay.

I didn't have the courage to really wind it out. I'm probably incriminating myself to say I got it up to 60, but I've got to say that it was as smooth as can be. The steering was tight and sure, and the growl sounds just like you've heard it in movies, even when you're inside and driving. It was a really cool experience. And then we were back.

Behind the wheel of the Ferrari after my joyride. I think the TV camera is still in the "trunk," which is under the hood. Behind you can see the ride I came in on: Channel 7's Ford hybrid SUV.

Photo shot on my M3 by Dan Ragland, the car's owner.

I think Dan would have let me drive a lot more if I'd asked, even though he had stuff to do that day -- that and he was letting me play with his $700,000 toy -- but it had been a perfect experience, a delicious taste. I'd rather have a glass of really fine wine than get slobbering drunk and have someone be afraid of ever letting me have more. It was time for me to step away from the car, slowly.

Mike Redding, the Managing Editor, reviewed the interviews and footage, writing the final story for me, which I edited over the weekend. It became a really fine piece, the first I've bothered to save since starting to work at the station. I'm really proud of it, but I'll always savor that drive.

Next, I have to figure out how to get to Ferrari Racing Days in Budapest. Now that seems like a perfect combination of factors. Welcome to my fantasy world...

NOTE: I don't have a link to the story right now, but I'll work on it. The station is still transitioning to a new web host, so some of the archives are still slowly coming in...

POST SCRIPT: (September 18, 2010) I don't think I'll ever be able to build a permanent link to the story. Apparently the archiving system of the station's website has a rolling delete setup, where everything more than a set age goes away to be replaced with new material. I guess it saves on memory or something...

Amazing, Fascinating Stuff ...

2010-08-10T10:37:00.002-04:00

This is amazing:

It's about 30 minutes long, but worth every minute. Amongst other things, he gives me hope for the future of photojournalism and the internet and a bunch of other stuff. He simply articulates a lot of things I sensed, but couldn't really get a grasp on...

From the website "Thoughts of a Bohemian."

About that news site...

2010-07-30T10:28:00.006-04:00

You'll undoubtedly recall (having followed my posts here in detail) that a while back I proudly proclaimed the creation and premiere of a new journalism site, NewsTilt. Don't worry if you get a blank page on that link, I'm about to explain: Poor thing didn't last two months.

The guys who ran it were very nice, and I think had a great idea: Find journalists who produce good product but don't know how to market and distribute it, build a syndication site, and voilá: everybody wins! But building a market is harder to do than to say. Personally, I think they gave up too quickly -- USA Today planned to lose money for ten years when it began -- but you can't force people to do things. I hope to transfer all the material I had there to a new site of my own soon. However, that takes time, and as my last post explained, that's a rather precious commodity in my life right now.

Welcome to my hectic world...

FOOTNOTE: On the subject of links that don't show anything, I've discovered that a lot of my links in earlier posts -- the ones to stories on the WDBJ site -- just take you to the front page now. The station went to a new host for its website, and I guess that is one of the defaults. I'll try to see if I can get them so they'll take you to the stories again, but I'm afraid that's also way down on the priority list. Like, after I move the NewsTilt stuff. That far down...

Selling Out ...

2010-07-26T05:33:00.004-04:00

I just checked the date on my last entry, only to discover it was in MAY! May? Really? That's embarrassing. Actually, it's worse than embarrassing. It's humiliating.

For one thing, I'm one of those people who gets frustrated when a website -- any website, but especially a blog -- is left idle for extended periods of time. The ease of use, not to mention the rapid pace of the internet, all but demands constant updates and changes. If a blog I follow doesn't update regularly (ideally daily), I get frustrated. If it sits idle for two months, odds are I'll get bored and move on. (You don't want me to have the TV remote control, either.)

Now I have had a couple of excuses. For example, while I have several entries I want to put in (and will put in immediately after this one), they have photos that go with them. And it has been a while since I got into the darkroom as well. Now I have the negatives, and just need to scan them.

Also, it's not like I have a lot of idle time these days. I'm full time now at WDBJ, which consumes a remarkable amount of time and (to my surprise, actually) energy, both physical and mental. I'm lucky if I get home and have the time to read some blogs, let alone write one. However, I have resolved that that is going to change. And my life is all about change these days.

You see, the biggest reason I haven't had the time or concentration or, frankly, creative heart to produce this stuff is that I'm bankrupt. Literally.

That's why I chose the title above, a phrase that strikes me as having a useful meaning (if counter to its commonly used one). We're selling out of our overwhelming debt. The bank is taking back our house -- a particularly poignant aspect of the whole thing, as we built the place with plans to never leave. I used to joke that, one of the great pleasures of moving in there was that I'd never have the chaotic agony of moving again. And that's just one small part of it.

We now live in a cash economy. I'd read about this -- usually about poor people and illegal immigrants (and I realize that is often redundant) -- but never thought I'd experience it. (If you're curious, it's because the credit card companies will go into your account to get payments, even though a declaration of bankruptcy is supposed to stop that. And it simply became absurd; the account was more often than not overdrawn at the end.) I simply cash my paycheck the day I get it on the way home, and we dole out the money on gas and groceries, etc., through the two weeks in anticipation of the next check. Happily, the check cashing place also sells gas and fried chicken. (Welcome to the American South.) So everyone gets a treat on Friday.

Needless to say, there's much legal activity involved. And it is surprisingly expensive. Why does a process to declare to the world you have no money require a fairly substantial chunk of money? Where exactly do they expect us to get it? It's not like we have thousands of dollars laying about; don't they think we would use it to pay our bills to, oh I don't know, keep our house?

However, I've got to say, the legal process is sort of confessional. You have to delineate all your debts -- and thus face what you've done -- and all your assets. It's a good thing to do, placing yourself in terms of exactly where you are in the physical world ... and in my case, causing me to ask how we got there. And where we go from here.

I don't mean to make excuses. This is no one's fault but my own. I can see where I could have done better, how I've had a pretty comfortable life. After all, I'm a photographer and writer. It's not like these are real jobs. I get to do what I like ... and I plan to continue, but with a wiser eye to money and monetizing the process, and with a firmer hand on self-indulgence.

So now we're moving -- a smaller rental house, but big enough for the traveling circus that's my household, and it's kind of cute. We're painting this week, and have to be in soon, because the bank's goon squad will be at the door in about a month. But I'm gonna' get on this blog thing. You'll see...

What, No Grease?

2010-05-25T10:47:00.007-04:00

So I'm looking at the Washington Post website today, as I do every day, and one of the features is a picture series on the annual Herndon climb at the Naval Academy. As the academic year ends at Annapolis, the first year students -- Plebes -- are sent out to climb the large obelisk and retrieve from its top a Midshipman's hat (one styled like the standard naval officer's saucer cap) and replace it with a Plebe's cap (which looks like a traditional sailor hat, but with a black stripe around the edge). It is a final bit of struggle, signifying their promotion out of the purgatory that is being a lowly first year student. However, this year, for the first time ever, the Herndon Monument was not greased.

Anyway, it cast my mind back.

Plebes climb the Herndon Monument, 1996.

First, I thought of the above picture. I'm proud of it. It gives me real pleasure, and I have given it a permanent place in my portfolio. Ironically, the story behind it can leave me nervous and frustrated to this day, although it confirms my decision to move to Lexington and make a try at documentaries.

In the spring of 1996, shortly before I quit daily news work in Washington, the Chief of Naval Operations committed suicide after he was accused of wearing ribbons and medals he had not earned. The Navy and its traditions were very high in the news, and so my boss at Reuters decided that year to cover the Herndon climb, about which we had shown no interest before. Off I went to Annapolis...

I had been given little background or even information on the event. I sense the idea to cover it had been a spontaneous act, and I was seen as expendable for the day (my boss and I did not play well together). Arriving that morning, I asked around to find out what a "Herndon climb" was, and found the event was not until the afternoon. Nice enough -- who am I to refuse a lunch in Annapolis, especially as Jennifer had come along.

Returning, I positioned myself with several other photographers and TV to watch the festivities. Jennifer comfortably ensconced herself amongst the watching crowd, apparently near some alumni. And the event began with the Plebes roaring up to the giant, stone edifice and flinging themselves at it like Vikings at a particularly rich castle.

Jennifer learned from the alumni that this enthusiasm either drives them directly to the top through sheer momentum alone, or breaks against the stone, dissipating in increasingly frustrated efforts until someone finally organizes a proper human pyramid to get the thing done some hours (yes, hours) later. This, it soon became apparent, was going to be one of those hours-long days.

Climbers formed a base, layers were pushed and pulled up, then slid down. I began to notice that the girls seemed more intellectually adapted to the job, trying to make their carefully conceived plans heard over the macho drive of the boys. It was a perfect photo op, giving me time to get past pure coverage to look at opportunities for more interesting angles and moments. I shot close-ups of reaching hands and straining faces. And then it happened: I saw the Plebe pause and look up as he took a breath before continuing, standing on layers of his classmates. I shot it. I knew it was great. It was one of those rare, special moments (lost now that digital allows you to immediately check on your pictures) when I saw the moment in the viewfinder and knew, knew I had the picture. I checked the frame number, and made a special note on the film envelope -- Go to THIS frame.

I forget now how long we stayed -- I want to say it was three hours -- before deciding that to wait longer would put us back in Washington too late. We left them still struggling. And I can't remember if Reuters ever shipped any of the pictures. The two top guys there had little regard for me or my work by then, and it wasn't unusual for my stuff to be completely ignored. (Sometime I'll tell the story the return of Air Force pilot Scott O'Grady to Andrews Air Force Base, but then I'd have to find the pictures from that...) Fortunately, I do know my note was completely ignored, and when I retrieved the negatives, that picture was among them.

We moved to Lexington a year later. I welcomed my new world...

... and one thing leads to another

2010-05-19T08:52:00.008-04:00

A series of things have struck me in quick succession lately. They could be a bunch of blog posts ... or one long one. I think I'll do the latter.

One thought -- a short one -- occurred to me Sunday while covering the VMI graduation. In a relatively calm moment, I realized that, of all the colleges around here with graduations clustered together this May, it is the Virginia Military Institute that is the only one that doesn't set off explosives right next to our house to celebrate.

Here we see Janey and Caty watching the late night festivities for Washington and Lee's law school graduation. The light coming through the window is just from the fireworks. It's a 5-second exposure on a Nikon D80.

Then there was the moment, as the morning show prepared to start Sunday, when the producer turned to me and said, "You want to go check out a Car-B-Que?"

It took me a moment to figure out exactly what he meant, and then I found it rather funny in that dark, newsroom sort of way. He explained that a "Frito truck" -- that amused me too, for some reason -- had caught on fire, and he would like me to go out and get some footage.

After a quick look at the map (and a good thing too -- Route 220, a road that passes through Roanoke, but also heads up north and west of the city to Daleville, which was the location of the fire; I very nearly headed south and east), I shot out, onto 81 and off at the exit. On the crest of a hill a short distance from the interstate, flares and State Police cars marked my target. I quickly parked in a nearby gas station ... only to find after topping the hill on foot that the actual truck was some 200 yards further down the road. But now I had the camera and tripod out (and bloody heavy they are, too, I'd like to say), and it seemed more work to go back, load up again, get in the car and drive down there than to just walk the distance.

I stopped as I went, shooting wide, then close and closer, until I finally was in the midst of the firemen, who were cleaning up as the fire was long since out. One came up and explained the details, and later I heard the voice of another from the other side of my camera. "Hey, News 7," he said. I turned to see him. "Do ya' know what caused it?" Innocent that I am, I was about to explain that his colleague had just given me the information, when the smiling fireman answered by holding up a charred bag of Extra Hot Barbeque chips. "They just got too hot!"

The "Car-B-Que" on 220. Firefighters shovel Frito bags clear.

Shot with my M3 on Tri-X.

Still chuckling to himself, he then tossed the bag into the heap spilling out of the charred tractor trailer. Which was quite the surrealistic scene, I thought. The first fireman had explained that the entire load would have to be trashed because of the fire, so the cleanup involved literally shoveling piles of potato and corn chip bags away from where they'd been hastily pulled out to get at the fire. Not something you see every day.

I got back before the morning show was over, and so had the tiny triumph of getting it on the air. (News is all about right now, so when you get on the air with pictures of an event that happened after the show began -- as opposed to the older, pre-canned stuff -- it's better.)

And speaking of newsgathering (and lunken segues), I had the unfortunate experience of encountering a Nikon D5000 commercial again the other day. I've managed to avoid the recent Nikon campaign starring Ashton Kutcher lately because the ads tend to frustrate me, but sometimes one tumbles across these things all by accident, and there you are, suffering through it again. Interestingly, it's not on YouTube, although a couple of the other insufferable Kutcher ads are. I'm amused that, in searching for a link to the ad, I found that others hate it as much as I do, and that there is a much better ad concept for the camera as well.

However, this particular ad makes me nuts because it places him at a fashion show, where he is shown supposedly making pictures just as good as the professionals there (at one point tumbling across the runway itself, causing a chorus of protests from the pros as he blocks their view) because he has this whiz-bang camera. The theme, I guess, is that it not only lets this bumbling idiot make great pictures, but that his amiable anti-establishment attitude pricks the snooty, self-important bubble of the fashion world. This I think is supposed to make him appealing.

Anyway, if they hadn't lost me the moment they hired Ashton Kutcher, they certainly did when he gets in the way of the pros. Because, as you might have noticed, I'm one of those pros, and our job is hard enough without a bunch of goofy, self-satisfied prettyboys stumbling through the middle of everything because they think their do-it-all-for-you DSLR will let them do a job I've worked at for over 20 years. I tell you what, how about I shuffle onto some movie set and take the star role for a while, and he can forfeit his big paycheck to me for the day? How's that for fair? You are not welcome to my world ...

Haven't I seen you before?

2010-05-04T18:10:00.009-04:00

Around the station, it's called "Fat Running Cop." What they are talking about is a piece of footage from the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007, made by Lynn Eller, a photographer at WDBJ. The station is the nearest CBS affiliate, and we regularly cover Tech and the town of Blacksburg, so when the newsroom heard of problems there, they sent Lynn to get some footage and see what was going on.

As he approached, Lynn remembered later when telling me about his experience, he was passed by State troopers driving at that high speed that only cops headed to an emergency can do. He called the station immediately, recommending they send everyone they had as well as the satellite truck.

On arrival, Lynn found a community in chaos. Cops were everywhere, and as one approached, Lynn thought, "This is it. He's throwing me out." Instead, the cop warned him to be careful. "We don't know where he is yet." Lynn spent the entire day taping the events around the shooting, much of it being the police reacting to the massacre. One of those police was an overweight cop, weapon in hand, rushing down the sidewalk. The "Fat Running Cop."

Poor guy. Lynn says now he almost regrets even shooting the footage. You see, you saw the Fat Running Cop everywhere that day, and in the weeks after. Frankly, I'm surprised that, when the anniversary passed last month, we didn't see him again.

I thought of the Fat Running Cop (geez, I'm sorry for calling you that over and over, but I don't know who you are) recently because of the United-Continental airlines merger. There's a leap, you might think, and you'd be right without seeing it from my perspective.

I edit the B-Roll -- that's the footage that they show while the anchor reads the story -- for the morning news show on Mondays. This past Monday, United and Continental announced they were going to merge. That, like most economics stories, doesn't really lend itself to visuals, so what I edited was pictures of planes and terminals. United-marked jets took off and Continental-marked jets landed, passengers waited at a United counter and luggage handlers sent bags up into a Continental airplane, and the anchor explained that it was a billion-dollar deal while we watched that. The one only marginally has anything to do with the other, but you use what you can get. This ain't radio.

Here's the sad part: That evening, after eight hours of continuously editing news footage, I watch the evening news. I am that much of a news junkie. And what appears on Fox (unrelated to WDBJ, as far as I know, in any way)? The exact same footage of United jets taking off and Continental jets landing and passenger sullenly moving through terminals.

Now this is understandable. The footage was probably some stock that had been given out by the airlines in good times, and laid around in various archives for just such an eventuality. But it was not just some part of a larger collection, it was precisely the same stuff.

And this brings me to my point: A CBS affiliate in Roanoke, Virginia, and an international cable news network are using, of all the thousands -- millions! -- of hours of footage of stuff related to United and Continental and airports, the same few seconds, probably because some guy at a network once said, "This'll probably come up; I'll save about a minute of it."

And then I thought of the hyper twenty-something that had been interviewed earlier about the attempted Times Square bombing, telling in breathless tones how everyone had rushed from the area. He was on all the networks too, probably because he was the effusive and cooperative one still on the scene when the cameras arrived. And this is a problem.

We spend a lot of time talking about journalism in crisis: Newspapers closing, one-man-band coverage (instead of a cameraman-reporter team), bureaus closing ... Bureaus closing. That's what this is a symptom of. Fewer and fewer journalists (and I'm enough of an elitist to differentiate -- there is such a thing as a real, professional journalist) covering more and more, often by not bothering to go to the place and ask real questions. Rather, too many stories are covered by getting footage or information sent in to some roughly nearby bureau (like London is nearby Afghanistan) and adding a voice track to the TV story, or just passing on whatever has been said, like a giant game of Telegraph with all the accompanying miscommunications.

One of the few times this didn't happen was after the Haiti earthquake, which was a story big enough to focus everyone's attention yet close enough to make covering it directly affordable. And yet, complaints were common that there were too many journalists (and especially photographers) there. Too Many? You'd rather get the whole tale of that monumental catastrophe from the Haitian version of the panicky twenty-something in Times Square? What's the Kreyol for: "And then we all ran, 'cause we didn't know what was going on?"

Noooo. This is a bad thing. It's something we need to think about. Because I'd like to be able to edit new and interesting pictures on Monday morning, or better yet, get sent to make those pictures.

Welcome to my world of concerns...

Newton, Irony and Me...

2010-04-18T20:56:00.004-04:00

So my standing joke today has been about how I cheated death while covering Virginia Tech football yesterday.

I was sent to film (or rather, video, but I find that as a verb ... unpleasant) the final Tech scrimmage. It actually was the first time I'd been sent to cover the football team, and so my first problem on arrival was figuring out where to park, followed by where to go into the stadium and where to stand and shoot. I finally settled down by the sidelines, which has the advantage of providing more dramatic pictures, but the dual disadvantage of requiring one to hand hold the camera and be right next to the action ... which occasionally spills over onto the sidelines.

I give the sports anchor credit: He used the footage well, even to telling a little joke as it happens, but from my point of view at the time, it was one of those classic photographer's moments -- one in which the mind goes from "This looks pretty good" to "Hey, it's headed right my way, great" to "Oh, crap, I'm gonna' die" in a matter of seconds. You see, the quarterback took the ball and faded back to throw, but the rush was too strong and he broke out of the pocket and ... well, he ran right at me.

In that moment when I went from shooting to running for my life (a delicate instant, as the heavy TV camera makes you really top-heavy, and thus off balance from the start), I put out my left hand in a reflexive stiff-arm, to push him away. In retrospect, it was an absurd gesture, like the baseball trying to push the bat away. (Or perhaps a ping pong ball pushing a bat away, to make the proportions of speed and size more accurate, but I had better stop before my metaphors become too tangled.) I'm just glad no one else was filming out there, to get the comedic scene of me, too slow off the mark, rebounding off the armored giant as he plowed through.

Sore from the day's shooting (I am too old for football, I think; three hours of a camera on the shoulder is too long), I drove home to the girls' dance recital: some three hours of mostly small girls (and a few older ones) showing what they've learned through the years in a grand gala.

One can't be too critical of 3 or 7 year-olds, so it's not like I expected the Ballet Russes. Much of the performance of the school-age kids consisted of "What move is next," while the littlest ones engage in what I call "Choreography by committee." In those, the tots do their first move, then pause. There's a moment of consultation among the young dancers, and consensus is reached, and they move on to the next step or two. Often at this point, their teacher has built in a moment of free dance, which can involve just about anything from standing with a puzzled look to gleeful posing to running around in circles. Then there's the sudden recognition of a musical theme by the dancers, calling the committee once again to order. Consensus is again quickly reached, and the dance goes on like so...

As they age, as I said, the steps are more easily memorized, and order of a sort comes from chaos, even if it is an order of Step-two-three, Turn-turn, Pose-two-three. Rigid smiles (on the better performers) mask a fearful concentration to remember what comes next. The lesser performers have looks of fearful concentration. The main break in this comes when it is time for a leap. Then suddenly all fear sloughs away, and girls who went timidly from motion to motion suddenly charge out like eager fullbacks with the goal line in sight, flinging themselves into the air at center stage and careening to a halt just short of crashing into the wings.

I'll have to remember not to film that from the wings, for though the girls may carry less weight than Tech's quarterback, they surely have the speed and all the enthusiasm. I'm not sure who will fend off who there either.

Welcome to my world...

The Newest Outlet

2010-04-13T13:02:00.002-04:00

Today a new website, NewsTilt, premiers, and I am gleeful to be part of it. Perhaps this has as much to do with passing through the rigorous selection process as to have a new outlet for my many random story ideas. And then, of course, there's the possibility of income...

At any rate, I've been scouring my material for stories written and story ideas never finished. The latter are generally pretty good (at least I think so), but abandoned because they failed to find an outlet. So now I have one...

Hopefully, by the time you read this, you'll be able to sign on and look at the material on NewsTile. I have three stories up now, and there are dozens of others on subjects ranging from an old bookie in St. Paul to the current scandals in the Catholic Church.

Thus endith the commercial. You may now resume your normal activites...

"Quack"

2010-03-23T11:27:00.003-04:00

On my second day as a Census Questionnaire Assistance Clerk. I sit, as I write this, in the back meeting room of the Goshen, Virginia, Library, where I am available about four hours a day to answer any questions people might have about the census and how to fill out their forms.

It's a very quiet job.

The census form -- one should have been mailed to you some time ago, if you live in the United States -- is a very simple thing for most, asking basic questions about who is living in your residence on or about April 1, 2010. However, that's not to say the answers are simple for everyone.

Take, for example, if you're a college student. On April 1 (and, yes, I am amused by the date too, but it's no joke), you may be home with your parents on spring break (or perhaps at some hedonistic beach vacation). Where do you get listed? Well, it's where you are most of the year: at college (eight months vs. four months on break at home, cumulatively).

Things can get more complicated, based on your situation (what if I'm homeless?) and what form you get. Most everyone gets a D-1 -- a simple form that just asks roughly seven questions about each person living there -- but you may get a D-1 E/S (with Spanish translations) if you live in a place with a high Hispanic population, or any one of four or five others.

I learned all this at a day-long training session, with many reviews, test exercises and much repetition, mostly on the subject of privacy.

The thing that the Census Bureau is absolutely fanatical about is privacy. We are literally sworn in (like soldiers or the President) and give an oath not to reveal information collected. They won't even share with other government agencies. To say they're rather rigid about this is an understatement.

So that's why this is probably the last you'll hear of my experiences doing this. But if you need a question answered about your census form, drop by the Goshen Library. I'm here all week...

Meanwhile, In America...

2010-03-14T16:19:00.011-04:00

The 50s were, I think, a Golden Age in photography, particularly "Street Photography." (Actually, I could make an argument for most any decade since the art and science of photography began over 100 years ago; it really depends on what subset you're discussing.) Giants like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank walked the earth. Needless to say, I sit in awe.

However, I found much of the work from that time disquieting and downbeat. Frank's legendary book, The Americans, for example, can leave one profoundly uncertain about America and American culture. This is not to say I think these pictures untrue (or even anything less than genius), but I have often thought that it would be interesting to do a counterpoint, showing in much the same style and method an upbeat vision of America, capturing the optimism, energy, generosity and general positive attitude, even in the face of less than positive circumstances.

Frank did The Americans with a Guggenheim grant; perhaps some generous foundation would like to support my idea...

I often thought of it including pictures like the one above, shot at the Comicon at the Salem, Virginia, Civic Center a while back. I was covering it for WDBJ, and took a moment at the end of my TV shooting to grab a couple of frames with the Leica. Luckily, these two guys were just by the door as I slipped out.

This is my daughter, Janey, having unexpectedly ... and unwillingly ... fallen asleep one afternoon.

However, I find some of my pictures tend to wander into the less than upbeat anyhow. Take, for example, the one below...

I actually stopped and parked at a gas station (out of frame, to the right) and stood in the road to get this as I headed home from work. I had to; it just summarized too well for me the recent spate of snow and ice we've endured. The first grand storm infamously shut down 81 for two days.

On a more scenic note, this is the parish house of St. Patrick Catholic Church in Lexington.

And, though it's difficult to see on the small display size, on the church's door, tucked into the Advent wreath to the right, a handmade cardboard sign warns of "ICE!"

In a more disquieting form of humor, the Three Kings await their moment inside the parish house. We at St. Patrick's are sticklers for accuracy, and so the kings don't appear at the church's outdoor creche until their appropriate time, in January.

Here, a celebrant in period garb enters Lee Chapel on the Washington and Lee University campus for ceremonies marking Robert E. Lee's birth. Lee, of course, was president of the university from the end of the Civil War until his death in 1870, and he is buried in a crypt in the chapel's lower level. Groups gather every January to mark his birthday and that of Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson (also buried in Lexington, in the nearby graveyard).

However, the university has become rather sensitive in modern times about an over-emphasis on Lee's defense of the Confederacy and its accompanying slavery -- particularly emphasized by the uncomfortable proximity of Lee and Jackson's birthdays to that of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- so Confederate flags are not allowed to be brought into the chapel for the events. Participants tidily roll them up before entering, setting them aside like this one or stowing them away in their cars.

And finally, a view out the window of a local store, Pumpkinseeds, looking past the old county courthouse (hidden out of sight on left) and down Main Street. Pumpkinseeds is a particular favorite of ours, offering often wry and clever products like the shopping bag shown at right.

So, meanwhile, in America, we do seem to be getting along well enough. Despite some disagreements about politics and religion, we do find a way and manage. I think that's what I meant to say...

Random shooting...

2010-03-09T13:55:00.004-05:00

This is Main Street in Lexington, shortly before Christmas. Much of the over two feet of snow we received then had been cleared from the street, but the region remained a bit shell shocked for weeks after, and piles of crusty, charcoal-colored snow remain even now.

This was shot with my Leica M3 and Zeiss 21mm lens on Kodak Tri-X. I put it up ... well, as before, because I can.

Link me, baby!

2010-03-04T22:35:00.004-05:00

My boss at WDBJ has his own blog, Stop and Smell the People, where he talks about everything from his occasional, daily thoughts to memories of covering past winter Olympics. A few days ago, I gave him some prints of photos I made in the newsroom, using my trusty Leica M3 and 21mm f/2.8 Zeiss lens, including one of him at work. It's a tribute to the Leica that the picture of him was a complete surprise; he had never noticed I shot it. Well, he popped it and another into his blog, and it looks great, in my humble opinion.

Personally, I'm just happy he gave me a photo credit...

About the snow...

2010-02-23T21:58:00.005-05:00

Snow still clings to the ground in patches and piles, a continuing reminder of the weeks of bad weather that began before Christmas, despite a few blessed warmer days recently. I've been meaning in all the weeks since that first storm to write some of my experience, but also have kept waiting for the pictures to show some of it. There are more to come, but now I have the story of my commute...

Normally, my drive to work from Lexington to Roanoke is like what you see above: often early, often in the dark (it's hard to make a picture of that -- though the wag in me is tempted to post a black rectangle). There are a few cars, usually more trucks, and quiet smooth hours running at speed on the interstate, occasionally interrupted by bits of debris and dead deer. But the snow changed all that.

My bosses at WDBJ, warned by the meteorologists, anticipated the big storm in December. They reserved rooms in a neighboring hotel, and cautioned me to pack a bag. I was skeptical -- any number of hyped storms have fizzled in past years here -- but became a believer when, on Friday afternoon, the storm rolled in and the snow fell in a continuous curtain. By the end of the six o'clock news, it was beginning to seriously accumulate, and when we adjourned to the hotel, travel was becoming difficult ... even down the short run to there from the station.

By morning, the 4-wheel-drive vehicle I borrowed from the station was well buried in a foot of snow, and the drive back was an adventure. Traffic on the highways ground to a halt, trapping thousands. I spent a second night at the hotel, to my wife Jennifer's increasing jealousy. Trapped in the house with five cats and two children, she envied my quiet nights spent in a soft double bed without company.

By Sunday evening, the snow had stopped falling for a full day. Roads were clearing, those trapped and then rescued -- having spent the night in ad hoc shelters at fire stations and high schools -- were setting out again. Roads in Roanoke were clear, though narrowed to the lane or two the plows could clear, but easily passable. It was time, I thought, to head home.

The temperature remained cold, so the snow had to be moved aside. Still, I drove out 581 and onto Interstate 81 easily enough. Things were moving well, with two de facto lanes of traffic moving in each direction, hemmed in by berms of snow. As I passed mile 156, about five miles north of Roanoke, I was amused to pass a snowplow that had slid off the highway into the median and been abandoned.

Then, with horrifying, inescapable certainty, the traffic began to slow ... and then stop. I imagine this was how it started on Friday, everyone thinking that they would start up again shortly. Maybe, if things remained slow, they would get off at the next exit. How far was that? Five miles? Ten?

We sat. I began to worry. As I left, people in the newsroom had questioned how clear the interstate was. Maybe I should take Route 11, the old two-lane state road that follows the highway, weaving back and forth under and above it as it goes. But I was confident; how bad could it get? Time passed.

But, soon enough, we began moving again. I was right. It wasn't so bad ... until it stopped again. After a while, I began making pictures.

Note the rear-view mirror: you can see the cars stacked up behind me. Looking forward was all but impossible for the trucks. Exits were miles away. There was nothing to do but be patient, creep forward when we could, relax and listen to the radio when we couldn't.

Across the median, there was no backup on the southbound lanes. It was a mystery; I have never learned the solution. Nor have I ever learned the cause of my delay. We would slow to a stop, wait some period of time, and then finally start again. Sometimes we would inexplicably run back up to proper highway speeds, and then some miles down the road -- usually just long enough to give me confidence that it was over -- the brake lights would flash on and we would rapidly decelerate to a stop again. Sometimes we would creep forward, a few miles an hour for a few miles, and then settle into another wait.

At one point, I looked out my window to see some orange peels tossed into the snow piled up against the guardrail separating me from the median. An earlier driver, stopped in the same spot, decided to have a snack. There wasn't just one piece; it was the peel of an entire orange. He had sat there long enough to completely peel the fruit ... and probably eat it too.

I never did find a cause: no wreck, no fishtailed truck, no piles of snow spilled out into the road ... nothing. Well, there was one stalled truck in the left lane once, but that was all. Oddly insufficient for all the stops and slows, the waiting and the creeping forward.

In the end, a drive that takes some 45 minutes on a good, normal day took some two and a half hours. It wasn't frustrating so much as ... absurd.

And when I came home, I found this:

That's some 22 inches of snow burying the house, car, driveway and yard. There was no getting in or out, even in the SUV (we tried some time later, repeatedly ramping it up on pile of snow, backing off, and rushing forward to a skidding stop again). Entrance and escape was finally brought by Cliff, the fellow who mows our yard, showing up with his tractor and a plow some time later. But I was home at last...

About Al Haig...

2010-02-20T15:13:00.006-05:00

I was surprised and saddened to hear this morning of the death of Alexander Haig, former Secretary of State among many other, highly respectable and important jobs. (And probably the one in which he had the least influence on history, as compared to Supreme Commander Europe -- where one Army officer once told me the Europeans thought Haig "walked on water" -- or Nixon's Chief of Staff, to pick two others.) I had the pleasure of a week-long trip with him to Moscow in 2000.

We were election monitors (a title more technical than real in my case, as my wife, Jennifer, and I were primarily spending our time making pictures for the group that sent us, the Jamestown Foundation), along with a number of others, including journalists Roland Evans and Michael Barone, and former DCI R. James Woolsey. It was quite an experience to be "inside the bubble" with a crowd like that. I still have the white, red and blue pass that marked me as an official observer -- it was like having an All Access Pass to an entire country.

Haig took to calling me "Mr. Snappy Snap" as Jennifer and I kept popping up with our cameras. All I could think of was how Navy pilots don't really have cool call signs like "Maverick" or "Ice Man" (as in "Top Gun"), but rather often silly and embarrassing ones, usually drawn from some event, like "Goofy Foot." (It's true; check out the technical advisors and pilots on that movie's credits some time.) I knew that I was lucky to be among this crowd and in this situation, for fear of having "Mr. Snappy Snap" forever printed on my nametag and locker somewhere.

But the greatest moment came at the end, at baggage claim at New York's JFK Airport. Haig's aide, "Woody" Goldberg, had gathered his luggage on a cart as the rest of us had collected ours, and Jennifer and I were turning (talking with Goldberg, as I recall) when we heard a voice call out, "Mr. Secretary!" A Customs officer had recognized Haig, and was beckoning him to the rope to let him bypass the regular check. As he turned to the opening, the officer noticed us clustered behind, and asked, "Are they with you?" With a quick glance in our direction, Haig answered yes, and we all sped through. I have never, before or since, felt so important.

The Day the Snow Storm Broke...

2010-02-02T13:44:00.003-05:00

I don't know the future, and I don't know how to predict the weather (there's a half-dozen guys where I work who get paid a lot more than I do for that), but I do know a rolling panic when I see one.

The snow is falling again here, and it would be a picturesque and delightful sight but for the fact that it's the third time since a massive Christmastime storm brought the area to a standstill, closing the interstate for tens of miles and stranding thousands. Meanwhile, a larger low pressure system is approaching to strike in two more days. What will it bring?

On Facebook, a friend described a woman busting into his downtown store saying "there is potential for 3 or even 4 feet of snow." Another friend, who labors at the city's public works department, said they were getting calls from people asking about a possible 30-inch snowfall -- a figure he could find no source for. Nor could I. A quick trip to the station's most recent forecast warned of a "big low pressure system," but said nothing of massive snowfall. As a matter of fact, I sensed a reluctance to even predict snow at all, as the temperature line falls so close to us. (Should it move north, we get slushy rain.)

This is like James Thurber's "The Day the Dam Broke," but with lower temperatures. I envision increasingly jittery crowds slowly gathering into a great flow toward the Kroger's, washing over the milk and bread aisles like a great tide. Quickly, toilet paper must be bought!

Well, I'll be packing an overnight bag again this weekend as I head to work, just as I packed one last weekend (unused) and packed one in December (two nights in a hotel next to the station, and even getting to there and back was a struggle), because I don't know the future. Welcome to my World in the snow...

Haiti and Me...

2010-01-19T15:39:00.016-05:00

I'm often asked if I miss being a news photographer in Washington, or if I wish I was covering a particularly exciting story, like the Obama inauguration. The answer is almost always: No.

An inauguration -- to take an easy example -- is a giant, complicated and generally uncomfortable affair. Security is high, and the access to almost every aspect of the event is very limited and extremely controlled. The chances of making a picture of interest or importance, let alone one that could be considered in some way unique, are microscopically slim. Covering a Big Story, especially in Washington, is almost always long, tiring, frustrating and futile. No, I don't miss it at all. As a matter of fact, I can often be found comfortably seated before the TV in my Lexington home, chuckling at the pack of photographers when they appear in cutaways.

However, now and again, there's a story I do wish I was on. Usually it's unexpected, exciting and quickly breaking. I find myself obsessively collecting information and details -- the internet is a great resource for this, the dealer to my information crack habit -- though I have no outlet whatsoever, and I imagine how I would cover it, what gear I would use, even what it would be like to be there.

Right now, the Haiti earthquake is that story, a perfectly agonizing combination of the Big Story -- the top headline in every outlet -- with the fact that I have some experience with and knowledge of the place. I ache to go down there and be the journalist of my fantasies...

I was in Haiti just over a year ago, in November of 2008. It was the first chance a group from St. Patrick church had to go to our twin parish in Fond Pierre since the political and security systems completely broke down some four years earlier.

While I had some pictures of Port-au-Prince, it wasn't the focus of our journey, just a way station on the way into the mountains to the east. The only picture I found in my computer from there -- digitized from film shot on an old Rollei twin-lens reflex camera -- was of the dog at Matthew 25 house, "Boss."

He is of an unspecified breed -- tan and sleek, with those pointed ears. I don't think I saw another type throughout the trip. He ruled comfortably at the house in its Port-au-Prince neighborhood.

An email to Josh Harvey, chairman of the Haiti committee at St. Patrick, said that Matthew 25 survived with minimal damage, and its collection of supplies as well as neighboring soccer field made it a central collection point for locals needing medical help. NBC stumbled upon them a couple of days after the quake struck.

We spent only one night in Matthew 25 after arriving, getting up the next morning for the day-long drive into the mountains. It's a journey that, in linear miles, would take only a couple hours in the US, and is notable now for the improved condition (at least before the earthquake) of the main highway, under construction to deserve that name thanks to EU support.

Any distance out of the city (and in many neighborhoods in the city), construction quickly reduces to cobbled-together wood frame structures. These are generally one or two-room homes for entire extended families. When our four-wheel-drive vehicle became mired down in the deep ruts in the road, just outside of Fond Pierre (fortunately), I paused to make a picture of this house overlooking the scene. It is a typical home.

Given the opportunity -- an opportunity few get -- building does step up to a cinderblock-like construction, covered with plaster. The church at Fond Pierre, being rebuilt when we visited after the old church's roof threatened to fall in without benefit of earthquake -- shows how it was done. Here we see two of the workers with their diesel generator, used to power an arc welder with which they joined metal beams to attach the new roof.

Behind you can see the concrete and block construction, typical of the buildings in Haiti. This is what was asked to survive the 7.0 quake. Frankly, I'm surprised as much survived as it did -- I would have expected virtually everything in Port-au-Prince to collapse like a castle built of children's blocks.

I include the above picture -- aside from the fact that I just like it -- to show the finished, plastered wall of the school that stands adjacent to the church. (Both do still stand essentially undamaged, according to Fr. Jean Louis Malherbe, the parish priest.) The school serves over 300 children, and thanks to the efforts of the Rockbridge-Haiti Medical Alliance now has a nurse and small clinic.

Medical services, especially in the countryside, are virtually nonexistant in Haiti in the best of times. Statistically, there are only 2.5 doctors for every 10,000 Haitians. (Yeah, read that again, and remember that most of them are concentrated in urban areas.) In Fond Pierre, it was a day's walk to the most meagre medical facility.

Also, I wanted to show -- and I originally shot the picture to capture -- those chairs. Oddly graceful, with a charming, handmade coarseness, they seem to summarize so much about Haiti. They're cobbled together from whatever is at hand, but assembled with a certain care and love, especially those tiny, child-sized ones. I both wanted to figure out how to get one and bring it home and how to get a consistent supply, as I am convinced they would sell well and expensively in artsy shops in America.

I like to think that, if we can simply lift from their shoulders the crushing burdens of corruption and insecurity, grinding poverty and deforestation, just long enough to take a breath, the Haitians could do to their economy and infrastructure and lifestyle what they did, in a small scale, with those little chairs: pull together what they had at hand to make something useful and more comfortable and, in the end, truly beautiful.

Here we see a teacher using the under-construction church to get above the children after Mass (said in the open air of the school courtyard while work on the church continued). He holds a bag of candy -- leftover Halloween candy brought by a member of our group. Candy is not a rare treat there ... it just doesn't really come at all.

The children wear their school uniforms, which is why they all look alike. The uniform is the only "nice" clothes they generally have. A T-shirt and shorts, often without shoes, is daily wear. Smaller children are commonly seen with just the shirt, or nothing at all.

Again, note the construction technique, revealed before the plaster is put over it, and imagine a building like that receiving a good, sharp shake.

Above, the school's principal holds his 1-year-old daughter as they watch an amateur show of sorts that sprung up after Mass.

Below, we see children at Mass...

And some pictures from another day. I believe this was after a parish meeting, called for our benefit. In these pictures, you can see the homemade pews in the school courtyard, drawn up to make the temporary church.

I find the boy above particularly symbolic at this moment. Many children in my pictures have a curious, if uncertain, openness to them -- as seen with the girls to the left in the first picture -- while others are openly amused. (After all, remember that we were the first "blancs" to arrive in four years; it was as if the freak show had come to town.) But this boy seems deeply suspicious, as if working out what my angle was.*

I can imagine Haiti and the Haitians are metaphorically looking at the world this way. They're happy for the help, no doubt, and more than hopeful for more. And it is my opinion that we need to look at this not as emergency relief alone, but as the sudden, swift start of a long, hard haul to help bring Haiti up from its current state of grinding survival, staggering from moment to moment rather than in any way growing or improving.

But we should have no illusions that the Haitians will -- or should -- take our help and our "recommendations" and march forward as directed. As time goes on, we need to keep helping, but we need to do it with a certain understanding. Let us recall that this is the only slave nation to successfully rebel and become independent.

I hope to return to Haiti, and I hope to be of some help, as time goes on. The story right now, the story that gets a journalist all juiced up and ready to go, is the earthquake and its immediate effect and recovery. And, hell yes, I wish I was down there covering it, not because I revel in human misery or imagine some great glory, but because I'm at heart a journalist, and when things happen, newsworthy things, things that make people pause and look and wonder what happens next and what happened to cause it, I want to be there.

But most of all, I want to watch what happens next, after we move on to the next political race and the next troop movements in Afghanistan and the next Hollywood star breakdown, and the people of Port-au-Prince and Fond Pierre are left to their lot. And, maybe, in my little way, I can help...

*Well he should be suspicious, of me (for, let's face it, I'm all about getting good pictures, especially in the moment of making them) and of those like me, who arrive in his town announcing -- like in the old joke about Washington -- that we're here to help them.

Out Standing in My Field...

2010-01-10T15:30:00.003-05:00

This probably falls under my "Welcome to My World" category, but I like putting the punchline before the story...

Yesterday was another early morning at the station. I find myself (actually, quite contentedly) on a regular cycle of doing the editing for the Saturday, Sunday and Monday morning shows, requiring I get there a good couple of hours before they begin. These are the early morning shows -- you know, the ones that come on before the network's early morning show? So the workday starts at 6 a.m. on the weekend, and at a mind-numbing 4 a.m. on Monday. However, the set up here is to explain that, on the weekend, I then often go out and shoot a couple of stories in the afternoon to fill out my 8 hours. (You'll recall that, in the fall, it was on this shift that I became the festival king.)

Yesterday, after some snow and ice-induced quiet (more on that to come, when I get the pictures scanned), it came again: three stories. First, the declaration for city council by a candidate with a name even Dickens would have been embarrassed to make up: Goodpitch. (It's for real.) Then a swing by the Civic Center, where while it's under 20F outside, they're holding the Home and Garden Show -- some quick footage and a couple of interviews. And then -- and this is where I've been heading for two paragraphs -- a local county was to have a groundbreaking ceremony for a new Hospice building.

Hospice, for those of you fortunate enough not to know, helps people who are terminally ill at the very end. It's a great service, and even though I would have covered the event with dedication anyway, I did want to get this to help out.

However, by that time I was running about 15 minutes late, and was somewhat unfamiliar with its location. Luckily, I got a Garmin GPS unit for Christmas, and with a quick input of an address, I was off at high speed with a female voice telling me where to go. (And yes, that is a familiar state of things for me.)

Still 15 minutes behind, the GPS tells me, "Address at left," and it does look like what I expected: an empty field. However, there's something I don't expect. The field is totally empty. It is a barren landscape, not a soul in sight. No ceremony. No ceremony winding down. No confused and irritated hangers on telling me I missed it. Nothing.

Across the street (as the directions in the press release had said) was the sheriff's office. I pulled over there, parking in a spot on the end of a row of carefully reserved parking places, for various captains, lieutenants, investigators, etc. All empty. I thought I'd ask there; maybe the Hospice people had taken shelter from the cutting wind. But, while the outer door was open, the inner was locked. Did I mention all those reserved spaces were empty? Apparently the sheriff is closed Saturday.

Past the field (still empty) and down a cross street, at the bottom of a long, gentle slope, was the county nursing home. I drove down there. There were cars in their lot, but the door in was locked as well. I saw an old man dozing in a wheelchair through the glass, but the reception desk was clearly unattended.

At this moment, I think of a tradition I learned shooting stills that I call the "Editor's Frame." This is a picture you shoot that will never be used. It's usually a wide angle view of the event you're covering, meant to show the editor (who will later complain about your other pictures not being close enough, or not a good angle, or some such thing) just how horrific the situation was. As I walked back to the car, I decided to do the TV equivalent. If nothing else, I told myself, we would then have some stock footage of the location should someone want to do a story on the new Hospice.

I pulled out the camera and began to walk back up through the field, up that long, gentle slope. It was a longer trudge than I first thought, through the still gusting, icy wind, and this really was a big, empty field. Acres and acres of it. I shot long pans of the place, the only feature being short, crunchy, brown, dried grass for hundreds of yards, until that nursing home at one end and a line of scrubby trees marking the property line. It was like standing in the tundra, alone in that empty ground, me in my black duffle coat, giant Panasonic slowly swinging from side to side.

It was only when I was back in the car and driving to the station that I wished I had taken out my Leica and made a picture using the self-timer. (Though, I don't know where I might have set it.) It would have been a remarkable image, that flat open ground from frame edge to frame edge, my dark figure poking up in the center.

We left messages, but I don't know what ever happened to the ceremony. Welcome to my world...

Gawd help us Owl...

2009-12-30T07:57:00.005-05:00

So, when on my commute, I will often scan through the FM radio stations before giving up (I inevitably give up, although one decent or intriguing song may slow me for a moment) and either turning on my iPod or pushing in a book on tape. However, lately I have come across a pop song called "Fireflies." This opens with what must be the sappiest lyric in musical history: "You would not believe your eyes/if ten thousand fireflies/lit up the world as you fell asleep." In went the book on tape.

Unfortunately, this is the hit song of the moment, and every experiment with the radio led back to "Fireflies," which only took me to the next, cringe-inducing lyric: "'Cause I'd get ten thousand hugs/from ten thousand lightening bugs." Quickly moving on to the next chapter in the book, I could only think of P.G. Wodehouse's Madeline Bassett, who believe the stars were God's daisy chain and "every time a fairy blows its wee nose a baby is born." Who was the lyricist on this thing, a 12-year-old girl of unique naivete for our time, trapped in a crush on the middle school poet? (Advice to that girl: give it up; he's gay.)

Here's the killer: it's a really catchy tune. It drills into your brain and takes up residence there, to the point where you find yourself humming the chorus later that day.

But about that chorus ... the lyric work becomes somewhat less saccharine, but makes no more sense. "I like to make myself believe/the planet Earth turns slowly." (It kills me to admit it, but I'm singing along as I type that.) I couldn't resist. In a quiet moment at work that day, I did some quick algebra. The earth's circumference at the equator is roughly 29400 miles, and it takes 24 hours to rotate. Rate x Time = Distance. (And so to all you who said, like the character in "Peggy Sue Got Married," that high school math has no purpose. And I just did a search; hard to believe that scene's not on You Tube.) Anyway, quick, easy math shows us traveling at roughly 1,037 mph, due to the rotation of the Earth. I hate to think what quickly is to this guy.

Okay, at this point I'm being obtuse and picky. I know they're talking metaphorically, describing a wish rather than a reality, but now the lyrics are making me crazy. It reached the point where I positively looked forward to the one bright spot in the words, a description that reaches for a kind of American trash version of Asian poetry: "A fox trot above my head/A sock hop beneath my bed/A disco ball hanging by a thread." But then another unfortunate image popped up. Just before that delightfully post-apocalyptic (or perhaps pre-apocalyptic, depending on the state of that thread and the height of the disco ball above our protagonist) vision of the disco ball, my mind filled in an image of David Letterman's late, great Larry "Bud" Melman finishing the triptych with, "A party in my pants!"

By the end, even the lyricist is begging, "Please take me away from here," though I'm sure thousands of distraught teens, with parents who don't understand them and lives destroyed by some humiliating moment in the lunch room are singing along on their tear-stained pillows. But I am unfortunately hooked by the tune, and now actually listen to the whole damn thing when it comes on. Gawd help me ...

Welcome to My World (on the Interstate)...

2009-11-26T06:04:00.005-05:00

So I stepped out at 3 am to a wet, thick, chilly fog, smelling of wood fires. I was on my way to the early shift, editing for the 5:30 morning news.

Usually, these days bring a quiet drive on the highway -- 45 minutes on Interstate 81 from Lexington to Roanoke -- plunging through the darkness pretty much alone. This is nice, soothing in its way, because I need only to worry about myself. The occasional roadkill, especially the dramatic scene of a deer recently obliterated by a semi, warns me to stay alert, but the whole thing often takes on a sort of Zen peace about it.

Not today.

Today, it's Thanksgiving, and the road was filled with dozens of frantic drivers, pressing on through the night to their holiday destinations, north and south. That thick fog unnerved many, already undoubtedly sleep-deprived and uncertain of their surroundings, making their speed erratic and uncertain. Others rushed toward the destination, crowding the cars in front of them in the blinding whiteness. I hung back at those clumps of cars, fearing the knot of crumpled steel a simple error (blissfully avoided during my trip) could bring.

The license plates seemed mostly from New York, though I do recall one from Massachusetts. It is only my adopted status as a Virginian (marked by the faint Canadian accent to my speech) that prevented me from grumbling about damn Yankees.

And so, I think, I am thankful first and foremost that my Thanksgiving is at home. My commute may be longish, but I am not caroming down an interstate, eight hours out and God knows how far to go, with red rimmed eyes and discontented kids in the back, white-knuckling my way through fog in an alien state, surrounded by drivers in worse shape and with less competence (at least, based on their behavior) than me.

Welcome to my world...

A Friend Told me...

2009-11-24T16:11:00.002-05:00

A friend pointed me to this video, and he was right. It is hilarious:

Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks

America, the deadbeat cousin...

2009-11-22T17:27:00.002-05:00

The opening skit to SNL this week. I thought about putting it on Facebook, but it is (of course) rude, so decided that the hilarity should reside here.

Welcome to My (Election Day) World...

2009-11-13T13:02:00.007-05:00

So the off-year election this year in Virginia -- involving the races for several state legislature seats and, most importantly, the governor -- got some national attention, as it as seen as a bellweather of everything from President Obama's popularity to the future of the Republican Party. At any rate, what it meant for me was getting up at 4 a.m. to drive to Millboro, Virginia, a small town in Bath County that happened to be the home of Creigh Deeds, the Democratic candidate for governor.

Deeds was to start his day by voting ... at 6:30 a.m. It was the first time he would be seen for a whirlwind day of appearances, the next not until 11 a.m. in Charlottesville, so as cable news and networks spoke about the election, the only footage available would be that early morning voting imagery. My imagery. Cool.

But that's not my story here. To jump to the end of the story of my experience, I got the pictures, drove back to WDBJ an hour and a half away (stopping to pick up additional footage of people voting in Lexington as I passed through) and sent it out on the feed. I owned the airwaves ... for a couple hours. Then the Charlottesville stuff came in, and then the final Richmond appearance, where Deeds again made himself available for a final round of interviews. My stuff disappeared, without so much as the last greasy bubble of a sinking ship, never to be seen again. "Remember," the slave would whisper into the victorious Roman general's ear, "All glory is fleeting."

No, the focus this story from my world that day is not me, but a young reporter/photographer from another local TV station who came skidding into the parking lot shortly before Deeds voted. He climbed out and began pulling equipment out of his aged, dark red hatchback, all arms and legs and and elbows and knees and lenses and wires. It looked like Roberto Begnini had been hired to do a comedy routine on a TV photographer. Nothing was in bags, the spindly tripod legs went in three different directions while his legs went in two others, his knees barely supporting what his hands couldn't hold. Microphone cables trailed out in tangled loops as he struggled over to me and the two still photographers (from AP and Getty) who waited outside the voting station. "Am I late?" He breathlessly asked. "Did I miss it?" We assured him all was well. There was plenty of time.

Off he went, and I heard the clatter and click as he struggled to pull everything together. There was a pause, and then he was at my shoulder. "Are you shooting P2?" He said, sotto voce.

It was a curious question. I was indeed shooting P2, Panasonic's digital video system that records the "footage" onto a largish memory card (available only from Panasonic at a fairly substantial cost) rather than onto tape or (as Sony's system does) a DVD. It's one of several systems currently in use, and one well suited to news gathering, but the question is one usually asked while standing, bored, after exhausting subjects like the weather and mutual acquaintances. "Uh," I said. "Yeah."

"Can I borrow a card?" I looked down at his camera. The little bay, which can hold up to five cards, was empty. He had left his office -- some two hours away -- without any media to record events. Put simply, he had just arrived after a long drive to a news event with the world's largest, heaviest, most complicated and expensive doorstop.

I had a dozen thoughts at once. This guy, I realized, was totally screwed. There was no time to go back and get a card, but without a card, he could do nothing. He might as well have not shown up. I knew well the feeling of sinking panic he was surely experiencing. But he was also the competition, and a moment from "The Apprentice" (of all things) flashed into my head. One of the competitors had won immunity, but was so confident of his later work on the show that he told Donald Trump he would wave the immunity. Trump fired him on the spot, explaining that passing up an advantage like that was just stupid. Cutthroat, but he had a point. If I refused, mine would be the only TV pictures of this event. How would the people back at the station feel about that? Were my bosses as cutthroat as Trump? And how would they feel about my blithely handing over a not inexpensive item to what in truth was a total stranger? Furthermore, what if I needed the card later? Sure, with the three cards I had in my camera, I had over two hours of available recording time, but it wasn't impossible that, between this event and my return to the station, something massive would happen. I could be trapped out in the field, frantically recording events and ... run out of memory because I had given a card away. Then I'd look as stupid as this guy, and over something far more important.

I looked at my card bay, its three cards nestled in their slots, and back at his, gaping and empty with its sliding door open ... and relented. I pulled out a card and handed it to him. Someday, I'd be trapped somewhere, hopeless and needing help (though hopefully not because I did something that stupid). At least, that's what I told myself as I pushed back all those questions and fears.

And so Creigh Deeds cast his vote. AP and Getty made stills. The other guy and I recorded it for TV. Deeds paused outside to talk with us, first interviewed by me, then the other guy, then chatted with his friends and supporters gathered in the parking lot before climbing into the limo (driven by state troopers, assigned that day to both candidates so as to be in place to protect the future governor) and leaving. After every news event like that, there is a pause, a moment to catch your breath, gather your equipment, perhaps socialize a moment with your colleagues, and head out.

The young reporter came to me. "I really appreciate your helping me out," he said, his camera still on its tripod about a dozen feet back. "You really saved my life..." And as he spoke, I saw the leg brake -- the thing you tighten on the extended tripod leg to keep it up -- begin to slip. I started to speak, but it was gone. The leg slid closed and his camera fell forward onto the ground, landing lens first.

Small pieces flew away on impact. The lens snapped away from its mounting, hanging from the camera only by the cable which connects the zoom control to the camera's power. We rushed to it and gently turned it over, like paramedics at an accident scene. I detached the lens cable, thinking it would do more damage for the lens to pull at the plug, and picked up the loose parts I had seen fly away. The lens mounting ring was sheared, the front plate of the camera pushed back by the impact. "Can it be fixed," He asked fearfully. "Yep," I answered. "But your day is over."

I flipped the body onto its side, revealing the card bay. As I expected (from my own camera falling experience) the card had been popped out of its slot by the impact, requiring me to force the door open. I removed the card and handed it to him. "Your footage should be fine, but you'll want to take care of this."

It was the icing on his bitter cake, simply the Worst Day Ever for a news cameraman. He mailed the card back to me in a couple of days, and my bosses were understanding. One colleague was actually quite supportive. "Good for you," he said when I told of handing over the card. "Pay it forward, man." But I shall always be thankful it wasn't me, while simultaneously dreading my Worst Day Ever. Welcome to my world...

Dreaming of you...

2009-10-13T16:26:00.016-04:00

So last November, I drove through the night to get to Louisville, Kentucky, for a single day. They were having the annual Leica Historical Society of America meeting there, and though I couldn't afford the entire outing (complete with hotel, event fees, meals and transportation -- the same reason I'm missing this year's gathering in Seattle), I wanted to get in as much as I could. Also, I have a continuing plan on a book project on the history of photojournalism through its equipment, and the Leica plays a towering part in that history.

I had arranged to cover it for News Photographer magazine, as part of that bigger, Leica work, and as a good writer, I tried to buttonhole (in the most amiable way possible, the way a fan does the manager of her favorite actor) the Leica officials there, particularly M Systems Manager Stefan Daniel.

Daniel is a jolly fellow, with a round, youthful face and German accent -- as you'd expect. After all, he had flown in to the US just for that weekend from Leica headquarters in Solms, Germany. He had the misfortune of finding himself in the lunch buffet line behind me, and thus became subject to the inquisition. It was amiable conversation (surprisingly so, you might think, as I stood between him and lunch after a long morning), culminating in the question everyone asked: "Where is my full-frame digital M?"

He smiled wanly and rolled his eyes, leaving me with the impression that he'd heard it a hundred times before ... and there was nothing to be done. As Leica explained when the released the 3/4-sized chip on the M8, the physics of light made it impossible. I left feeling it was a game we all played, like high school kids flirting at the dance. I wanted a date, and it was out of my league.

Then the rumors began towards summer's end. The fabled M9 was coming. Camera shops in Paris were taking pre-orders. A Brit on the Leica Forum actually disassembled his M8 and proved there was room to put in a full-sized chip. (I tried to locate the post -- complete with pictures -- but it may be too old.) Chatter on Facebook and emails with my Leica-loving friends. But no, we couldn't believe it. They had disappointed us with the M8, then just teased us with the S2. This would be some modification on the M8, not the final, full-frame M dream.

I was one of the people who actually watched the web feed on 9/09/09. (The date did give me hope, and by then there had been leaks of web pages and manual uploads and photos. I was telling my friends that this was it, but had that fear in my deepest heart that I'd be jilted at the Prom ballroom door.) There was a speech from the new CEO -- a history of Leica that would not have been tedious had, a: I not known it all already, and b: the technical aspects of the webcast been a bit better -- then my old friend Stefan Daniel stepped to the lecturn with an M body. And the moment came: the full-frame M9.

The rest was anti-climactic and thus unimportant to me. (Though, I must say, I find a rising interest in the model III-like X1.) The true Leica was here, and only $7,000 (more or less).

A short aside on that last number. That's a lot of money. I'm not buying one anytime soon, not for lack of interest, as this now overlong (and nowhere near finished) post amply demonstrates, but for simple economics. It's a place I found myself in for 20 years until I awoke one morning to find I had, by way of luck, true friendship and delicate longterm spending, acquired a IIIc, three M3s and an old, chrome M4, along with a range of lenses, from 28 to 90. (It never stops, either. My wife generously found me a Zeiss 21 -- about which I had done nothing but whine for most of the year -- for Christmas last year.) I guess there's hope, if that history is anything to judge by.

But that's not the aside. What I meant to say was that $7,000 is also about what the top-of-the-line, full-frame digital Canon and Nikons cost, and even if it didn't, I would think of Stefan Daniel at the LHSA meeting again. He was doing the dog-and-pony show, showing all the new products that had come out at Photokina shortly before, when he opened the floor to questions. I soon saw that resigned look I was treated to in close up at lunch, because the subject of cost came up again and again. Much of it was driven by the S2, which had no cost associated with it then, but it also went to the product line in general. Why, people asked again and again, in ever-varying form, are Leicas so expensive?

"Leica has never been a very cheap product," Daniel finally explained. Statistically , he said (by measuring against monthly income) Leicas today are actually cheaper than in their heyday in the 1950s and 1960s. I remember thinking that a pretty impressive answer, but the questions kept on coming ... and that as when the M8.2 came in at around $5,500. So how is it that $7,000 is better?

Well, for one, see above: Nikon and Canon ran ahead to the mark with their full-frame cameras. But for another, look at the product. This is the digital camera Cartier-Bresson would have bought. That was honestly my thought as I learned more about it. And finally, I was afraid they'd run it up to $10,000 because ... well, because they were Leica and could. (Also, I have constantly argued that the S2 should be priced to undersell the Hasselblads as an economic measure for big studios: All the good parts of DSLRs and digital medium format, but cheaper than the big cameras; trade all your old crap in for one, great, easy-to-use system -- but they seem to come in for more than Hasselblad. Why?)

Secondly, I think this shows the new regime in Solms has finally got it straightened out. I hate to hack on the American, brought in by new owner Dr. Andreas Kaufmann to turn the place around only to clash with the artisnal German Kultur of Solms, but after years of stumbles, someone seems to be playing the products right. I have real hope: the right camera at the right price with what seems the right attitude.

Now I just have to figure out how to get one. Maybe I can do T-shirts, like this guy...

Welcome to My World...

2009-10-05T22:13:00.021-04:00

So, as I've engaged in my often early morning, 45-minute commute, I've taken to using my iPod on shuffle for entertainment ... mainly because there's so little worth listening on the radio at 5 am. Also, it is an interesting exercise both in self-revelation (sometimes I'm surprised what songs pop up -- I don't know I even had them) and self-congratulation (aren't I clever in having such a range of music in there). Oddly, no matter how disparate, or perhaps diverse, the music, it often blends so well. It's occurred to me (in one of those moments of self-congratulation) that it would make for an easily done, amusing radio show. Just walk in, plug in the iPod on shuffle, open on the mike with a story -- something amusing, maybe vaguely Garrison Kielor-like -- about some absurdity that had happened to me, end with the phrase, "Welcome to my world," and hit "play."

So here's an amusing story from my world these days.

I have become the Festival King. As the Fall brings festivals -- Olde (Yes, the "e" is required) Salem, Pulaskifest (all one word, trust me), the Coal Miners Memorial Family Fun Day, Highlander Festival (open-minded enough to be pan-Celtic, including the Irish), the Medieval Faire (another required "e"), etc., etc. These are on Saturday and Sunday, and as I am now on permanent weekend shift, filming them is my pleasure...

Last Sunday the grind (which also includes such as a rose show and art displays) involved a bike race ... a bike race up a mountain ... 7 1/2 miles of one-lane, switchback gravel road up a local mountain (as I learned). We learned of this by way of a news release, as we learn of most all of these things, that was two pages long ... and at no point saw fit to mention where this race was to occur.

Roanoke County can be a big place in that sort of situation. They did say where the awards ceremony was going to be, at 2 pm ... coincidentally the hour at which my shift was set to end. The race was set to begin at 9 am, 10 am, or 11 am, depending on whether you read the news release, the web site or the schedule I found (more on that in a moment). So I drove to the awards location, a place called Camp Roanoke, a short way out of town down winding country roads. It's no treat to find either, especially if you've never been there before, but I started down that one-lane gravel road to the camp after a careful map study, only to be confronted by a police car coming the other way.

The lights came on, the car slowed. I opened my window and the cop looks up and says, truly, "Oh, I didn't know you were News 7." Okay, so another reason why I like driving around with the station logo printed a foot tall on the side of the car. "I just want to let you know the bicyclists are coming." I thanked him and drove on, thinking: "What?!" Sure enough, about 20 yards on, about fifty bicyclists blow by with the whoosh of wheels and chatter of chains.

I stop. Now, I'm figuratively, if not literally, at a crossroads. (The road remained an entrapping narrow trail to ... well, at this point I don't know.) Other vehicles follow the bicyclists, Do I try to U-turn as best I can and follow, in hopes of getting ... well, anything? Do I continue away, finding someone at the camp who might actually know what's going on and where to go? Do I try to pass the pack, get ahead, and grab a shot before it gets away? Aw, ****. I continue on. At least someone might know what's going on, and if I miss it ... well, then, I've already missed it, haven't I?

So I come roaring into the camp (I literally fishtailed around the corner into the gate, throwing gravel and dust like a scene from "Dukes of Hazard") and pull into the parking lot, which is full of cars but empty of people. Actually, the whole place is empty. Where the drive turns into the parking lot, on the ground, I see a ball cap and a clipboard. It's like the Marie Celeste, as if everyone had simply disappeared in mid-activity, dematerializing but for the cap and the clipboard, which simply dropped into the grass.

Now I have no shame. I leap out of the car, walk over to the clipboard and read the schedule, which says the race begins at 11 (it's 10:40 at this point) at "Poor Mountain Road." Where the hell is that? Who cares, if I go the direction of the bicyclists, I'll undoubtedly pass them -- or at least get there in time -- and catch the start. I'll fake it from there. I drop the clipboard, utterly without ceremony -- plop -- in the grass, and jump in the car.

Back down the approach road, and at the end I'm left with a quandary. The bicyclists are now long out of sight. Uh, which way do I turn for this road? The mountains are closer on the left; a glance at the map shows a long run over a river to the right. But I came from the left, and saw nothing that implied a race start. I turn left, but after fifty years or so have second thoughts and pull over to study the map. Yep, the index shows I should have turned right.

Another U-turn, over the river and literally through the woods and around a broad, arcing curve, and there they are, all drawn up in a pack at a railroad crossing. I slide to a halt, leap out and grab the camera in time to film the start -- a nice shot, zooming out and panning with them as they go by -- and then I'm alone in an empty road with a couple of race organizers.

"So," I say, walking up, "how do I, uh, leapfrog ahead of these guys and get some more shots?" "You can't." I smile reflexively while staring blankly at these guys. "It's a pretty narrow road, and they're going to be all over it." At this moment, I'm remembering all sorts of warnings on that schedule on the clipboard about how how this road and that "will be open to traffic," and how the bikers should be cautious. "Uh," I say. "Well, I'd like to get more than one shot of this." I hope he gets my implication that his nifty race will not be on TV unless this can happen. I don't think he did. "I wish you could too," he says. But he doesn't know how. I take off after the bikers anyhow.

First I encounter the pickup trucks trailing, their flashers on. To my pleasure and surprise, first one then the second lets me pass. Then the motorcyclist ahead of them lets me by. Now we're on this narrow, dirt, switchback road with what seems a 40 degree incline. I'm behind the last bicyclist. He crawls agonizingly upwards, his bike obviously in the lowest gear, his legs painfully pumping away. My thighs begin to experience that lactic acid ache in sympathy.

The "road" is about as wide as my car. I creep along, trying to leave a good distance between me and the rider so as not to pressure him. A wide spot comes, and he waves my past. And so with the next and the next. Then, at a wider spot, there's a water station. I pull over, and leaving the car running pull out the camera and film those last four or so riders I passed riding by. Then I jump in before the motorcycle arrives and skid out again ... back behind the last guy in the race.

The scene repeats itself again -- me rolling slowly behind, then passing the bottom three or so, then pulling off to film them passing. Then in the back again, slowly passing one then another, until finally the top and the finish line, where I was able to film three or four coming in and interview the winners. It took over an hour to get there.

Then on to another festival (the Diabetes Walk for a Cure), drop the footage at the station and go home. The best thing about these days is that I just dump and run; by the time my pictures were downloaded into the station computer, my shift had ended an hour earlier. It's someone else's problem to edit it into something useful.

Today I come in and see what they made of it. They used that opening shot of the start ... and the interviews at the end. Turns out I didn't need more than one shot. Welcome to my world...

Because I can...

2009-09-20T16:30:00.003-04:00

... And because I really need to post something ...

Young Jane enjoys her dance class, accidentally a one-on-one session that day when other students, for various reasons, didn't make it.

Shot with the Leica M3 and 35mm Summicron lens on Kodak's BW400CN film.

And on that note, an extended blog on the new Leica M9 is to come. No, I've not gotten any closer to one than anyone else who watched the Big Reveal on 9/9/09 by internet. I just like talking about Leicas...

Catching up...

2009-09-09T21:50:00.002-04:00

So to avoid have happening to this image what has happened to our beach pictures (shot in July, still sitting undisturbed in their film canisters in September), I'm uploading this from our Labor Day camping trip to a friend's farm in Bath County, Virginia. It's a two-second exposure (I think; I was working pretty blind) of the bonfire. About eight or ten families gathered, camping in tents next to the river. Dinner came before, then we all adjourned to a nearby site for this bonfire and marshmallows roasted over the embers. Much fun, I think, was had by all, especially our two little girls. It was their first camping trip.

Shot with a Nikon D80 using a 17-55mm f/2.8 lens...

Looking back...

2009-08-25T08:27:00.004-04:00

Sixty-five years ago today, Paris was liberated by Allied forces, specifically a Free French armored division moved forward to ensure the city was freed by its own people.

Well, actually, less than technically, it was liberated by a couple of crazed journalists who had rushed ahead in their jeep to get a good hotel room. Life photographer Robert Capa had encountered the French tanks just outside Paris, and discovered one crewed not by French but Spaniards -- veterans of the Spanish Civil War in which Capa had established his reputation. It had the name Teruel painted on it, and he climbed aboard, explaining he had been at that very battle in 1937. So on Teruel he rode into Paris.

However, on his arrival, Capa made a shocking discovery. "I wanted to spend my first night in the best of best hotels," he wrote in Slightly Out of Focus. "The Ritz. But the hotel was already occupied. Hemingway's army had come into Paris by a different road, and after a short and happy fight had taken their main objective and liberated the Ritz from the German yokels." Luckily for Capa, who had been feuding with Hemingway, they made up that night in the bar, and the famous writer made room in his hotel.

Another five minutes of my day...

2009-08-12T22:27:00.004-04:00

Found another interesting blog: Rangefound. Run by another Leica fan, who I discovered at the Leica Forum. Along with NPPA (obviously), PDN Pulse, The New York Times's Lens blog, John Harrington, The Online Photographer and David Burnett's "We're Just Sayin'", a blog I plan to check regularly, if not daily...

I think there's some way to put these places permanently in the margins. Guess I'll figure it out eventually...

Meanwhile, on Twitter ...

2009-08-07T11:37:00.002-04:00

Melissa Grego tweets: The country is in such bad shape right now I wouldn't give a damn if (Obama) was from Mars. - Wanda Sykes at TCA re 'birthers' controversy

(Note: "TCA" is the Television Critics Association, currently meeting in LA. The TV columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle calls it the "Death March with Cocktails." I love that.)

Addendum...

2009-08-06T07:54:00.003-04:00

The San Francisco Chronicle has a piece on vocal protesters at town hall meetings, touching on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's comments. They seem to think it is a small, vocal, organized, far-right thing...

Once Upon a Time in America...

2009-08-05T22:23:00.006-04:00

Most people nowadays don't remember that Ernie Pyle (if they remember Ernie Pyle) had a job before World War II -- one of the greatest jobs, in my opinion, ever. He was paid by a newspaper and then a newspaper syndicate (IIRC) to simply drive around the country, writing interesting little profiles of the people and places he encountered.

You could see the pattern that he later used in his war reporting: person, character study with details such as hometown and family, evocative place description, etc. But I came to think of him in that job recently for another reaason.

I saw yesterday in The Daily Beast a reference to a poll that shows that a stunning number of Virginians are what have become known as "Birthers." Those, to make it short, are people that believe that President Obama was not actually born in Hawaii in 1961, as claimed, but somewhere else, like Kenya or Indonesia. This of course would render him Constitutionally ineligible to be President. The whole movement itself has become controversial (and is, taken factually and objectively, absurd, if for no other reason than there's nothing really that could be done about it now), driving some like The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson positively to distraction. I sympathize, but I also wonder ...

This strikes me as a symptom of a greater zeitgeist, one that seems particularly prevalent -- or at least, one that I am running across in numbers too high for coincidence -- here in Southwest Virginia. I felt a hint of this earlier, with the rise of the "Tea Parties," which I think were unfairly derided -- or at least underestimated -- by many, and I see this as part of the same general movement.

Before I go on, I have to pause to note that I often encounter this in a group, or rather a demographic, that shouldn't be dismissed. Everyone has their claim to being indispensable to America, but theirs is as good as anyone's. These are the people who are over-represented in the military, the folks who go to work in factories, pay their taxes and just try to hold it together. Around here, a lot of them farm and do spot work, job-to-job, like construction, just trying to push through the recession. They're not quite the Okies of Grapes of Wrath, but I think Mr. Joad would "be there" for them.

At any rate, I keep encountering this ... thing, this movement, this general dread and discontent. It makes me nervous, in a way, even as it also gives me a sense of the great, sleeping beast that is America in an oddly good way. Which is what leads me to Ernie Pyle, driving around 1930s America.

Aside from the sheer simple pleasure I would get from a job like that, it would give me more confidence in moments like this. Is what I'm seeing just a localized phenomenon? Is it a product of my own personal biases? Is it driven by the current media fascination (and frustration) with the Birthers? I dunno'. But I sure wish I had the job that would let me drive around, ask a few people, and find out...

On the Beach...

2009-07-27T21:30:00.006-04:00

Okay, so I'm on vacation. Sort of.

First of all, with two small children, as Ronald Reagan said about the presidency, it's not a vacation, it's just a change of scenery. They're a full-time job ... as they should be. And this isn't a complaint, just a statement of fact. Just as, as when you get out of college, get a job, get older, get married, the concept of "vacation" changes, so it does when you have kids. Now it's as much about their vacation as yours...

Secondly, our modern age has made my obsessive personality even more out of control. I just finished an article for NPPA on Robert Capa's Death of a Spanish Solider picture, because a series of articles have recently called its authenticity into question. Again. (This is a whole separate posting, as I had been working on a piece about this for a while, only to have it lost in a hard drive crash. I reconstructed it in less than a week after the new controversy began, finally sending the finished piece last night after two days of solid writing ... in between trips to the beach.) The internet just makes it too easy to do stuff like that (and update a blog) from a place where one is supposed to be getting away from it all.

And so I come across this: On Vacation, Leave the Photo Gear at Home and Take the iPhone Instead. Uh, no. Or rather, I understand, but vacation is for me more the time to overpack the photo bag. I decide what I haven't had the chance to really play with, or what I've really been enjoying playing with lately, and load 'er up! Last year, I took my Leica Ms and Kiev (a Russian -- or to be specific, Ukrainian -- version of the Hasselblad) to the beach along with 400 B&W film. This year I brought the Leicas and my trusty twin-lens Rollei, veteran of trips to China and Haiti. Why? Because that's the packet I wish people would want to pay me to use. That right now would really entertain me, to be contracted to go out with my Leica Ms and Rollei to spend some time somewhere to capture it. So I've made my own gig...

ADDENDUM: The Capa piece is live now on the NPPA web site.

Catching Up...

2009-07-11T16:47:00.010-04:00

The Fourth of July in Lexington, Virginia, is like many holidays here. They seem to resemble Norman Rockwell paintings, or some other hugely unlikely, idealized version of the small town holiday...

The day begins with the children's bike parade down Main Street, starting at the public library. Decorations are handed out for the kids to use, and the mob then sets out on the downhill-sloping street for -- I don't know, about a mile? Others actually do gather to wave to the passing kids, as seen here, in front of storefronts which have also been decorated in patriotic colors. Flags hang from every lightpost.

The eventual destination, after a luncheon break of free hot dogs, lemonade, watermelon and popsicles provided by local businesses, is the parade ground (or "deck" as they prefer) at VMI. The hub of festivites rests there, with various booths for charities and sales, including snacks and drinks, a flea market of sorts, a barbeque dinner by the sponsoring Rotary Club, and a hot air balloon festival. Usually anywhere from ten to twelve balloons show up, launching in the early morning and early evening, when the wind is the most still.

Here we see the crowd watching as a balloon begins to inflate. As you can see, this year the weather was more uncertain by late afternoon, and indeed by nighttime (and the fireworks) it was lightly raining.
I shot this, and particularly like it, because it shows in its way what I think the celebration of America is all about, as well as capturing some of the cheerily chaotic festival atmosphere there.

Here several balloons have risen enough to launch, which they did shortly after, rushing off roughly Eastward at a brisk pace in what I assume was a surprisingly strong wind.

And, at day's end, the tent for the barbeque is mostly empty. I don't know whether this couple are die-hards or just extremely early for the fireworks, which wouldn't begin for another two or three hours...

All the pictures were shot with my Leica M4 and 21mm Zeiss lens on Kodak BW400CN film.

As an aside: As I waited with my girls for the bike parade to begin, the Leica around my neck, a broadly smiling man approached and, with a German accent, explained he was from Wetzlar, where the camera was made. (The factory has since moved to Solms, which he explained is nearby.) He seemed very pleased to see the Leica and I wish the circumstances had let me chat with him longer...

Addendum...

2009-07-10T17:05:00.002-04:00

So, as she settles into the swing on her playset this afternoon, my six-year-old daughter looks up and says, utterly without preface, "I wonder what's going to happen with Michael Jackson today?"

There was a speechless, if amused, pause on my part before I could manage to say, "Well, nothing I hope. I think they're pretty much finished with Michael Jackson." Which, of course, set her off on an extended rumination, to which she is prone, on "Wouldn't it be funny if an airplane landed on Michael Jackson's grave, and they had to do something, and ..."

I've gotta' ask...

2009-07-10T11:21:00.003-04:00

I was studiously avoiding anything Michael Jackson -- both viewing and writing -- but it was a nearly impossible task. The Memorial Service or Funeral or Celebratory Concert or whatever it was (for a short time, I tried to coin a combined term among my friends, "Funicert," but they didn't share my dark humorous sensibilities) was on every network, cable and broadcast, it seemed. There was no escaping the 14 karat, highly polished gold coffin.

Now, there's the aftermath, and having been a creature and creation of the media culture, that means reviewing the ratings. I saw a figure that 31 million people watched the event on 18 networks (one story here) which struck me as actually low. I mean, simple math breaks that down to less than 2 million people per channel, which is decent for a moderately successful cable channel (eg: SyFy just got 3 million for its newest show), but awful for a major event on a big whatever-it-is (four? five?) broadcast network...

And then there's the fact that it was omnipresent. Every broadcast network, every cable news channel and several other cable channels (like E! and TV Guide). There was no where to turn! It was Michael Jackson or SpongeBob. How many of those viewers, like me, were trapped. (Although, I was amused when one network affiliate, during the 11 p.m. news that night, announced that day's soap opera episode would be aired at 2 a.m. Couldn't they just push the plot line a day later?)

Yet, I guess the audience was skewed to the larger outlets, like the broadcasters, so maybe it did get decent ratings, trailing out through the secondary cable channels. But it's a curious set of numbers ... which I guess goes to prove the old truism often used by Reagan (naturally): There are lies, damn lies and statistics...

Again with the Leica...

2009-07-07T15:52:00.005-04:00

So of course, in the process of filming (or rather, to be technical, video-ing, or rather high definition video-ing, which is why I prefer "filming" ... just because it's easier) Phil and his work I brought along the Nikon D-80 for production stills and my Leica M4.

A wide view of Phil in his workshop. He is paused -- something he does often to stare at the wood, or his quick, rough drawings, to gain a sense of where he is, what he's doing and (perhaps most importantly) where he's going. Sometimes it seems as if these aren't pauses at all, but the real work. The rapid, often noisy, handwork with the wood is only punctuation to the heavy lifting of thought...

A portrait, of sorts, shot as we were chatting just before I left on the first day of filming. He looks somewhat more severe than he truly is here -- and thus it's really not a good portrait, having failed to fully capture him. However, it does show some of the intensity of thought that goes into everything he says.

Finally, another view of work. This is from the first day also, when he was piecing together larger hunks of wood to form the general shape from which he would carve and rasp out the more graceful form of the piece. Again, he is in a pause, turning the wood, contemplating its place and shape.

Shot with the Leica M4 and a Zeiss 21mm f/2.8 lens on Kodak BW400CN film.

The Way We Live Now...

2009-07-03T23:46:00.007-04:00

So, even though I'm still editing the VMI New Market project (using an usual system of editing video as a "silent movie" in essence first, then going back to the interviews to create a narration of sorts -- exactly the opposite of the usual method), I've already started filming on another project.

This is Phil Welch, a woodworker -- really an artist who works in wood -- here in Lexington. I first met him at a party, hosted by someone who had commissioned one of his works: a table in with, instead of conventional legs, a bumble bee's head and legs. It was a really impressive piece, in various tones of wood. In other words, no stain or paint, just different wood tones providing the color.

At the time, I thought that watching the creation of such a complicated piece -- not to mention the artistic effort that went into it -- would be really interesting. So I suggested to him that, next time he had a good commission to work on, he should let me know so I could film it from start to finish.

This is Phil's drawing for the commission he called me about: a large jewelry box in the shape of a woman. The final piece will be only slightly smaller than life size, with a torso serving as the box, about a foot-and-a-half or two feet tall. I guess the final piece will be about five feet tall. It will hang from brackets on a wall.

The drawings, as perhaps you can see here, are not really detailed diagrams, but more a way for him to work through ideas. Nothing is set until he really starts working the wood. However, wood being wood, as he has explained to me, once you commit to a certain shape and structure, you're pretty committed.

Here he shapes a leg. He rasps and sands the pieces like this by hand, slowly drawing the shape he wants out of the wood.

Phil's actually very humble about my film. He constantly wonders what it is that he's doing that might be interesting to watch, and constantly apologizes for, as he puts it, "not much happening" as I film. Meanwhile, I'm looking through the lens and watching him think and create ... long pauses as he stares at the wood, then rasps, then touches, then rasps again, then looks, steps back, steps in. It's really quite exciting in its way. If he only knew.

Also, I have to say he's a delight to interview; the absolute opposite of a bad interview. No question goes unanswered or inadequately considered. "What are you doing today?" might lead to an extended philosophical consideration of whether what he's doing should really be considered "art", or just "artisan" or maybe even plain old "work." Or it might just result in a review of his efforts. Usually both...

Of paper hats and legacies...

2009-06-10T20:01:00.002-04:00

Caty, 6, asked me today to make her a paper hat, like the one in old storybooks, all pointy at the top and made from newspaper. Luckily for me, my father was having lunch here at that moment, and I sent her to him.

You see, before he became an academic and college president, my Dad worked in the journalism business too, starting as a copy boy at the old San Francisco Examiner (where I would later enjoy a photo internship) in the 1930s. When there, he learned how to make paper hats from the printing machinists, who would fold a double-page piece of broadsheet paper into a square hat to protect their hair from ink. It was always a small miracle to me to watch him make them when I was a child, and I thought it would be a double benefit for Caty to ask him for a hat: He'd be rewarded for his grandfatherly knowledge, and she'd be occupied and happy.

But the years have passed (he's 87 now) and it's been a while since anyone (me) asked for one of those hats. He had a hard time remembering.

Fortunately, I had preserved the last one I asked for. It hangs in a place of honor in my study, made from a yellowed, 14-year-old Commentary page of The Washington Times. I fetched it, brought it in and, from my memory of watching him make them and by carefully unfolding my treasure, figured out how it should be made.

Of course, with the internet, it's easy to find instructions on how to do ... well anything. But the idea of learning from living memory, not to mention family memory, to do something is special, I think.

Of course, there is one problem: how long before one won't be able to find a double-page piece of broadsheet newspaper?

Scenes from life...

2009-06-08T08:29:00.007-04:00

Two new images, again because I can:

Here we see the cat in residence in a local bookstore, Books & Co.

This, I think, is a pretty good symbol for the pleasures of living in Lexington. The store has always had a cat about, a nice homey touch, but one that is hardly unique here. The antique dealer on the next block over, for example, brings his golden retrievers to work every day, where they sit outside the front door of his shop eagerly greeting passers by.

Also, this is one of two independently-owned bookstores in town ... within a block of each other. I wonder what the statistics are on book shop presence per capita, let alone two that are not chains. (One, by way of explanation, deals more in used books, while Books & Co. sells mostly new. Both, needless to say, carry our book, Rockbridge.)

Shot with my beloved Leica M3 and a 35mm f/2 on Kodak's BW400CN film.

This is the graduation ceremony for St. Patrick's Preschool, operated through our local Catholic church. Our youngest attends, but won't graduate to kindergarten herself for another two years. I enjoy this shot because it looks to me like the DaVinci Last Supper of kid mischief. (Adding to my amusement, in the background to the right is a wood carving of the famous DaVinci picture.)

Shot with a Nikon D80 and 17-55mm f/2.8 lens...

It makes a body think...

2009-06-04T10:33:00.003-04:00

From the new Life.com site, a photograph made in 1939 by Hugo Jaeger, who worked as a personal photographer to Adolph Hitler. This is Hitler's Chancellery office in Berlin, and that's his hat casually dropped on the side table there.

The scary thing about this particular image (and really several of the others -- Jaeger saved some 2,000 transparencies after the war, many of which Life.com is publishing for the first time) is I could see this being something I would have shot, casually working in a government office with the officials around. Was Jaeger a Nazi? I don't know; the Life description of him makes him seem just a guy with a job. But it does cause one to think...

In one of the other captions, Life tells how taken Hitler was with the new color film (I'm assuming Agfachrome, though I suppose it could also have been Kodachrome). "The future belongs to color photography," Jaeger said Hitler told him. Hmmm....

Another view...

2009-05-28T19:25:00.004-04:00

So, trying to be part of the 21st Century, I uploaded the fireworks stuff to my Facebook page as well as this blog, but I put this second photo, of my family watching the fireworks through our bedroom window, on Facebook only. I don't know why. It made perfect sense at the time.

However, as the day went by, not only did I keep getting comments from my Facebook friends about how much they loved it, but I found myself telling people I know who are not on Facebook about the picture. How could they see it? So...

That's Caty, far right, Janey, and Mommy watching, lit only by the light of the fireworks themselves in another 5-second exposure.

As an aside, I now find myself calling my wife "Mommy," Reagan-like, even when the kids are not there. I had trained myself to do it so the girls would identify her by "Mommy" -- just seemed like the right thing to do -- but it's now become so habitual that I can't stop. A bit difficult during preschool field trips, though, as every woman in hearing turns when I shout, "Mommy," not to mention those moments when no children are in sight.

Freudians would have a field day...

Oh, yeah, that again...

2009-05-27T23:19:00.006-04:00

So, the mystery booms turn out to be fireworks again, this time for the undergraduate graduation at Washington & Lee University. Looks like it's in our front yard, doesn't it?

Shot with the Nikon D80, roughly a 4 or 5 second exposure (I changed about halfway through) at about f/4.5, ASA 400. I've set the camera on the floor of our porch, holding the lens slightly up with my fist...

About North Korea...

2009-05-26T13:36:00.003-04:00

Okay, so I'm no Asia expert, but a thought occurred to me that I'm surprised no one has mentioned:

When North Korea detonated a nuclear test and then fired two ballistic missiles, followed by firing two short range missiles (one surface-to-air and one surface-to-sea), it wasn't just a random firing of whatever was laying around in the closet. I think this is a statement -- a sentence with subject, verb and object (or rather, dependent clause) spoken in military hardware.

The nuclear test reenforced the fact that they have them, the ballistic missiles said that they can deliver them, and the short range missiles said you can't stop them.

The first two points are obvious: Subject=atomic weapon, verb=delivered by missiles. It's the third part that's interesting...

The current US design for anti-missile defense is either sea or air based (or controlled). So the North Koreans fire a couple of missiles saying, "And if you try to stop us, we'll just blow up your fancy defense system." It's a complete statement of power and capability, obvious if you read it right...

Of course, I'm no expert...

Coming soon to a mailbox...

2009-05-21T22:15:00.003-04:00

For purely self-abusive reasons, I've been reviewing my old posts here (among other odd reactions, that little twitch I get at seeing "0 comments" over and over; at least I've gotten used to having 4 followers -- thanks guys!)

It's when I noticed an old post on writing an article for News Photographer magazine, the journal of the NPPA, on the recent decision to allow coverage of the return of war dead to Dover AFB. Well, that piece is coming out this month, and I wanted again to mention the articles I found on the return of the first Unknown Soldier in 1921. They won the Pulitzer for AP reporter Kirke :. Simpson and it's some of the most beautiful journalistic writing you're likely to see this side of Ernie Pyle.

Cooooool...

2009-05-21T19:15:00.002-04:00

Video shot with a Canon EOS 5D, a 15mm lens, a series of time-exposed frames and assembly in Quicktime Pro:

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.

This could end badly...

2009-05-21T12:30:00.005-04:00

Just saw a PDN piece saying that Newsweek is pulling out of the White House photo pool. I'm often wrong about this sort of thing -- my presidential candidate predictions are guaranteed not only to be wrong, but 180-degrees off -- but I don't see this as a good thing...

From Newsweek's point-of-view, it makes perfect sense: they're trying to remake themselves into The Economist, eschewing day-to-day reporting for deeper analysis and commentary, which I think is a smart move. Why have a photographer (and the accompanying travel costs, etc.) hanging around all the time at the White House?

However, if you look at the big picture, what this means is a less transparent, less accessable presidency ... an institution that has been increasingly opaque certainly in the 20th Century, if not earlier.

So what's my point? As journalistic outlets increasingly pull back from having access, when something comes up where an administration wants to deny access, it becomes easier to say, "No." So, say the next Watergate happens (to pick an extreme), and the people in the White House don't want all those pesky reporters and photographers hanging about, asking difficult questions, ruining perfectly good photo ops. When Newsweek or U.S. News (who dropped out of the pool years ago) say they want in now, the Press Office puts on a sad face and says, "Oh, no, I'm sorry. It's just too difficult to expand the pool that much. And we can't make an exception for you, or everyone would want it." Until one day, when the pool consists of some wealthy blogger with a cell phone camera, he can be locked up in a side room while something important happens...

Not that I'm paranoid or anything...

UPDATE (22 May 2009): I didn't expect something resembling confirmation that quickly...

A few other pictures...

2009-05-20T13:39:00.009-04:00

Because I can, and because I've been having such fun with my Leica M3 and BW400CN film...

The view through a window in the Roberson-Phalen House in downtown Lexington. Workers are adding the final touches on the restored home, and here one pauses to make a phone call outside while a group tours the interior.

From the same tour, an interior of the First National Bank building on Main Street, currently undergoing renovation. The top two of the three floors will be apartments, and this floor -- on ground level -- and the basement are to be commercial space.

And finally, from one of the days I was preparing to go out filming, VMI cadets come spilling out of Jackson Memorial Hall after an event. I made a number of frames of this, and while this is the best of those, I'm not sure it really captures the moment as hundreds of identically clad students spill out of the building...

Okay, just a couple more...

2009-05-17T23:28:00.010-04:00

Because, in addition to the Canon XL-H1 HDV camera I was filming on, and the Nikon D200 I was using for all the previously posted production stills, I had my beloved Leica M3 with me while following the cadets, I have yet more pictures.

This is the campsite at the Frontier Culture Museum. I have often want to, but never had the time to, do a project on photographing at Civil War reenactments using my Leicas. The theory was to see what, say, Robert Capa could have made of the Civil War. A bit pretentious in two different ways, but a comingling of two different interests of mine, so why not?

Anyway, I thought this picture captured what I had in mind. Shot with a Zeiss 21mm on Kodak BW400CN film.

This is perhaps my best picture from the take, particularly as it is so in style with the reason I like using the Leica. I've probably "buried the lede" by putting it second, but so be it...

That's Cadet Aaron Cregar during one of the last rest breaks just outside the town of New Market. His feet by then were heavily blistered (they had by then marched roughly 80 miles) but he pushed on to the end and even stayed at the battlefield through the weekend to take part in the reenactment.

This was shot with a Leica 35mm f2 -- the kind with the spectacles, because the M3 didn't have a 35mm viewfinder -- on BW400CN.

That's Cadet Curt Herron taking the flag at the end of that same rest break. You can see from the background that much of that day's march was in a fog, following brief but noisy overnight thunderstorms. Also done with the 35 and BW400CN.

I've got to say I'm really loving that Kodak film. Though my heart will always belong to TriX, the ease of use provided by BW400CN, which can be processed at any C41-type one-hour machine (I actually have mine done at the local WalMart), is beyond measure in this right-now world. It means I can still use my lovely, 50-year-old film cameras, but produce pictures almost as quickly as digital...

Stiff, old and really, really tired...

2009-05-16T15:46:00.016-04:00

That would be me. The cadets who marched to New Market were disgustingly upbeat and surprisingly energetic throughout, moving at a strong pace every day despite some serious foot problems for a couple of them.

Third Classman (or sophomore) Curt Herron rests just outside the town line. I had driven ahead to film them marching past the sign saying, "New Market," and when they didn't arrive went back to find them resting in the gateway to a nearby farm. Fortunately, I had checked my odometer, and so was able to tell them they were only 1.3 miles out.

Herron's feet were perhaps the worst of the group, developing painful blisters before rolling his ankle. Then, the taped padding and bandages rubbed, scraping the skin off the backs of his heels. He pushed on nonetheless, doing the full distance despite suggestions that he ride part of the way in the support van which followed, carrying water and food. His hobbled stride was painful to watch...

Here they are upon first arriving at the New Market battlefield. Behind me as I take this image is the Bushong House, and in the background you can see the Hall of Valor, the museum. After dropping much of their gear (blanket rolls, haversacks, etc.), the cadets formed into a line and marched to the fence where, 145 years ago to the day, the VMI corps of Cadets moved when called into battle. As their predecessors did, these six fired two volleys and then climbed over the fence to charge the artillery position at the top of the hill.

I was of course filming during the charge, so there are no stills. Also, that's a really, really long hill.

The image above is in the aftermath. You can see a Union artillery team there -- reenactors there for the events this weekend, who added a sense of reality to the charge by firing blank rounds throughout. They congratulated the cadets after (having happily surrendered, unlike their historical antecedents, who put up a hand-to-hand fight before giving up the guns) and insisted on having pictures made with them.

In 1864, 10 cadets died as a result of the battle (5 instantly and five from their wounds after) and 47 were wounded. All these guys lost was one aging filmmaker, who came puffing up behind them at the end of the charge.

So here is the group as they finished lunch:

The lunch was brought by First Classman Ben Scudder's family, there to watch his success. It was Scudder who organized the whole thing -- that's him standing on the far left. He's off at the end of summer to join the Coast Guard to help pay for the completion of his final year at VMI.

Kneeling in front is Eric Wittig, and standing, from left to right next to Scudder, are James Lockett, Aaron Cregar, Hank Baker and finally Herron (really Michael Herron, but he goes by "Curt"). Aside from Scudder, all the cadets are Third Classmen.

So now, aside from a couple of general storytelling interviews to provide background, it's on to editing for me, which isn't as exciting to blog. I'll try to put up a video as soon as I get one ... and as soon as I can figure out how to do it...

Update from the front...

2009-05-13T22:39:00.007-04:00

So as I set out this evening to catch up with the cadets, I encountered the rest of the VMI student body practicing for Friday's New Market parade. They use a special formation, much closer to the road around the parade deck and centered on the statue of Virginia Mourning Her Dead, erected in honor of the cadets killed in the battle.

As I prepared to leave, this scene developed, featuring what I can only assume to be passing tourists...

The heavy metal style contrasted with the pristine white, orderly ranks of cadets was too much, especially with the one fellow slouching on the cannonball (a minor monument on campus). And yes, I included the "Do Not Enter" sign on purpose.

That's House Mountain in the background, the central local landmark. Recent rains have really cleared the air around here of haze and pollen, and the view was spectacular.

Meanwhile, on the road...

This is what I found at 11 this morning, when I finally located the cadets marching to New Market in Verona, Virginia. They had already reached the halfway point of their daily distance, and broken for lunch. The two at far left are asleep, and the entire group would be before the hour was out.

Also, note the bandaged feet of the cadet second from left, mostly covering hotspots and blisters. However, before the day was out, he would roll one of his ankles. He walked through the pain (though with the ankle wrapped) to their destination.

Foot pain seems to be the main problem for the cadets, caused more by the hard surface of the road than their shoes, they claim. Their morale is disgustingly high...

Tromp, tromp, tromp, the boys are marching...

2009-05-13T09:26:00.005-04:00

Seven VMI cadets are reenacting the march their predecessors did over 100 year ago, when they left the campus in Lexington,Virginia, in May of 1864 and marched 85 miles in five days to New Market, to the north, where they took part in the battle there on May 15. The 2009 cadets are dressed in period clothing and (perhaps most importantly) wearing period shoes.

I had often said that it would be an interesting little film to follow such an adventure, but no one had done it since the last effort in 2005. So when I was told it was happening this year, I could hardly back out.

Here we see the cadets marching up Route 11, having already been on the road over a day:

And at their campsite at the end of the second day (last night), at the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Virginia:

It's not much helping the drama of my show that they all seem rather cheerful, with high morale, and not very worn down by the beating their feet are receiving, after an 18-mile march on the first day and 19 miles on the second...

New market and me...

2009-05-10T19:41:00.007-04:00

So I had been talking about this idea: sometimes (turns out to be far less often than I thought), VMI cadets march the route from their Lexington campus to New Market, Virginia, where VMI cadets turned out for the only time in America a cadets corps fought as a body. This year, a First Classman (senior) decided he hadn't had a chance. So he made it.

VMI Cadet Ben Scudder contemplates the gear he wants to take with him on his march to New Market.

Scudder and Cadet Charlie Gerkin (right, a Third Classman, or sophomore) pack for the march.

I just began filming their adventure. It'll be a helluva' dtory, I think. Let's see if anyone will pay for it.

BOOM! Oh, did that disturb you?

2009-05-08T21:19:00.005-04:00

The view from on our front porch towards Washington & Lee University during the annual Law School graduation fireworks show. This happens every year at around 9 pm, and never fails to startle us. This year, it went off despite a drenching downpour and thunderstorm. If nothing else, those W&L kids are dedicated to their traditions ... and parties.

Shot with a Nikon D200 at 400 ASA. A 1.6 second exposure (balanced on a window sill) at f/5.6. In case you care...

Fun with Photoshop...

2009-05-08T19:56:00.007-04:00

I think this is truly hilarious. It's from another blog, the content of which I haven't really read, but I think it shows the proper irreverent attitude towards the fascinations of the moment...

Another video...

2009-05-06T18:49:00.002-04:00

This one is really fine fimmaking: a Chanel No. 5 short, starring Audrey Tautou of "Amelie" ... and a Leica M8 (at the very end ... wait for it.)