shootingshooting

After getting home at 5am after working a 16 hour day, I was lucky enough to get three full hours of sleep before waking up at 8:30 and heading back to work. The team was scheduled to arrive home that afternoon and there was a homecoming celebration for them at the Dean Dome. News 14 was taking the entire ceremony live with two cameras. The addition of an extra camera makes everything much more complicated than it would normally be.

Dawson and Bill, two of the engineering crew's geniuses, accompanied me out there with a van full of equipment to meet a photographer of ours from Greensboro. Aside from the typical photog gear (camera, tripod, mics, batteries), we had all of the mixing equipment to set up as well. I was not very familiar with anything from the van load of gear the engineers brought with them, so my help was limited to running cables and doing mic checks. Despite some issues with the fiber, Bill and Dawson managed to save the day and I believe the entire 2 hours of television (including live shots of the team getting off the plan and the busses driving down I40) went off without a hitch.

I've said it before but I will not hesitate to say it again; I have a huge amount of respect for our engineering crew. This is Dawson double checking the setup. During the celebration, he would use the video switcher to switch from the other photographer's shot of whoever was speaking to my assorted crowd shots. This was the third day this week I was involved in a major event instead of being on vosot patrol, and it was pretty interesting. I had never worked with Dawson in the field before, but he did an incredible job of directing.

Before and after the celebration, Ryan was doing on-scenes with fans from inside the Dean Dome. Dawson was kind enough to grab my camera and grab a few shots for me.