11-7-11 Addenda

Inside the Homestead Dairy. As I shot it while filming a "Do My Job, Bob," I guess this could have gone with the earlier post, but it seemed more appropriate here. The bottles (real glass, just like the old days) are loaded into the crates by hand. In a neighboring room, ice cream is still hand-packed into the containers. Really a heartwarming place to see at work.

Outside dance class, on nice days, they have this little table, and in the late afternoon the setting sun shines between the buildings across the street, casting artful shadows.

Inside dance class, we all remove our shoes before going in. The scattered little shapes had a sort of Jackson Pollock aspect for me, as well as telling a little story.

Halloween at the International House of Washington & Lee University...

Before the political rally at Roanoke Airport. I was told I was to cover the governor arriving -- a quick hello, maybe a sound bite, then into the car and off to a day of campaigning. We just needed something for the noon news. But the posters started going up, and the politicians started arriving, and the crowd gathered, and it began to become clear this was something more than advertised. As things prepared to kick off, a texted a photo back to the newsroom showing a lineup of a dozen or so politicos lined up, as if waiting for ice cream, behind the lectern -- the governor, lieutenant governor, state attorney general, congressmen, state senators, etc., etc. "This could take a while," I wrote ... and it did.

But I did enjoy this classic scene of American politics: two volunteers making sure their candidate's poster was up behind the speakers' platform.

And here the crowd listens to the speakers. I felt foolish later to learn that the woman at far right is Octavia Johnson, Roanoke's sheriff. I had no idea at the time...

11-7-11 Scenes from work

Martinsville Speedway at dawn, the day before racing. This is one of the few times I have to admit that color would be preferable; the light -- blue and pink as the sun rose behind the clouds -- was remarkable.

Bob did a feature story working with the guys who paint the signs around the track. You don't much think about it, but every time the racers scrape the wall, let alone run into it, they take off the paint ... and those companies pay big money.

After the live shot, there was a nearby country diner our satellite truck operator, Sam Doyle (right) knew about. Classic. They had an egg and pork tenderloin that was all that is good about Southern breakfast cooking.

For Halloween, downtown Roanoke has special promotions, which we previewed that morning. That is why Bob is standing in the chill, predawn darkness, inputting material onto the station website ... while dressed as an Angry Bird. The things we will do for television. To his credit, the promoter dressed as King Pig.

On the set, chief meteorologist Robin Reed, off duty in his jeans, chats with Brent Watts ...

The production crew talks with anchor Chris Hurst (far right, of course -- he's the only one in a suit) before the show.

Another "Do My Job, Bob," was at a local country music station, 94.9 Star Country, where the co-anchor of the morning show was out sick.

DJ Brett Sharp Laughs at a joke from Bob while monitoring the board.

The news from Hollywood.

"Boomer" occasionally steps in during the show to add to the hilarity, but spends much of the time off to the side like this. An unassuming figure when you first see him, he has a wicked (in both the figurative and literal sense) of humor, at one point prodding Bob and Brett into a series of increasingly obscene double entendres while supposedly discussing how to put together a TV newscast.

Shot with the 35mm f2 Summicron on an M3 using Kodak's BW400CN film.

10-25-11

Occupy ... Blacksburg. It wasn't a large protest, but big enough for the normally quiet college town, and as orderly and reasoned as one might expect.



The director of Opera Roanoke reviews his music backstage at the Jefferson Center in between live interview segments for the morning show. He would actually at moments start to gesture as if conducting the orchestra right there.


Also backstage, in a way, this is the floor of the Roanoke Civic Center as they set up the ring for the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus. We did a morning show segment after filming one of the "Do My Job, Bob" stories. In the foreground, the hard hat they handed Bob when we did some of the early, heavy lifting parts. He didn't need it so much when he had to shovel elephant poop.


The circus is actually a great live segment, and their PR realizes the value of local TV in promotion. They -- as personified by Jillian Collett, seen here -- couldn't have made things easier. Behind, we see the competition, Channel 13, also set up for their morning show.


When clowns get bored...


I-Hsiung Ju, master brush painter and my art professor in college. As with many things in college, I didn't properly exploit the opportunity he presented. For one thing, I never took a course in traditional Chinese brush painting from him, something I have tried to rectify in adulthood as time and money have permitted.

He sits here in the Staniar Art Gallery at Washington and Lee University, behind him a monumental series of scrolls.


Following the show, we gathered at the home of one of his other former -- and in many ways still current, though himself a master brush painter -- students.

Mr. Ju or Professor Ju, as he is fixed in my mind despite retiring years ago, is a truly Great Man, a witness to, participant in and (sometimes just barely) survivor of history. He studied traditional Chinese art from childhood -- his was a family of artists -- was drawn into the war with Japan, was wounded, then escaped to the Philippines as the Communist Revolution drew to a close. His stories are always a delight, though his still thick accent slowly sinks into my mind along with them, until I find myself speaking in broken English by the end of the evening.

10-8-11

Sometimes, after the nightmare that is a live shot in the predawn darkness in a farm field, the morning light brings on something quite lovely...

We were doing a preview of the Smith Mountain Lake Wine Festival. The morning became a recipe for disaster: To start with, it was essentially at night and in a big field. The autumn weather brought out a thick fog in the cool air. And to top it all off, it was one of the rare days Bob Grebe -- the correspondent who was to conduct the interview -- called in sick.

On the positive side, they had already set up the tents for the vendors, so I had something to light in the background, and the Chamber of Commerce spokesman was an old hand at interviews, able to interact easily with our anchor back in the studio.

But after, as we tore down and I shot some B-Roll for the short story recapping the festival preview, to be shown at noon, the fog made the tents and field and interesting place of mystery, like something out of Ray Bradbury or Dr. Lao.

This is an horticultural center at the Virginia Western Community College in Roanoke, a resource we're often able to call on for Bob's garden segments every Wednesday. I just thought the interaction of the texture, light and structure was interesting.

Bob talks with Clark Becraft of VWCC in preparation for filming a story.

Lately, we've been working on a popular weekly segment called "Do My Job, Bob," in which Grebe tries to take on others' jobs ... usually with only moderate success. The first we shot was making doughnuts at a local place called Blue Collar Joe's. We did the live shot at his downtown Roanoke location, Uptown Joe's.

Here we see Bob, as usual, trying to upload information to the web between live hits in the show...

I like this picture, even though it came in the middle of a very hectic and frustrating day, but I find it quite poignant in its way.

This is the setup for a military funeral, after the family has left the burial site. The Army, long experienced in these things, arranged a small packet of tissues in every family member's seat. However, the soldier buried that day went missing during the Korean War. Lost and captured by the North Koreans, he starved to death as a POW. His remains were finally returned with a number of others in a mass repatriation. After identification by the military lab in the US, he was finally returned to the family, which had him buried with full honors in Pulaski, Virginia, on a cool autumn day under a light drizzle. It was some 60 years after his loss. A young man when he died, the soldier had neither a wife nor children. None of the tissue packs was used.

On another "Do My Job, Bob," he learned how to do glass blowing, a task that seemed to particularly delight Bob. I was terrified throughout the shoot, as I spent most of my time between the table and bench in the foreground, where they were maneuvering molten glass on the end of a long tube, and the furnaces in the background, averaging about 2000 degrees.

It was a tight fit as it was, but the TV camera makes you blind to the right side and behind you, making it easy to back into something ... something very hot. Somehow, we made it through the shoot without incident.

H&J Tire in Lexington, one of my favorite businesses these days. That's my car in the background, and that's one of those pathetic not-really-a-tire spares on the front right. I popped the tire (yep, popped it -- ran into a big hole in the road) on the way home for work, but needed to be back at work before dawn the following morning. They had me changed out with a new tire, without warning, in an hour.

I love living in a small town.

Back at Smith Mountain Lake, another morning fog makes for another lovely landscape. I think I'm beginning to understand why people pay a lot of money for homes there...

This amused me. These are Northside high school students on the roof of their school building. We had all gone up there to make pictures of the student body on the playing fields below, standing in the shape of a giant pink ribbon. Climbing up the twelve-foot ladder through the hatch to get to the roof was easy enough for them, I guess. (It was somewhat more difficult for me with the tripod you see in the background and my twenty-something-pound camera -- I've had problems with that before.)

But the getting down apparently presented more of a problem. Here they look into the tiny abyss with horror.

In the end, the greatest problem was ensuring no males were beneath as they clambered down in their tiny miniskirts...

9-18-11

Dance class at the small Halestone Studio in downtown Lexington, Virginia. My view as a doting parent in the little room outside. My girl, of course, is the only one not in the proper outfit...

Another dance class, another studio space, but still operated by Halestone. Another parent watches as her daughter practices for ballet.

A scene from the Rockbridge Community Festival, when Main Street in Lexington is blocked off and filled with booths from artists and artisans as well as community organizations and political parties. I was waiting at the American Cancer Society booth to film an interview with a bicyclist riding across the nation to raise money when gusty winds blew up, threatening to carry away the tent.

The Lexington Presbyterian Church, where "Stonewall" Jackson once attended services. A fire some years ago destroyed the steeple and much of the interior. These days, there is a "controversy" -- or as close as this small town gets to one -- over whether private groups should be allowed to hang flags of their own from the lightposts, specifically whether the Sons of Confederate Veterans may hang Confederate flags on Jackson's and Robert E. Lee's birthdays (near each other -- and unfortunately near that of Martin Luther King, Jr. in January).

My father. If you want to learn more about him and me, I just did a posting at Cat Typing.

Grandparents Day at Heritage Hall, a local care facility.

From my day job, Bob Grebe interviews Virginia Tech chef Nazim Khan for the WDBJ Mornin' show outside Lane Stadium at Virginia Tech.

For about five minutes each morning, as the predawn light begins to rise, my lighting matches the background perfectly...

Each morning, in between live appearances, Bob uses a netbook to get on line and make sure the stories and background material gets on the station's website.

And finally, a fundraising concert for a small Episcopal church in Buena Vista, Virginia, by musicians Blouin and Wolfe.

Shot on a Leica M3 using a 35mm f/2 Summicron lens (the kind with the spectacles) on Kodak's BW400CN film.

Old Fiddler's Convention -- Galax, Virginia

Every year, in Galax, hundreds -- thousands -- come to celebrate Old Time and Bluegrass music at the Galax Old Time Fiddler's Convention. Naturally, we had to go and cover it, so Bob Grebe and I found ourselves there before dawn this August.

A group of musicians -- not a formal group, I think, but just a pick-up collection of friends from past conventions -- gathered on the main stage at the fairgrounds for us in the early morning darkness so that we would have some music to hear and some people to talk to about the event and why they come.

This, for example, is Roger Sprung. He is a professional musician who recorded with big bands (like Guy Lombardo big bands). His experiences alone would fill an entire newscast, let alone a two-mintute morning show insert.

We did a separate piece on the guy on the right, Fred Swedberg, a Baptist minister from Pennsylvania who also grows heirloom tomatoes. He was a delight to talk to -- Bob called him "Tomato Fred" in the later piece, done for our gardening segment on the following Wednesday. I had a hard time breaking away, not because he held me up, but because I wanted to settle in and chat all day.

Richard is a visitor from New York. He comes to the convention every year, and hopes to retire to Southwest Virginia. He loves the friendly, helpful Southern approach to life.

At one point, as they played, he did a short bass solo. I struggled to include it in our stories, but just couldn't find the place. Heartbreaking.

This amused me. All the more because it was right where we parked the satellite truck. To explain: The convention is organized and sponsored by the local Moose lodge.

Here Roger plays next to Fred's kitchen setup in the campground. The banjo he holds is from the 1920s, and includes and elaborate device that allows him to retune on the fly while playing. He's playing "Auld Lang Syne," sliding from the last note in each bar to the first note in the next by twisting little knobs and thumb flippers at the end of the neck there.

After the performance, Fred told me it was intriguing to watch Roger during jam sessions. When a good banjo player was there, Fred said Roger would really begin to show his talent and perform. When a great banjo player began to play, Roger would simply stop and listen.

The scene in the campground behind Fred's kitchen tent...

After playing for me, Roger returned to his business of the day: laying out the banjos he had brought to sell. They were works of art, artifacts from practically every era of American music.

Covering Galax's Old Fiddler's Convention never fails to make me crazy. There's a thousand stories there, and a million pictures, if you only had the time to do them...

Most of these are shot on an M3 with a 28mm f/2.8, except for the one of Richard, shot on another M3 with a 50mm. I brought the second body, knowing I was running low on film on the first (with the 50) but also knowing that I'd want to shoot a lot if I got the chance. All of the pictures are on Kodak's BW400CN film.