The shrinking coach...

I was going through the photos I shot last week, and a lot of what I shot was advance stuff. This was one of them. Were were doing a story about the head girls basketball coach at Albany High School, Paul Johnston. Johnston is a really good guy, who avoids the spotlight all he can, he's the good coach you like to deal with, he's always trying to deflect the attention to his team and players. This is great, until he does something like loses over 110 pounds. Now, if you ask anyone that's quite a feat, but if you ask him it's not a big deal. Luckily our reporter was able to talk him into doing the story. Then I found out WHEN he does his walking... at 5am every morning. He walks three hours a day, usually 1-2 of those in the morning in the gym. Then he finds the other hour later in the day. My thought was to get him in the morning since it's a 40 minute drive up there. Now, it's the assignments like these that I dread, but always end up liking after it's over. As I was walking into the gym I noticed the above shot. I ended up taking a few more of him walking but this was my favorite.

All of my photos were shot in about 15 minutes, normally, I'd spend the whole time shooting photos during his time walking. But, I also shot video (below) of him. This was my first video, and looking back on it I needed to shoot a heck of a lot more b-roll for it. But the interview turned out really well and I think added a lot to the story. I'm still not a huge fan of video, I'd prefer doing audio slideshows, it's a lot easier to edit and can often have just as much impact or more. Now, I do think video may have it's place, but trying to do both at once makes both mediums suffer. I think I did ok, but would prefer to have done one or the other.