...On the Road Again

It seems crazy to be driving down I-40 on a bus headed for UGA with full wireless.  I can remember my first phone that was web capable.  I never used the feature because of it's expense and that it wasn't able to really look at the real internet, but only sites that had crappy small sites that the early pda's could access.

Tomorrow, I'll load a 64G CF cards into three cameras and shoot the game.  Two hours after the last whistle, Ill have edited the entire take from 3,000 images down to about 700 or so, will have built-out a movie slideshow for the internet, and have sent it to an online drop-box site where it will be embedded into a new recruiting site that is still under construction.  Now all of this to most of you will seem pretty normal, and it is, I guess, except when I reflect on the process of the old days of how we covered football games on deadline.

In 1989, I interned at the Palm Beach Post where we would charter a plane, put two photogs and a lab tech on board and fly from West Palm to Gainesville.  We shot color slides back then.  So we'd shoot the game, and then rush to the small airport where we'd jump on our twin engine Cessna and as we climbed out, we'd use dark bags to roll film onto steel reels and then process them as we flew.  We'd use a Coleman cooler set to 110 degrees when we left so when we got back to the plane it would be about 105.  By the time we landed at the airport back in West Palm, we'd have the film all processed and in the final solution.  A shooter would pick us up at the airport and then rush us all back to the newspaper where we would dry the film and begin to edit.  Each roll cost about $7ea and the processing was around the same cost.  So we'd spend a lot of cash just to cover one game to make our deadlines for the next day's paper.

So, I'm old.  but I'm really glad that my career launched at the time it did.  I've processed black and white film, even done color prints in a hotel bathroom when I worked at the Milwaukee Journal, and now I've got 64G cards.  I love technology and the speed at which I can work these days but....

You still have to make good images.  No matter what technology brings, there will always be a need for people to shoot well, and make fantastic, important, and historical reportage of the world around us.  I'm 45 years old for a few more weeks, but I'm not done yet.  Video fascinates me as it brings in a new weapon into my arsenal with which I can bring to bear for my clients.  In a few weeks I will be launching a brand new companion website devoted only to my videography.  Stay tuned...  oh yeah, and  GO VOLS!!!  BEAT THE DAWGS!!!!   pm-r :)