I have never been a fan of Christmas. This probably stems from the fact that I was raised Jewish. The obnoxious music doesn't help matters. My wife, however, loves Christmas. She has fond memories of spending time with her family, getting presents and doing whatever else people do for the holiday. This year she is bummed because her family isn't having a big celebration, so I planed to surprise her with a Christmas tree.

I arrived at Home Depot alone, which was my first mistake. I obviously didn't think my plan through very carefully. When I got there, only two trees were left on the rack outside. As I was checking them out, a couple drove by and pointed at them. Thinking I needed to act fast, I ran in and told someone I wanted to buy one. They told me to wait outside and someone would be there soon.

I went back out, staked my claim on the larger of the two trees and tried to keep myself warm. Twenty minutes later my extremities were numb, but no sales associates had arrived, so I went back in and asked again. They directed me to the other outside - the garden section.  There were hundreds of trees out there - doh! I chose a nice fat one and waited while the guy wrapped it in mesh. I was hoping someone would help me carry it out, but no such luck.

That thing was heavy! At first I tried to grab it on both sides to avoid getting my jacket dirty, but I could only carry it a few feet before I had to put it down. I gave up that method, bear hugged it and headed to my car. Now you have to imagine me waddling like a duck and bumping into things.

Finally I made it to my car. I looked at the roof and back to the tree and wondered how the hell I would get one onto the other.  I brought a sheet to keep my nice new car from getting scratched. I thought that a fitted sheet would work best, because the elastic ends could go over the top and bottom of the tree to keep it on, but I miscalculated the size of the tree. It was way bigger than the sheet. The elastic made the sheet even smaller by bunching up every time I tried to wrap it around the tree. After a few unsuccessful attempts to get the sheet around the tree, I held it in place with one had and lifted the tree with the other. I got it up near the top of the car, but couldn't make it all the way.

At this point I started looking around the parking lot for someone to help me. If it was warmer outside or earlier in the day, there may have been some day-laborers around, but not tonight. A few unsuccessful attempts later I realized I needed a new plan. This time I tried putting the sheet on top of the car and lifting the tree up onto it. I tried, but couldn't lift the tree up over the exposed portions of my car's beautiful paint.

Finally I draped the sheet halfway over the roof and left part of it hanging over the side of the car. I lifted the tree up, put it against the sheet and slid both onto the roof. I had enough foresight to bring a rope, with I used to secure it to the roof by wrapping it through the open car windows and took a chilly ride home. Next year there won't be a surprise. If she wants a stupid tree, she's coming with me to buy it!

Emily and I went to the Jon Stewart / Stephen Colbert rally yesterday to shoot some behind the scenes footage for Comedy Central and FutureView, the event's production company. We arrived at 9:00am and the National Mall was already starting to fill up. Because we were there to shoot behind the scenes footage, we had all-access passes, which allowed us to go backstage and hang out with all of the celebrities. When we first arrived, we heard a band rehearsing. I though they were doing a cover of a Black Sabbath song, but when they were done, Ozzy Osbourne walked out of the trailer! Everywhere we looked there were famous people. We saw all the Daily Show correspondents, Stephen Colbert, Kid Rock, Cat Stevens, John Legend, The Roots, Sheryl Crow, and Tony Bennett. But the ones I was most excited about were the Mythbusters! When I saw Adam Savage walking toward the VIP tent, I made Emily wait with me while he walked past. I was so nervous, I almost peed myself. Jamie was already in the tent. I wanted to go say hi, but I decided it would be better not to bother them.

We spent the first few hours before the event started shooting footage of the production staff - the director, audio mixer, lighting director, etc. Then when it was about to begin, Emily, Ted and I got strapped in and took a ride on the scissor lift. Most of the big overhead pictures above are from the top of the lift. I got some great shots, but the stupid still photographer up there with us wouldn't stand still, so most of the shots are shaky.

During the event, we were just a few feet from the stage and went back to the VIP tent a few times to see what everyone was up to. Overall, the event was amazing. The performers were great and everyone seemed to have fun. But most importantly, there were three times as many people there than at the Glenn Beck rally.

Note: This is a video I edited for the campaign, not the one I was shooting.

Thursday I did a shoot for the Brown Bailout campaign. The point of the video was to make fun of UPS's attempt to change Federal regulations to benefit themselves and hurt FedEx. We shot around the Capitol building with the Brown Bailout Guy (a character you'll probably recognize from all the advertisements on Youtube) dressed as a hunter, chasing the "Lame Duck Congress". It was a fun shoot, because the Capitol police let us do whatever we wanted. It was absurd at times. At one point the Capitol police asked us what we were doing, but the second I flashed my press pass, he turned around and walked away. I couldn't believe what they let us get away with. We had the Brown Bailout Guy pulling a decoy duck out of the reflecting pool, dancing around the Capitol lawn holding a big net and even riding a Segway while making duck calls into a bullhorn!

NASA

I was in Houston for a couple days last week doing a shoot at NASA. We were shooting in building 9, where the astronauts are trained using exact replicas of the space shuttle, International Space Station and various Russian capsules. The mock-ups had to be set up exactly like the real shuttle and ISS, down to the placement of each square of velcro.

We arrived at NASA at 7:00am on the day of the shoot, quickly set up and started filming. I was able to get some shots from the visitor's walkway overlooking the mock-ups, before the sound guy and gaffer arrived. They showed up around 7:30 and we set up for the first interview, which was with the head trainer / facility manager. Afterward, I took some shots of the exterior of the ISS and the cockpit of the shuttle. Next, we interviewed one of the engineers, who gave a good technical background about the training modules. Then we set up for astronaut Anna Lee Fisher, the most important interview of the day. Our producer, Capella, was completely star struck and made a point of getting a picture with her afterward.

When the interviews were finished, I spent the rest of the day wandering around the building in amazement and shooting the interior of the ISS and other mock-ups. It ended up being one of the most relaxing shoot days I've ever had. If only they could all be that easy!

Almost Epic Fail

Yesterday I was hired to shoot a video for an event downtown. I got there at 7:00 am and shot some footage of people arriving and mingling at the breakfast reception. They started the speeches around 8:30 and I had a prime spot with a view of the Capitol building right behind the speakers. When they finished the introductory speeches, they moved the lectern out of the way and prepared for the ribbon cutting to kick off the event. The event organizers made a point of discussing the ribbon cutting in all of the pre-event conference calls. I had to get the shot.

The minute they moved the lectern, I ripped my camera off the tripod and ran to get a better view. I jumped into place and focused my camera just in time for them to cut the ribbon. When it was over, I looked up into the corner of my viewfinder and realized that my camera hadn't been recording. I must have hit the button while I was running! I panicked for a minute and told the producer and director that we had to re-stage it. They quickly found some tape, while I told the event organizers that I wanted to re-do the ribbon cutting so I could get a better angle (or some crap). They posed for pictures, while the producer and director scrambled to find another ribbon and tape it up. I got everyone back in position, handed them the giant scissors and had them do it again. They didn't seem to mind and I made sure to get the shot this time. The rest of the day went fine and the video will turn out nicely, but they would have been pissed if I didn't have the shot of them cutting the ribbon!

Hardball with Chris Matthews picked up a soundbite from an interview that Emily shot for the PBS Newshour! Check out the whole interview (her bite is 1:10 into the segment).

New Job Update

So far I’m liking my new job. It is similar to my old job, but the projects are a bit different. I enjoy knowing my schedule ahead of time and being able to plan for the shoots (something I couldn’t do very much of in the news business). I’m also getting to do a fair amount of travel. Last week I went to NYC for the day. As usual, I had to drag a heavy light kit on the train, but at least I had a production assistant meet me at Penn Station to help with the shoot. I was only there for the day, so I shot an interview and caught the 5:00pm train home.

Two weeks ago I went to Detroit for a shoot. The client was holding a small event in conjunction with the huge classic car rally that was happening that week. Detroit reminded me of Daytona Beach during bike week, only it was cars instead of motorcycles. At night, after the shoot was over, the producer and director wanted to go to the casino. I don’t really like gambling, but I had to go, because our dinner reservations were at a restaurant in the casino. They played craps after dinner. I didn’t know how to play, so I just watched, but they won a ton of money. If I had known they were good at it, I would have just bet on whatever they did! At least now I have a very cursory understanding of the game.

Later this month I’m suppose to go to California. Unfortunately the client is very secretive about the whole thing, so I don’t know the dates, the city or anything about the shoot. Hopefully I’ll know more soon and won’t end up having to wear a blindfold on the plane!

Sony Shoot

Last week I went on my first location shoot with my new job. We were shooting promo videos for Sony's new 3D TVs. Mark (my new boss), Roy (a freelance cameraman) and I headed to San Diego early Wednesday morning. We met up with Jennifer from the PR firm the owns my company and made it to Sony headquarters that afternoon. The set designers and gaffer had been there most of the day, so the engineering space where we were shooting already looked like a mad scientist's lab when we arrived. It was great; there were waveform monitors and vector scopes everywhere, along with a ton of props brought by the set designer and of course the Sony TVs. We spent the next few hours tweaking the lights and finalizing the set design.

Before we left for the night, Ray from Sony gave us tickets to a professional woman's tennis match that his company was sponsoring. Most of us had never been to a pro tennis match, so we headed over there. It was really exciting. The #2 ranked woman in the world, who I had never heard of before that night, Jelena Jankovic, was playing. We settled in with some food and drinks and watched her lose.

The next morning, we arrived early and made the final adjustments to the set and lighting. Ray and Arturo (one of Sony's 3D TV engineers) were the stars of the show. They went through three half-improvised, half-scripted demonstrations about the features of Sony's 3D TVs. At lunch, we came up with some funny "that's what she said" jokes to go into the segments and filmed them at the end of the day, but I doubt they'll be seen outside of my edit suite.

The TVs themselves were really amazing. The image quality was, in many ways, better than what you see at the theater. The image was bright and clear and it really looked like things were popping out of the screen. Now I've got to start saving up for one.

Overall, the shoot went well. I really enjoyed working with a larger crew. When I was shooting news, I had to bring all the lights, camera and sound gear myself and I had to be the set designer and sometimes the makeup person. It was nice not having to worry about everything.

New Job, New Belt

I just finished the first week at my new job and so far so good! I'm now the director of photography / video editor at Proof. It's a small creative agency owned by a large PR firm. I like that it retains the small company feel, but draws on the resources of a larger organization.

I spent most of the week trying to get my head around all of the projects they have going on. I will have to learn quickly, because next week the main freelance editor will be gone for the political season and I will have to take over. On top of all the editing, we are going to San Diego for a shoot next Wednesday through Friday. Then in two weeks, we're going to Detroit for another shoot. I love shooting on location and I'm looking forward to all of the travel.

My other big news this week is that I got my blue belt in Jiu-Jitsu. I've been training for over a year now, but still don't feel ready to move past white belt. It's such a complex sport and there is still so much I have to learn. I'll probably never feel like I know enough. I guess that's a good thing and the reason I keep coming to class. Regardless, it feels good to be making progress and I can definitely tell I'm getting better. Emily has been taking kickboxing classes for a year as well, so if we ever got in a fight, it would at least be interesting to watch!

Photos from Road Trip

Here are some photos from my road trip with Beth. Too bad we had to cut it short, because there were some beautiful landscapes along the way! Check out the photo set on my Flickr page.

Photos from Alaska

I uploaded some pictures from our cruise to Alaska. Check out my Flicker set.

Things have been pretty crazy around here. After Turtle was attacked, we had to bring him to the vet every couple days for a few weeks to get his bandages changed. I spent much of the time researching the dog bite laws and trying to figure out if we could get the owner of the dogs who attacked him to pay for the vet bills. Kat and I visited a free legal clinic and they said our first option should be to contact the guy's home owner's insurance and file a claim. My neighbor called his insurance to file a claim, but didn't do much follow up. I got the policy number and claim information from him and called them every day. Eventually they asked me to fax over all of the vet bills. Kat helped us write a letter to the dog owner and his insurance company to prove our case. Finally I got a call from the insurance agent saying they would pay the claim! It was a huge relief to get back the $5,000+ we paid for his treatment.

Last week Emily, my mom, sister and I went on a cruise to Alaska! There wasn't much to do on the boat, but we did get plenty of good gym and reading time. The excursions were the highlight of the trip. We hiked to the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, biked and hiked in Sitka and went on zip lines in Ketchikan. Lindsey drove the kitchen staff crazy with her complicated orders. She had to put her special orders in the night before, but by the time she sat down for dinner, she had either changed her mind or decided to eat elsewhere. I felt bad for the dining manager. She told him that she was a vegan, so she could order off the vegan menu, but would then order a rack of lamb to go with her vegetables.

On the way back from the cruise, Emily and I got stuck in Minneapolis. The airline put us up in a hotel and gave us meal tickets for dinner. We got to the hotel just after 11:00pm and the kitchen had just closed. We woke up very early the next morning, fought the mob of people trying to get on the 5:30am bus back to the airport and finally made it home on Sunday.

The day I got back to work, I put in two weeks notice at my job. The previous week I found out that I got the job I had been applying for at Proof. I will still be shooting and editing video, but I will be working on much higher end productions at my new job. My goal was to learn about this type of video production to broaden my experience in the video industry. I'll let you know how it goes!

At first it was cute when the neighborhood kids came to visit Turtle, but now it's getting annoying. I made the mistake of letting them play my Playstation once, now they're over every day. They hardly even pay attention to Turtle anymore. They just want to play videogames and eat my food. One of the kids even tried opening my door to let himself in without even knocking. Ugh. I have started using excuses like, "Turtle is sleeping, you'll have to come back later", but Turtle doesn't know how to play along with it. He gets up and meets them at the door with his tail wagging.

Today, I vowed to not answer the door if they knocked, but one of them caught me while I was putting out the trash. Soon I will have to resort to harsher measures.

My dog Turtle was viciously attacked by my neighbor's dog. He is alive and will recover, but it has been a tough week.

Last Saturday, I flew to San Francisco to help my friend Beth drive across the country; she is moving to the Philadelphia area. We planed to take a leisurely trip along I-80 and stop at all of the usual tourist spots. The first night we made it to Reno. The second night, as we were arriving in Salt Lake City, I got a call from Emily.

She was out walking the dogs in the alley behind our house. The neighbor's large, wild dogs broke away from his control and jumped on Turtle, biting him and tearing a huge gash across his back. The guy didn't do anything to try to get his dogs off Turtle, but another neighbor saw the attack and kicked the dogs until they let go. Emily rushed him to the vet. When she called me, they didn't think he had a good chance of surviving. They were able to stabilize him that night and the next day he seemed strong enough to undergo surgery.

The vet cleaned out his wounds and stapled him shut. He stayed there for a few days recovering and gaining strength. Meanwhile, Beth and I drove from Salt Lake City to DC in two days. I was incredibly worried about Turtle and I felt horrible that Emily had to deal with it by herself. I just wanted to be back with them. Beth and I got in to DC on Tuesday night; Wednesday Turtle was ready to come home.

The last few days Emily and I have been keeping up with his rigorous schedule of medicines and warm compresses. He is spending most of his time in bed resting, but does go walk around in the yard a few times a day. Our neighbors have been great. Many of them have come over to visit him and bring treats. Even some of the neighborhood kids have stopped by. Turtle will need one more surgery and a long period of recovery, but he will eventually be ok.

I spent the beginning of last week in Pennsylvania shooting a story for the PBS NewsHour about the Democratic Senate primary race between Arlen Specter and Joe Sestak. I went with producer Sarah Clune and correspondent Judy Woodruff, who were both really great to work with. Sarah was incredibly organized - the essential quality of a good producer.

Most of the days were spent following the candidate to their rallies. I have attended many rallies for presidential candidates, but I can't remember ever going to a rally for a congressional candidate. They were hilarious. Joe Sestak gave a speech in a suburb outside of Philadelphia from the bed of a pickup truck. Arlen Specter gave one in a union hall where there were more people on stage than in the audience. Sarah and I felt really bad for him after that one.

Unfortunately, some of my favorite footage didn't make it into the piece. We spent a couple hours at the famous Pat's cheese-steak restaurant. I got some great shots from inside the kitchen of them cooking the meat and making the sandwiches and we shot some vox pops with the customers, but the segment got cut. We also spent a lot of time trying to get nice shots of the skyline. I got some from the Phillies stadium and some from the top of a parking garage at Drexel University, but those didn't make it into the piece either.

Like most of these trips, the days were packed. When we were done shooting, I couldn't just go to sleep. I still had to offload all of the footage from my camera to external hard drive for Sarah to log and transcribe. Monday we left the hotel at 7:30am, shot all day, interviewed Joe Sestak at 9:00 that night and didn't get to bed until 2:00am Tuesday. I shot over six hours of material and WETA shot a couple more, but when it was done being edited, the piece was only ten minutes long.

Here's a link to the video.

Last week the Prime Minster of Singapore was in town for the Nuclear Summit. Actually, just about all the world leaders were in town, but I was shooting for Singapore based Channel News Asia, so he was the one I was focused on (Singaporeans just call him "PM" - like "Let's go film PM giving a speech"). The Nuclear Summit was held at the Washington Convention Center and they had the whole place fenced off for a few blocks in every direction. It was a huge pain trying to get into the convention center, because there was only one entrance and it was nowhere near the metro or any other convenient access point. I spent most of my time carrying my heavy gear in a large circle around the building. When I did get inside, the shooting schedule was a bit frantic. I had to run from PM's meeting with Hillary Clinton to the Group Photo with all the world leaders, to the Plenary Meeting, to PM's meeting with the Crown Prince of UAE and back to the media center to send everything. On Tuesday, Obama gave his big wrap up speech, which I filmed from the "cuts riser" off to the side of the stage. The riser was mobbed by still photographers, many of whom acted like it was a trampoline, making it hard for me to get steady shots. Finally the CNN cameraman and I yelled at them enough times to make them stand still and we were able to get some nice shots of the President.

On Wednesday, I followed PM to Chicago along with a hoard of Singaporean journalists and his large delegation. We covered his speeches, his meeting with Richard Daily (it was fun going to Daily's office), his meeting with the President of the University of Chicago and his lunch with Singaporean ex-pats. But the highlight of the trip was, of course, the food. I brought the journalists to Due's for deep dish pizza the first night we were there. They loved it and wanted more. The next night we tried to go to Gino's East, but it was closed by the time we got there around 11pm, so we went to Giordano's instead. After two nights of deep dish pizza, I couldn't look at a slice of pizza for days (a rarity for me). I got back into DC on Saturday and had barely enough time to rest, before starting another hectic week.

Tuesday was The Week Magazine's awards dinner. I was in charge of our technical operations, which meant setting up the cameras, switcher, record deck, live digitize computer and live streaming computer. The event itself was interesting - it was headlined by Rahm Emanuel and featured a panel discussion with Rep. Eric Cantor, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Gov. Ed Rendell and Steve Schmidt. Afterward, Kate and I were at the office until 5:30am editing video segments for their website.

The rest of the week was spent shooting interviews with Sen. Inhoff, Gov. Pataki, Dick Morris and Grover Norquist, chasing around people in whale costumes for an anti-whaling documentary and crash editing a video for the Lowell School that we shot a year ago, but have basically forgotten about until now. Hopefully this coming week will be a bit less hectic.

My mom was in town for the AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) meeting last week. I was there to shoot the Netanyahu speech. They let all of the journalists in early and gave us a disgusting (although I'm not complaining because it was free) dinner. When they let the general public in, I was sitting at the press tables talking to some journalists. I watched my mom climb onto the press riser and ask the other camera-people about me. When she couldn't find me, she left something near my camera. Finally I went over and met her. She had brought me a sandwich wrapped in a napkin. They all laughed, but said that they have Jewish mothers as well, so they understand.

Tuesday I went to NYC for the day to shoot an interview with Karl Rove for Politico.com. I took the 8:00am Acela train up there with all of my gear - two full light kits, camera, tripod, laptop, microphones and a ton of other stuff. Last time I was up there, I learned the hard way that some of the escalators in Penn Station are too narrow for my gear cart. This time I got off the train and headed straight for the freight elevator. About 15 other people seemed to think I knew what I was doing, so they followed me on. When the elevator was full, someone pressed the button. Nothing happened. They manually closed the doors. Still nothing. Everyone started looking at me, expecting me to know how to operate it. I just shrugged. They noticed a rope hanging from a cage door and pulled it down. Finally the elevator started moving. We went up to the top and the doors opened into what looked like a freight dock. So they decided to close the doors and go back down. Everyone got off where they started, looking a bit discouraged.

The interview was conducted at the Simon and Schuster office, located across the street from Rockefeller Center. I met Nathan, the B-camera operator, an hour and a half before the shoot was meant to start. It takes at least an hour to set up a decent looking two camera shoot. While we were setting up, there was a woman standing around chatting with us who I assumed was Rove's press secretary. I didn't pay much attention to her at first, but she started talking about all of her recent press appearances and I suddenly realized who she was - Dana Perino, the White House Press Secretary under G.W. Bush!

Rove arrived right on time for the interview. I asked Tammy, the executive producer, to clap to help me sync the cameras in post production. Rove took it upon himself to clap and he thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. He kept clapping and yelling things like "quiet on the set" until we were ready to start. Towards the end of the interview we were really rushed for time, because Rove had to be at the Charlie Rose show. Suddenly one of his assistants walked right into the shot and stood behind him typing on her blackberry. I could have killed her. We had no time to re-ask the question, so there was nothing I could do to fix the shot. Click here to watch the full interview.

Wednesday, I spent all day editing. That night I went to the premier of the new Discovery Channel series 'Life'. It was a great event. They had the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra playing the score for the screening and the food was outstanding. They served fried mac n' cheese balls, sweet potato fries and mini cheese burgers before the screening and sushi, steak, stir fry, and all kinds of delicious desserts afterwords. Plus there was a full open bar the whole time.

Friday I shot an interview with Rep. Kingston from Georgia. When I got there, I learned that they wanted to move the interview to the Capitol Building. As we headed downstairs to the underground tram, which connects the Rayburn Building to the Capitol, he grabbed my light kit. It was really nice of him, but I really didn't want him to carry it. Especially because it is by far my heaviest piece of gear. I asked for it back a few times, but he wouldn't relent. He ended it carrying it on the tram and all the way to the Capitol.

Last Friday was the latest interview in Politico's Inside Obama's Washington series. This time it was with White House budget director, Peter Orszag. The interview was conducted in one of the War Rooms in the Old Executive Office Building. This was the third "War Room" we've shot in. The shoot went well, but I made the mistake of telling the producer that I would send her approval copies before finishing the edit. The problem was that I forgot how long it takes to export preview copies. So I started editing in the afternoon, but didn't leave work until 11:30pm.

I've spent all this week editing the Legal Momentum video that I shot in NYC. It has been a long, labor intensive project, as all corporate videos are. Most of the video was pretty easy to edit, but one section has caused a ton of problems. It's a section about domestic violence, but we obviously can't show pictures of spousal abuse. The rest of the video I've been able to use generic shots of women when I didn't know what else to show, but I can't do that for this section. Finally, one of my co-workers had the idea to show closeups of a woman's hands doing domestic chores. So I shot some video of Kate washing dishes and making tea. It sort of worked, but we'll see what the client thinks. I hope they like it, because the video is suppose to be done early next week and I don't have anything else that I can use.

Emily's sister Rebecca got Married in Cincinnati last week. Em, Kat and I left DC on Tuesday, the day of the second big snow storm. We decided that it would be too dangerous to drive north through the blizzard, so we went south instead. Tuesday night we stayed in Knoxville (yeah, we went that far south) and left for Cincinnati the next morning. We stopped for lunch at a small diner in Lexington, Kentucky, which made everyone sick. Emily and Kat then had to check out every little boutique in the city before getting back on the road.

We arrived in Cincinnati in time for them to go to the bridal shower. I ate Gold Star chili (bad idea) and read Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations in the hotel room. Thursday, we helped them set up the reception hall and went to the rehearsal.

Friday, I went to Skyline Chili with Todd, Tom and Dan to avenge my initial experience with Cincinnati chili. This time it was much better. It may have been the fact that the restaurant seemed more hygienic and the people handling the food wore gloves, but it did seem like the food was actually better.

That night was the wedding. The service was held in a church and they decided to do the entire Catholic mass. Emily and I kept ourselves entertained during the service by taking lots of pictures. The reception was held at a site near our hotel. Emily's aunt wasn't feeling well and wanted to go back to her room, but she wouldn't leave until she got a piece of cake. So throughout the toasts, she stood next to the cake with her plate and fork at the ready. I think she got a piece before the bride and groom even got theirs. The rest of the wedding went off without a hitch and everyone had fun.

We took the northerly route home and continued our quest to stop at every Starbucks on the route (or at least that's what it felt like). In West Virginia, we followed the map to what was suppose to be a Starbucks in Wheeling. We ended up at a casino. It was the strangest thing; the people looked like zombies. They were all staring slack-jawed into their slot machines, only moving one finger to press the button. The repetitive tones played by the machines seemed to hypnotize them. I don't think we could have pulled them away from the games if we tried. I met a guy with a custom made, air-brushed shirt that said "Diceman N' Da House".

I spent the last few days shooting in NYC. I love going there, but I hate dragging all the equipment around with me. This trip was worse than usual on the crap-I-had-to-drag-around front. I brought a light kit, two cameras, clothes, a tripod, a bag of peripherals and a laptop. So I had to take the train with a cart piled high with gear, a backpack and a tripod over my shoulder. Where are the sherpas when you need them?

Wednesday I met up with Erin, who works for Legal Momentum, a non profit which deals mostly with women's issues. We drove out to Queens to meet with a woman who works as an electrician and teaches at a local vocational high school. We interviewed her in the classroom and followed her around as she helped the students. The next stop was the Legal Momentum office in Manhattan. It was a huge challenge trying to find a parking spot. Eventually we gave up and paid $26(!) to park in a lot for three hours. I filmed them having a fake staff meeting and interviewed several of them about the organization.

When the shoot was over, I got a call from my office saying that I had to dress up for my shoot at the New York Stock Exchange the next day. Here's the thing, I'm a cameraman. I never have to dress up. I barely have any fancy clothes at home and I certainly didn't bring any of them to New York. So I called my friend Aaron and asked about the dress code at the NYSE. He said that he's always worn jeans when shooting there. I didn't want to take a chance, so I went clothes shopping. Too bad the stores were all closed by the time I started. I ended up going out to Brooklyn to meet Aaron at a bar and borrow a sport-coat from him. Thursday I went down to the NYSE at 8am. I wore the sport-coat and jeans and no one said a word.

I was there to shoot more B-roll to sell through Getty Images. My company has been making a few thousand dollars a month off some old standard definition footage, so we decided to get some new shots in HD. I wasn't suppose to be there until 9:00, but I arrived early because I knew it would take awhile to get through security. By 9:00 I was on a balcony overlooking the trading floor. They let me stay until 9:45, way longer than I expected. I got some great footage that I'm sure will pay my salary for years to come.

After leaving the stock exchange, I walked up to city hall and the courthouse. There wasn't much to shoot over there, so I set up on the Brooklyn Bridge and got some shots of women for the Legal Momentum video. Given the subject of the video it was perfectly acceptable to focus on women, but it still felt creepy.

I met Aaron at the United Nations building for lunch. It was actually harder to get in there than it was to get into the NYSE. Aaron had to carry the gear, because he has a "resident journalist" pass. I had some soup from the horrible little UN cafe and hung out with Sherwin the SABC correspondent, before heading back to Penn Station to catch my train home.

I spent all week shooting a new video series for Politico called Inside Obama's Washington. I worked with my favorite executive producer Tammy Haddad, Steve Mort (our shooter/editor/reporter from Orlando) and the people at Politico. We interviewed Arne Duncan (Education Secretary), Nancy Pelosi (Speaker of the House), Eric Cantor (House Minority Leader) and Dan Pfeiffer (White House Communications Director). The shooting and editing process took at least 16 hours for each video, so I was working from 8am to midnight everyday.

We had less than an hour to setup for each interview, which is really not enough time for a two camera shoot. The Arne Duncan interview was scheduled to begin at 8:30am, so Steve and I showed up at 6:45 hoping for extra setup time. Unfortunately we had to wait for the press person to arrive, chose a room, move a conference table, and argue with the producer about the location of flags and plants in the background. We were still rushing around adjusting lights when Duncan arrived, but we couldn't make him wait, so we had to drop everything and start the interview.

For Pelosi, we arrived at the Capitol building almost three hours early, made it through security fairly quickly and were able to start setting up two hours before the interview. Given we had the most time, her interview looks the best. Pelosi reminds me so much of my mother. Obviously their politics are much different, but their mannerisms are so similar.

The Cantor and Pfeiffer interviews were conducted on the same day, with only about an hour and a half between them. I brought extra cases for the lights, so we wouldn't have to worry about packing neatly. After the Cantor interview, we just through everything into the cases and ran to the White House as quickly as possible. Well we didn't actually run, we took a cab, but it was still a rush. That night we had to edit both videos, so I got Emily to come help. It was almost 1:00am by the time we got home.

I shot a couple big interviews yesterday. One with Valerie Jarrett, an adviser to President Obama and one with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner . Murry, a freelance cameraman I often work with, and I were at the front gate of the White House at 8:30am. It took awhile to get in, because they had to check the gear with a bomb dog and by hand. We finally got to the interview location, the War Room in the Old Executive Office Building at 9:00. We only had 30 minutes to set up for the two camera shoot. Normally it takes at least an hour. We were making final adjustments to the lights as she walked in. The interview itself went fine, but it took over an hour to clean up afterward.

At 2:00 we arrived at the moat entrance to the Treasury Department. This time it took even longer for the guards to look though our gear and bring over the bomb dog. Finally we made our way down the rough brick driveway and into the basement of the building. They certainly don't make it easy to bring in the equipment. This time we had an hour to set up, so we had time to fiddle with the lights. Lighting is usually the most fun part of a shoot and if there's time, I can spend hours getting it just right. Geithner arrived a little late and seemed to be in a better mood than the last shoot I did with him. He joked about not being able to get a reservation at a local Indian restaurant. I couldn't get a reservation there either, but you would think it would be easier for the Treasury Secretary. The interview was conducted by Mike Allen from the Politico. After 15 minutes, Geithner's press secretary motioned for us to wrap it up, but Mike was relentless. He kept going even after signaling he was finished by asking the "finally" question. Geithner didn't seem to mind though and Mike eventually concluded the interview. Look for them on the Politico website later this week. It may be picked up by the networks as well, but that remains to be seen.

I spent Thursday and Friday of last week in NYC shooting for the NewsHour. Thursday I shot in the Little Haiti section of Brooklyn. We tried to find a restaurant with a large number of Haitians who were effected by the earthquake, but the restaurants were deserted. We ended up at a Haitian radio station where people were gathered to find out information about their family members in Haiti. I shot some b-roll of the radio station and surrounding neighborhood, before getting an interview with the DJ. From there, we headed to the office of the nation's first Haitian city council member and conducted an interview outside of his office.

The producer at NewsHour arranged for us to feed the footage via satellite from a Hispanic TV station in Brooklyn. We got there ten minutes before our scheduled feed time and tried to connect the camera. It didn't work. They tried connecting it to various places in their network, but still no luck. We moved the camera into the control room and kept working on connecting to the satellite while our allotted time expired. Finally they gave up on a digital connection and switched to an analog output. The picture worked right away, but not the sound. They brought out old, scotch taped wires with the rubber stripped off and connected the audio. I quickly started sending the footage, but only one channel of audio was working at a time. I had to switch the audio cables back and forth to send the right channel until all of the footage was sent. It was a horribly nerve wrecking experience that I never want to repeat. I found out later that the people at the TV station had so much trouble connecting the camera, because they had never fed from a camera before. Their lack of experience was, of course, blamed on me.

Friday we shot a local city council meeting where it was announced that city workers could donate money to the relief effort directly from their paychecks. The Haitian city council member, who we interviewed Thursday, broke down crying when he started talking about his family members in Haiti. After the meeting, we went to a community market popular with the Caribbean diaspora. A white woman came and sat with us and told us about how she was sick of the 'white media'. She said that she couldn't read most publications or watch most TV stations because it was biased against people like herself. She went on to tell us about how she went to Nigeria and felt like she was at home. After freeing ourselves from her crazy stories, we went back to the TV station to feed the footage. This time they were ready and it went fine. Next time I need to send footage via satellite, I will make sure to go somewhere that has done it before.