News from behind the camera

I've been doing a lot of writing about the shoots that I've done after I've finished them. It's been a while since I last wrote about things going on in my career. I just sold my first art print last week! The woman who purchased it told me that it was going to be an auction piece to help raise money for charity. It really made me feel good to have my work go towards a good cause. Thank you, Karen, for thinking of me so highly!

This week coming up is going to be a busy one for me. I have two weddings this weekend, followed by a trash the dress session on Monday. I've booked a photo session with a local band for next month, and am really pressing forward with my L.L.C. It's a very exciting time for me right now.

So when I'm not working on all of this photography stuff, I'm working the chopper job for ABC. I still absolutely love it after 5 months of being here :) I have to say though, as neat of a job as it is and as people perceive it to be, it is rather trying at times on my emotions. We rarely fly over anything that has a positive outcome. We oftentimes serve as an airborne news truck because we can oftentimes get to the scene faster while staying out of the way of authorities.

Last week, though, I realized that we can be so much more than that. We were called to a water rescue search at Lake Michigan downtown. A little girl was swept out by the undertow, and the coast guard had been searching for at least an hour by the time we arrived. We started out by getting a few shots of the scene, and then tried to help the coast guard find the little girl. That day, I had two pilots rather than just one. The lead pilot spotted something red in the water. We notified the coast guard, and when they got to it, it turned out to be a large red shirt. Shortly after that, I saw something large and blue in the water that looked like a body to me. The three of us talked about it, and decided that the figure was too large to be a 6 year old girl. The lead pilot told the coast guard about the find anyway, and we continued our end of the search. Ten minutes or so later, the coast guard went to the figure we found, and it was the little girl.

They rushed her body to shore, administering cpr all the while. I had absolutely no control over the tears that streamed down my face, and hoped that by some miracle, they could revive her. I saw the rescue team rush her body to the ambulance that sat nearby. After they closed the doors, the ambulance didn't budge. I figured that they had pronounced her dead on scene.

The three of us (me and my two pilots) made our way to a nearby airport to refuel so we could return to base. None of us said too much on our way there. We saw the coast guard at the airport, and talked with them for a while about the incident. We found out more about it, but also were able to change the topic and feel better about what we'd just witnessed.

In the end, the little girl did die. Another little girl was rushed out of the water and died a couple of days later, too. It was said that the beach this happened on was a restricted beach because of the strong undertow that was common there.

On a lighter side of things, I just met with some of the management from the studio for lunch yesterday, along with my base manager and ther other camera operator for the chopper. It was definitely an honor to get to meet them and to talk to them about the way that things are going. Sometime in the near future, they'd like us to come into the station to meet everyone that we talk to on the radios everyday.

Anyway, that's my professional life at the moment. I have to say, I'm pretty excited with the way things have been going, and definitely proud of everything I've accomplished in such a short period of time.