It’s an odd coincidence that on the same day my favorite roadside billboard vanishes, another interesting one appears along my commute in a completely different spot. I guess it’s true that advertising abhores a vacuum. I snapped this shot of my friend and colleague, Mia Gradney’s new billboard - even though I don’t work at that station.
You see, back when Hasser and I did that cross-country road trip back in 2005, we both thought it would be fun to take photos of every roadside billboard we saw featuring local TV news personalities. Unfortunately we thought of it in the last twp hours of our 36 hour drive, passing hundreds of them along the way. And I’ve been meaning to start a photo collection ever since.
So I’ve started my very own Flickr group called, “Local TV Personality Billboards” and I’m looking for folks to submit shots of their area TV news anchors on roadside billboards. Anyone can join/post, and I give bonus points to those who have the “Mount Rushmore” shots of anchors cut-n-pasted together, defying lighting and spacial composition. Anyone interested? It’s like a scavenger hunt!
I just can’t believe how quickly these past few months have flown by! We went to Atlanta this past weekend for the NATAS Southeast Emmy Awards thing, which still proved to be fun even if neither Ky nor I were sent home with Emmy gold this year. It’s just an honor to be nominated, you know. (Perhaps the Lone Star Emmy nominations in a few months will bring some pleasant news).
Apart from “doing the family thing” I’ve just been trying to get everything organized in my life, both offline and online. You may have noticed some housekeeping going on here at LLR and some of my tertiary sites. I’m flipping switches and knocking out projects.
Here’s a quick list of my current obsessions:
Television - True Blood, Royal Pains Music - everything M.Ward (as per usual), Depeche Mode’s “Sounds of the Universe”, and White Lies. I just realized that I totally forgot to get the new Placebo album! Video Games: Oblivion, Peggle, and I’m dying to get online and do some gaming with friends soon (Gears2 or Left4Dead anyone? I’m hungry for Horde/Survival modes).
I’ve been doing a lot of promos at KPRC recently, but haven’t had any new video to post. Most of my stuff lately has had a lot of NBC footage, and is more ‘day turn’ sort of stuff anyway. Well, I finally have something blogworthy. Here’s one promo from a series of new spots promoting KPRC’s kick-ass investigative unit, Local 2 Investigates.
Did I mention this was all shot on my still camera? Aww yeah, 5D2 FTW!
There’s also an alternate version of this spot, with just the announcer speaking (and a really-alternative version that I’m hoping gets approved), and also each of the reporters has their own shorter personalized promo.
With all the cool 3D animations and Lensbaby HD video aside, my favorite part has got to be the ’street posters’ of the gang. My boss thought of it when we were out scouting locations for the shoot, and it worked out really well. Now I have three giant posters of the gang looming over me in my office, keeping watchful eye over my internet usage.
I’ve been snapping a ton of RAW photos, and I finally got the chance to shoot a project that can use some ‘high pass’ and bleach filtering that I’ve been dying to process some photos with. The investigative photos work better with this look than shots of my daughter playing with dolls, for sure.
Here’s some semi-raw video shot with my Canon 5D Mark2 still camera that’ll be used for a promotional campaign. I have much more video - all these shots are done with my Lensbaby Composer lens attachment.
Shooting with the 5D2 has its limitations, for sure, but the saturation and depth-of-field more than makes up for them. You just have to practice and come up with some of your own tricks to get exactly what you want. Actually, I can’t wait to see what my next project looks like now that I actually have full manual control over the exposure with the new firmware update. (For this project I only used audio as an enhancement, or to hear my shot markers. I have had some luck with audio on other projects — more on that in another post).
Anyway, I just wanted to show off some raw video before posting the actual promo spots with all the post-production enhancements. Not bad for a consumer camera sporting a toy lens, right?
We went to the zoo on Saturday (where this photo below was taken) and then to play in the water fountains in the park on Sunday. Our goal was to get a bunch of stuff done each morning when the temperature was still at a cool 96 degrees, and chill at home when it got into the triple digits.
This week a bunch of cool projects that I’ve been working on will finally be let out into the wild, and I’ll finally be able to post some rad photos and videos on the blog. Later this week we’re off to Atlanta for the Southeast Emmy awards thing, and I can’t wait to see dozen of old colleagues and friends while I’m in town.
