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.

At the Greebrier...

The beauty of covering something like the Greenbrier Classic golf tournament is that sports events are generally catered. At someplace like the Greenbrier, that even involves white linen tablecloths for the breakfast buffet. Nice...

7-10-11 The Rest of the Roll

Martinsville Bulletin photographer Mike Wray waits on the bumper of a Horsepasture VFD fire engine at a drowning scene. Although he has an Olympus digital camera slung over his shoulder here, he pulled out a Leica M2 when he sighted the M3 I was carrying.

The drowning actually happened a way up a dirt drive, past an abandoned farmhouse on a large pond. The building was ruined in a particularly photogenic way, and he and I spent the time waiting for the authorities to let us up to the scene making artful pictures of it.

The fireman left to control traffic said it had burned down some time ago.

Preparations for flying by balloonists at the annual 4th of July Balloon Fest at VMI. I made a "nat pack" of it for the station, and managed to get these shots in the process.

Finally, some tambourines in a church pew in Buena Vista. I was working on a story about a local gospel music jamboree, and one group of singers met us there so we could interview them and record them singing in anticipation of that evening's concert.

7-10-11 First Batch

This is the studio at WDBJ7 in Roanoke, my day job. Just before the evening news, it shows co-anchors Hollani Davis and Chris Hurst, looking towards the cameras from within the newsroom. Obviously, this is before the show began.


While we're discussing my day job -- as a photographer for channel 7 -- here is reporter Joe Dashiell working on a story in nearby Buchanan, Virginia. We were there for the town's fair, a fundraiser for the volunteer fire department, and after a morning of filming had stopped in the local lunch place (still inside the local drugstore) for sandwiches. Joe then took advantage of the air conditioning while writing his story for that evening's newscast. We reported live from the town.


A view of the stands at the Roanoke Valley Horse Show in the Salem Civic Center. I was there to shoot the final championship in hunter-jumper, and had ensconced myself next to the official video camera on a platform at the end of the rink. The two men on seated, one above the other, on the right are riders awaiting their turns.


Below the platform where I was, on the rail, were the EMTs and other hangers on. I was never quite sure whether the fellow in plaid, for example, was competitor in another event, a stable hand, a trainer, or what. He did have the air of a man who knows and works a lot with horses, though...


As I left and looked back, I was struck by the scene of riders coming and going into the arena from the stable area that had been erected in the civic center parking lot. It was around 9 pm, and so in total darkness. I tried an exposure anyway -- maybe at 1/8th of a second? It's a little motion blurred, I fear...


A scene from Rockbridge County: Jacob's Ladder Road, just outside Lexington. In the distance is House Mountain, a local -- or rather The local landmark, visible in one way or another (from the side it's revealed to be not so much a mountain as two parallel ridges) from most all of the county.

You may be struck by the pastoral beauty of the scene. It's one of the many reasons why I choose to live in Lexington.


And finally, a scene of accidental domestic art: my kids' toys and shoes in the sunlight on our back porch.

While I set up this blog exclusively to post photos, I must admit some hesitancy. Any honest photographer will tell you that not every picture can be a great work of art. Frequently, we're lucky to get two or three nice images out of every 40 or 50. (I used to say "out of every roll of 36," but as film has become rarer and rarer, I worry that not all readers would understand.)

There are many other photo blogs that I follow. Some have a Leica theme, some a street photography theme. Some just ruminate about photography in general. I confess to not infrequently looking at the pictures and wondering: Really? This is the best he could find? And so, I envision others looking at my pictures and doing the same. Well, I guess that's fair enough.

This is what I did in July -- or at least part of what I shot in part of July. I've been shooting lately with a Leica M3 using a 50mm f/2 lens. I load the camera with Kodak BW400CN film -- great stuff, I think, that I date when I pull it out of the camera. So this was the roll I took out and processed on July 10. Thus the title of this post.

However, I haven't managed to go through all the pics yet -- there is some inevitable Photoshopping to get the contrasts right, take all the color out, and so on, to make it look just the way I want. Hence: First Batch.