Pasco senior Ashton Bott finishes off her transformation into a walking dead as part of the Every 15 Minutes program, which seeks to raise awareness for drunk driving-related fatalities.
The "every 15 minutes" part refers to an old stat that claimed one death from alcohol-related accidents every 15 minutes. The rate has dropped since the program started, thanks to numerous programs aimed at getting heads pulled out of asses.
I shot some video for this and planned on editing it, having thought out a tight edit during and after shooting. Unfortunately, a last-minute A1 story came up and I had to pass the footage along to be edited. What I had envisioned as a quick 1:30 about the event clocked in at a flabby 4:09.
Now, I'm not talking shit about the coworker who edited it. I dumped it on her toward the end of her shift and it's much faster to edit loose than tight. There's that famous Mark Twain quote: “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
Well, that rings true for these multimedia pieces too, and with our current drive for quantity of videos over quality, it's tough to find the time to edit properly. Week before last, we slammed our interactive media department with four videos in one day. My fear is that by the time we get our video priorities in order, a good percentage of our readers will avoid our videos out of conditioning.
My hope is that things will settle down before that happens and we are given the time to produce some quality storytelling.
True. I got pulled away from editing the Every 15 Minutes video to go hang out in a bar and shoot some Cougar fans watch the Tar Heels smother WSU. I got an hour of overtime to hang out with a pretty fun bunch and catch the first half of a bitter Sweet 16 game. And sure, I'm pretty happy with the frame I got of a 1993 WSU alum leading the crowd in the fight song:
But I would've happily traded that to edit my own video—even from a less-than-stellar event. Why? Because every time I slog through my own footage, I learn a little more about what I need to do next time, and while we're in this orgy of video production, I want to use the lack of demand for quality to work out the kinks so when the quantity/quality formula is reciprocated, my pants are snug around my waist and not wrapped around my ankles.
But I would've happily traded that to edit my own video—even from a less-than-stellar event. Why? Because every time I slog through my own footage, I learn a little more about what I need to do next time, and while we're in this orgy of video production, I want to use the lack of demand for quality to work out the kinks so when the quantity/quality formula is reciprocated, my pants are snug around my waist and not wrapped around my ankles.
Finally, the Rev. Jesse Jackson stopped by the local WSU satellite campus to wrap up his two-day Tri-Cities tour. If you're interested, you can read about why he was visiting here and here. They served food that appeared semi-appetizing and Jackson had kind of a free form ramble. He seemed most enthused about answering students' questions, but unfortunately had a plane to catch and only had time to answer a couple.
Usually, I'm not a fan of camera awareness, but I dig this frame for some reason. It's from a story I shot a few weeks ago about a group of special olympians who bounced back from a nasty bus wreck to compete a month later. I did a video/photo multimedia mutant for this and was relatively happy with it, as well.
Monty Hays of Kennewick, who suffered hearing loss in Vietnam, cups his ears to help him hear panel members sharing stories of their dealings with the Veterans Affairs system at Worksource in Kennewick. Hays says that he has been repeatedly denied benefits by the VA. "I'm scared to even file a claim anymore," he says.
The first shot is from a tasting event sponsored by the chamber of commerce that featured local restaurants, wineries and breweries. The second is from a circus-themed bowling party for Junior Achievement.
So, I know. It's pretty weak to do these updates all on the same day, but I'm trying to make an effort to update more regularly. Here are a few sports shots I liked from the last month or so. I wish the background was cleaner on the soccer shot, but I like the triangle formed by the heads at the peak of action. Even better was that I was supposed to get a shot of that kid for a sports feature anyways. The baseball shot is nothing really special, but I liked that the dirt is still flying in the air from picking up the grounder. I still hate shooting baseball, but I'm getting better at it, at least.
A couple Sundays ago was my last Sunday on that shift rotation. I'd heard for some time that Sundays can get hairy with breaking news and as the only photographer on duty, that prospect left me excited and nervous simultaneously. After seven weeks of boring Sundays, it finally hit the fan when a body was found in the river at the same time a house in Benton City caught fire.
