BehindTheLens

How much does it weigh?

At the beginning of my shift about ten pounds.

State inspectors confirm the weight.

By the end of the day I would swear it weighs close to eighty.

#2 Question

How much does it cost?

Hummmm…….working on that one……

The modern newsroom still runs on caffeine. Used to be caffeine and nicotine, but the health-conscious ‘80s banished that nasty habit to the parking lot.

My stimulant of choice happens to be a hot, black jolt of java. Most of my consumption activity takes place in the bleary-eyed early morning hours while trying to shuffle kids off to school, but an occasional kick of the dark warm liquid does pass my lips, especially on those damp or frosty days.

Now I am all for the efforts to go “green.” And I honestly would carry my own go-cup, if it were my habit to frequent the coffee urn. But this is an occasional habit at work, and by convenience I grab one of the Styrofoam cups for my fix and head off to my assignment with the warm concoction in my hand. 

Styrofoam, however, is an environmental sin. “We must use reusable mugs” the edict exclaimed, “but these are only for use in the building. For those on the go…” To make a long edict short, the Styrofoam cups vanished.

I was expecting to see some of those old-style paper cups to take their place – you know, the ones with the little foldout cardboard handles. Or perhaps some generic cups like you might see in a modern-day coffee shop… which is what I thought I saw one day next to the coffee urn. Since this was one of those chilly days and my morning caffeine wasn’t quite enough, I poured a generous dose into one of the new containers and headed towards Lewisville.

After a few sips, I let the drink settled to a more palatable temperature. Somewhere around Farmers Branch I took a big swig and, much to my surprise, had a mouthful of MOLTEN WAX! Believe me, driving a large live truck down Stemmons freeway while trying to expel a mouthful of wax in some dignified manner is not an easy task. My mouth stung and smarted from the experience for the remainder of the day!

So in honor of Earth Week, I raise my hot cup of Joe in our recently acquired paper coffee cups. Next time I promise to bring that reusable go-cup—-if I can only remember where I put it!

Saturday night. Supercross. Chad Reed wins. He gets flames to confirm. Being a photog I have to shoot at least one picture. With my cellphone!

When Bob Welch went on a story, he would call the assignment desk on his way back and tell them “I’ve got a home run!”  Then he would laugh and so would the rest of us.  The man loved to shoot.  As long as there was a camera on his shoulder, he had the joy and excitement of a child.

In 1960, photographers had a dress code.  They were required to wear suits and ties and covered stories for both TV and radio.  Bob said he would call in, do the radio report then grab his camera and go shoot the story for TV.  In those days they were one-man bands.  Bob would shoot write, narrate and edit.  News was good solid journalism.  Bob says they focused on accuracy and the basics.  People wanted to know who, what, when, where and why. 

You may remember 1963 as the year the John F. Kennedy came to Dallas.  Bob was there and remembers it vividly.  “He was magnificent!”, he told me.  “Such carisma.  Jackie was just so lovely.  She was carrying a boquet of flowers they had given her at the press conference when they arrived at Love Field.”   Bob photographed them getting into their cars at the motorcade.  He went ahead to their next stop at Market Hall and waited next to a squad of motorcycle officers.  He heard the call on their police radios of a code 3, a shooting in the motorcadd moments before they raced by on the way to Parkland hospital.  He saw Jackie leaning over the president.  Bob jumped in his car and followed.  He remembers his heart pounding and even though he couldn’t breathe he somehow called the news room on the two way radio.  He could see the president’s limo just ahead of him surrounded by police and the president wasn’t moving.  He knew it was bad.  The newsroom was ready for him to record his report.  He told them the facts.

Bob Welch made history that day. You may not know his name but most of us have heard his voice.  He shocked the world when he reported on WBAP radio that “President Kennedy has been shot!”   If you ever visit the Kennedy museum, look for Bob and his Auricon camera in the photo of the press secretary confirming President Kennedy’s death.  He was the only photographer there recording sound.

His advice to me was to always remember what a great job being a photographer is.  He told me to get past the politics, the stress and the technical stuff because photographers are the luckiest people.  We get to see the whole world.  We just can’t forget to enjoy it.

Imagine the news coverage possibilities if only we could teleport ourselves!   But our reality is spending long hours on the roads all over the metroplex.  One typical day I started a story in Wilmer.   It didn’t pan out but we decided to Frisco to check out vandalized mailboxes.  As we arrived at the Frisco PD, we were rerouted back to South Dallas for an apartment fire.  Halfway there, we are rerouted again to a murder scene also in South Dallas.   We arrive on the crime scene at 3:15 and are live at 4pm with the story.   My point is we drive a lot!  We see a lot of the good, the bad and the ugly.  I wanted to pass on a few thoughts to you folks who share the roads with us.

If freeway traffic stops, it’s usually faster to get off at the nearest exit.  Take the side roads or an alternate route until you are around the road construction or accident.  Listen to traffic reports so you can plan routes around wrecks and road work.  Photographers know and love all the back ways around the highways!

 Please, put on your mascara, shave, and read the paper before you leave the house.  I see drivers on 183  east doing all of the above each morning.

We all eat and drive with our busy lives.  Some days we practically live in our live vans.   I recommend wearing dark clothing if attempting to and drive because you will probably end up wearing something you are eating or drinking.  Carry a tide pen and don’t even think about salads or anything in a pita!  And realistically, few people can talk on the phone, eat and drive with their knees.  Don’t even think about it!

For those of you who text and drive, pay up on your insurance because you are going to need it!  Almost every driver I see who is swerving or doing something crazy is on their cell phone or text messaging.  Tammy will tell you where the wrecks are in Gridlock Busters but photographers have to shoot those accident scenes.  It is a terrible thing to realize that twisted hunk metal was once a car.  And my heart goes out to the people who are injured or even killed.  I see it so often….way too often. 

Please, think and drive!  Use a headset if you have to be on the phone.  Just say no to text messages when driving.  Be careful, be safe and don’t let it be you the next traffic fatality video. 

OK, I’ll admit it. I’m a weather nut. Give me a good tornado warning, send me to a hurricane, and my heart starts thumpin’ and my adrenaline gets pumpin’……..

Problem is that my wife is from the Pacific Northwest. They get a little rain now and then, but the skies there tend not to open up and swallow mobile homes on a regular basis.

Every spring we have an inherit conflict in our house: I want to go storm chasing, but my wife wants to sell the house and move someplace far, far away.

I can’t say that I blame her. As a child growing up in Arkansas the sound of a tornado warning brought images of terror to my mind. We huddled around the black-and-white TV studying the grainy blip on the radar screen hoping it didn’t come our way. As a young photographer in Little Rock I witnessed many scenes of housing developments leveled, trees uprooted and even an iron bridge crumpled and tossed in the water. After the F5 hit Jarrell a few years back, I stood in a gravel road looking over a field, only to be told that the road was once paved and the empty field that morning bristled with houses.

 I once left my wife and infant daughter in our Oak Cliff home to meet a storm heading towards us from Grand Prairie. Moments later I was calling home, telling Christine the twister was heading for our house. Dodging the tree limbs and downed power lines, I burst through the front door to find my terrified wife clinging to our daughter in a downstairs bathroom. The tornado missed – but just by a few blocks.

I still enjoy the thrill of the chase, but these days my mind always focuses on my family in our Ellis County home. While we keep in touch by phone when the weather gets nasty, it just doesn’t take the place of being there. When the phone rings on my day off, I now have three sets of wide eyes to answer to. “You aren’t REALLY going to leave us here alone, are you?” Weellll…….

I view it as a duty, that many moms have many kids staring wide-eyed at the now colorful blips on the radar. My set of eyes might just spot something that keeps many families safe. If I must sleep on the couch that night, so be it. Not that I’m in hot water, but our bed is now filled with a mom curled up with our two kids praying everyone is safe not just in our house, but in every house in harm’s way.

 We seem obsessed with punishing a few drivers for road rule violations while the vast majority of problem drivers escape Scott free. In an effort to catch more traffic scofflaws, we erect automated ticketing devices – you know, those red-light cameras and the toyed-with speeding cameras – but these serve only to punish the car owner and don’t quite get to the root of the issue.

 What I propose is a true driver’s test. Something of a TAKS test for drivers, that must be passed before having your license renewed. I’m talking about a real connect ‘em to a lie detector kind of quiz like you see on so many TV game shows these days. Pass and you get to drive. Fail, and the goverment issues a bus pass until you mend your ways.

 Here is a sample of the type of questions I’d like to see. Remember, you’re hooked up to a lie detector!

1. When approaching a car with its blinker on, you typically:

     a) Slow down and let the driver merge

     b) Drive just behind the back bumper

     c) Floor it – after all, that’s your space!

 2. When driving in the far left-hand lane, the speed limit is:

     a) The same as everybody else

     b) 10 mph slower

     c) At least 20 mph faster than the car in front of you!

3. When approaching a traffic light, if the light turns yellow, you:

     a) Proceed cautiously through the intersection

     b) Slam on the brakes

     c) Close your eyes and floor it!

4. The amount of space you should allow behind the car in front of you is:

     a) 2 seconds

     b) 2 inches

    c) Follow? I don’t follow NOBODY!

5. Your driving style most resembles:

     a) Barney Fife

     b) NASCAR

     c) Demolition Derby

 If this was a real test, DART and the T couldn’t handle all the traffic! On a more serious note, our photography staff spends most of the day plying the highways and byways of North Texas. At the end of the day, the most important thing we do is go home to our families. Take a moment to realize those few extra minutes you gain charging down the highway or blasting through a red light is not worth somebody’s life. After all, going home is the most important thing we all do!

Life as a NBC 5 photojournalist is never dull. On Easter, for example, I started my day shooting blue bonnets.  From there I went to the Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship for a musical presentation about “Doubting Thomas”.  I had to leave early to catch the Pooch parade at Lee Park in Dallas. Dogs and their owners in glorious matching outfits complete with Easter bonnets was a visual dream come true. I overheard someone in the crowd talking about how much fun I seemed to be having and I laughed. These are the days I love my job the most. Ice storms…not so much!  I finished up the day at the Mavericks game doing locker room interviews and, yes ladies, I talked with Eva’s husband (Tony Parker).

One of the perks of being a photojournalist is that you never know what the day will bring. You could cover anything from City Council to grass fires. One of the biggest challenges in covering such a large geographic area is actually getting to your story. I plan a separate blog on my pet peeve of people who slow down in the fast lane to text message!

One of my favorite things about being a photojournalist is telling stories.  It amazes me how people share the best and the worst moments of their lives with you.  I try to give them a video memory that they can share with families and friends.  The people in my stories are my motivation and my inspiration.

Summer of 1986. That’s when I became an NBC5 intern. Bob Welch was the Chief Photographer at the time. His first question was ”are you sure you don’t want to be a reporter or anchor? You know, who, what, why, when and where?” Nope, I wanted to shoot pictures. Why? There aren’t many jobs where you can run around, shoot video, and get paid to do it. Not a bad gig!

The first story that I went out on was a feature piece about a vineyard somewhere northwest of Fort Worth. Bob was the photographer, I was the newbie soaking it all in. I’m sure that I asked some absurd questions, Bob was always patient with me. After he shot all the video he needed, it was my turn to frame up some shots. Or maybe one shot. What took him five seconds to frame up took me thirty. And it didn’t look good. But who cares? I’m going to be working in TV!

Toward the end of my first day I asked the big question, how can I turn this into a full time job at NBC5? Bob was direct, “you won’t.” I was crushed. “We’ll teach you more in two months than you can learn in four years of college!” That was close to the truth when it comes to being a news photographer. “You need to go to some place like Tyler for your first job!” I ended up in Amarillo. “They won’t pay you a lot of money!” True that. $4.24 an hour with a college degree. “You’ll make a lot of mistakes!” Double true. Forget to plug in mikes. Roll when you don’t want to, then stop rolling when you need to.

“Come back and see me when you got something good to look at!” I did. A lot. The photogs here were my mentors over the years. Bob Welch is the guy that got me in the door. When Bob retired in 1996, I was hired to take his position. One of the many things I learned from Bob is that you never stop learning. So after 22 years in the business, I  still reflect back on that day in the vineyard with Bob. I still wonder what Bob would do with this shot. I am still a newbie. And loving it. 

“That must be an interesting job” is the usual reaction when someone learns what I do for a living. If they only knew what goes into producing the news broadcasts here at NBC5. So I, along with a few of my colleges, accepted the challenge of relating life behind the camera in this new blog, Behind the Lens.

On any given day, you may catch one of us driving down the road in a live truck worth more than my house, taking pictures with a camera that costs more than my car. Think about that next time you see a live report from the side of an icy road!

On a good day, the news gods smile upon us and all our interviews happen at convenient times and the pictures we need fall into place. I remember that day… It was a wonderful day! Actually that does happen more often than not, but there are times when hours of sheer boredom lead to minutes of utter chaos.

In those chaotic moments come the best memories. Like the time a crew took the Galveston Island ferry rushing to meet a satellite truck….and locked the keys in the rental car. (Who knew the ferry doesn’t carry a Slim Jim!) Or the time we spent hours reporting live on freezing rain developing in our area, only to discover the mast on the live truck was frozen solid while extended some 42 feet in the air.

So, yes this is a very interesting job. In upcoming editions, we’ll share our experiences and maybe share a few clips that don’t quite make the air. What you see on the air isn’t the only story…the story behind the story can only be found Behind the Lens.