Going where I never thought I’d go

Tonight marks a first for me. I’ve finally had my work featured on television. I’m not talking about the local cable station, that’s been going on for months though I never get to see it. Nope, tonight my video coverage of a little boy returned to his parents after being “missing” for about 12 hours, was used on the nightly news.

As still photographers, we always joke about TV photographers never missing the shot because they’re shooting 30 frames a second compared to 6 or 7 on a still camera. We always joked about it, but really, we as still photogs felt superior to the TV guys becase we could make one great image that told the story without b-roll or audio overlays or special effects. Just a stark photo of the news.

This afternoon, I completed my sixth or seventh video in the span of 14 days. I have two others underway. Back 20 years ago, I KNEW I’d never shoot video. Now I can’t get away from it. It was interesting today that I even included myself when describing the group of tv news photographers taping the reunion of the boy with his parents. My boss picked it up right away and laughed but I think I’m starting to loose my identity as a still photographer.  The tv guys and I chatted it up about video equipment and one joked about the fact that we as newspaper photographers are shooting video and they as tv photographers are now shooting stills to go on their websites. The line between medias is blurring more and more.

To get back to my roots, I’m going to try and do some out-of-the-ordinary things over the next week or two. I may even dig out some film and load up the old Nikon SLR and the nearly 40 year old Minolta rangefinder, if I can remember how to load film that is. Keep an eye out for some different stuff from me over the coming weeks!

Click on the photos to see the corresponding videos.