December 9, 2009
I recently reached the 10th anniversary of my leaving print journalism for the Web and, in reflecting upon some of the personal developments during that decade, I noted with some remorse my separation from one of my childhood loves — my subscription to Sports Illustrated. As a sports junkie and participant, plus a budding sportswriter, SI was my Bible. However, with the proliferation of instant score gratification and sports analysis on the Web, SI’s weekly format and in-depth, albeit well-crafted, prose no longer fit into my what’s-happening-this-millisecond lifestyle.
But, like the ugly high-school duckling who shows up to the reunion as the swan you wish you’d asked to the prom, SI is poised for a dramatic return — more beautiful, hip and engaging than ever.
C’mon, admit it, if you’re like me, you want this badly. Real badly.
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October 27, 2009
As my multimedia ideas and capabilities have evolved, it has been nice to intersect them with the evolution of jazz trumpeter Thomas Marriott, one of my favorite musicians and friend. Marriott on Sunday headlined a concert for the Earshot Jazz Festival, considered by Downbeat to be “Seattle’s most important annual jazz event.” The concert, at Tula’s in Seattle, highlighted Marriott’s own works, which are formidable, and Marriott had a great supporting cast, which included local sax player Mark Taylor and pianist Travis Shook, an electric performer who was in from New York City for the show.
I’m a big fan of jazz and a big fan of trumpet players, dating back to Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan and Miles Davis and stretching to Wynton Marsalis, whom I started following when he was just a young lion in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Marriott is moving into the realm of the former because he’s more of an artist than musician, with inventive and emotive approaches to his tunes. I never get tired of his music.
This is my third post about Marriott, and each has discussed a shooting (still and video) environment with its own unique challenges. The first shoot took place at Ama Ama, a restaurant and bar with no stage and little ambient lighting; the second shoot was at The Triple Door, with its big stage and good stage lighting. Tula’s, which has been the local showcase for jazz, is more typical of jazz clubs you’ll find in other parts of the country, with a small stage engulfed by tables and a bar, with stage lighting that is a bit more localized.
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October 13, 2009
When critics accuse journalists of “being in bed” with some of their sources, I don’t think they mean it literally. But occasionally it happens. And in the “real world,” it can be the stuff of major scandal.
Just two years ago, Mirthala Salinas, an anchor for the Spanish-language network Telemundo, became the source of national headlines when her affair with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa became public. Salinas was suspended without pay and subsequently reassigned (banished, really) by Telemundo and her once-rising star has been shot down. Her crime — covering the mayor while she was romantically involved with him — is considered a clear conflict of interest by the news industry and the public at large.
Which begs the question: Is sports no longer part of the real world? Where I live, in Seattle, Wash., sports reporter Lisa Gangel of KING-TV is engaged to Patrick Kerney, a defensive end for the NFL’s Seahawks. I’d really not thought a lot about that until, channel surfing last Sunday, I happened across a Seahawks post-game show on KING and there was Gangel on the broadcast. Interesting — Salinas covers her love interest and gets drummed into obscurity; Gangel covers hers and is named recently by SeattlePI.com sports columnist Jim Moore, (in the interest of full disclosure, a friend of mine), the sexiest female sports personality in Seattle.
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September 21, 2009
I got an opportunity to do a short photo shoot of jazz legend McCoy Tyner’s visit to KPLU, the NPR affiliate in Seattle. First of all, I was really thrilled because he still is a vibrant performer, though he is one of the last from the truly golden era of jazz. He is closely associated with John Coltrane, but stands more than firmly on his own. Just find a version of his “Search for Peace,” one of my all-time favorite songs (also see the bottom of a previous post Jazz and the Flip Mino HD Camera). It’ll move you, for sure.
Tyner is humble and easy going. I got a chance to speak to him for 5-10 minutes and it wasn’t nearly as terrifying as it could have been. I often get intimidated speaking to artists, as opposed to athletes, mostly because I’m afraid my very crowded memory will fail me. I tend to remember when a basketball player scored 40 points in a game a lot better than who played the bass on a certain recording with a certain artist.
McCoy Tyner waiting for his on-air session at KPLU.
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July 22, 2009
NEW ORLEANS — We think a lot of time has passed — four years — and therefore much has changed since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood. Shockingly not as much has changed as you might expect.
I’m down here for a basketball tournament, but cannot help but be captivated by the continuing reminder of loss and rebuilding that has not happened quickly enough.
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June 10, 2009
Next week at ESPN HoopGurlz we are launching a three-day series of featurettes on the players we considered for the No. 1 ranking in the 2011 class. We will unveil our choice on Thursday. The candidates are (spoiler alert) Cierra Burdick of Matthews, N.C.; Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis of Anaheim, Calif., and Elizabeth Williams of Virginia Beach, Va.
Kaleena is one of my subjects, so while I was in Orange County last month, I stopped by her place to shoot a portrait. Since we’ve already run so many different shots of her, I wanted something different. This is what I came up with:
Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis
I believe I do a decent job at action and environmental portraits and want to get better at doing more-formal sitdown shots. That requires mastering the lighting and other variables that help bring out the subject’s personality. This is going to be a tale of how I bumbled into what I feel is a pretty good shot.
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May 14, 2009
I was present during the birth of my two daughters, Sassia and Mika, and, believe me, there’s nothing like it. I also was at the figurative birth of Thomas Marriott’s latest creation, the “Flexicon” CD. And that, too, was awesome.
In my opinion, the highlight of the performance, as well as the CD, is Marriott’s tune, “Little Frances,” about his daughter. To some, it is a melancholy song, so much that Marriott says people sometimes ask if anything is wrong with Frances (a resounding, “No!”). I hear a father’s emotional homage to his daughter, and the flugelhorn Marriott used during the CD release party gave it a light and playful touch (check out the clip):
This clip, by the way, was exactly what Florangela Davila and I needed for our video project on Marriott and the KPLU School of Jazz. I open with his fingers on the valves, in front of the mic, and pan to a full shot of Marriott and his horn, to first surprise, then answer (just as one of my mentors, Travis Fox, once instructed).
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May 8, 2009
I know many of my posts have been trying to explain how I’ve done something, with the idea being it might help someone else learn how to do that something. I’ve also blogged about how not to do something, in hopes that someone else will avoid someone else’s mistakes. This is a hybrid — how I did something, so someone else could avoid my mistakes.
First things first: Ever since I contemplated doing video, Ganon Baker has been at the forefront of the subjects I wanted to take on. I’ve been going to the Nike Skills Academy for Girls in Beaverton, Ore., for several years now and Baker has been captivating that whole time. He crackles with energy, says funny things and is capable of mythologized physical feats.
So here’s the product, done for ESPN HoopGurlz though some of you may be seeing it here before it gets posted there:
It’s a nice little video story. But it really could have been better.
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May 6, 2009
As I have been learning to be a photographer, I’ve had it drummed into my head to back up my files. I even witnessed a great reason why — a couple of my friends and mentors re-used a CF card without first dumping it, thus losing an entire shoot (this of course back in the day when the cards were astronomically priced and therefore, in some instances, shared). So I have my photographic files on at least three drives and, since two of those drives are redundant, it’s technically five.
Teammates at New Leadership in Springfield, Mass.
What do I keep? Anything resembling a picture. The blurry stuff I usually delete in camera. I also don’t keep the referee-butt images (which I call “doing the butt”) that feed my photographic fish stories (I had this award-winning shot, but a referee ran into the frame as I squeezed the shutter).
In my recent post, Girl-Wide View, I outlined my mission in photographing girl’s basketball players and how I, in the main, try to avoid the “funny face factor” in order to show girls in a positive light. Hanging on to what essentially would be outtakes in this context seems a waste, right? Not unless you consider a photographer’s mission is to tell and illustrate stories.
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April 28, 2009
The relationship between reporters and editors often is about as smooth and stable as a ride on Splash Mountain. A lot of reporters tend to regard editors as people who attend meetings, place casual utterances onto a budget and ask for stories never truly envisioned, or ruin the “voice” in a story, among other things. Editors generally are, through the eyes of many reporters, nuisances or do-nothings — or both.
Pieces still missing.
Having occupied both seats (including both seats simultaneously as I do now), I understand why, given their release by Hearst and about a year’s pay in severance, several former reporters from the
now-defunct print version of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (P-I) banded together and created their version of journalism Nirvana — a vision of news without the filter of editors imprisoned in ivory towers. It’s like cutting out middle management in, say, the Army, allowing the men and women on the ground to fight each battle without the interference of the generals. Who knows better than the soliders in the trenches, after all?
With my reporter’s hat on, I cry, “Woo Hoo!” But, my editor’s or consumer’s hat pulled tightly over my eyes, I whisper, “Disaster … “
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