I found myself trudging through a muddy, mosquito-ridden field at 11 p.m. the other night on my first day back from holidays thinking about how fortunate I was to be able to do this for a living.
I’d heard of a fire in the trailer court and thought immediately of the best angle to take pics this safely. I parked my (ancient) car along the side of the road nearby where one could hear and smell the fire but far enough away that it wasn’t going to be any kind of danger personally.
That wasn’t good enough, so I moved ahead in the field a little bit to get a little closer. Then a little bit more. By the time I realized the field wasn’t going to be as muddy as I thought, I decided to use it to get as close as I can without being confused for a firefighter. Eventually I was right by the house, meeting a neighbour to the fire who told me what happened and then texted me some photos.
This isn’t what a lot of people assume would be part of a day’s work for a sports reporter, but that’s what it is when you’re temporarily down a person. This is spot news, as they call it, and can happen at any time for any reason. Just come with a camera with a full battery and a few business cards, and voila.
Danger isn’t exactly my middle name but there have been times when I‘ve put myself a bit of a difficult position in order to get either a specific photo or a story. It’s part of the job even if that’s not in the traditional job description. Coverage of the storms last month that ravaged Woodlawn Regional Park and Boundary Dam required a bit of quick thinking. It wasn’t my day to work, but who cares? When I saw the swirling clouds to the south after watching a bit of TV with a friend, I immediately set out to work to find a camera and shoot whatever I saw. As I came in, I heard all of our phones with the klaxon of the tornado warning and I moved even faster, going to the closest, most open space I could think of, the parking lot of the Estevan Leisure Centre. Once I saw the clouds swirling again and going to the south, I packed my stuff in my car with the intent of outrunning the storm and going to Bienfait.
Alas, I couldn’t outrun it and was parked on Fourth Avenue under a tree so I didn’t get hit by too much hail.
By this point I was on low fuel and I wasn’t going to outrun anything with rain and hail like this. So the focus became on finding other things to shoot. Cars travelling in flash flooding areas can only go so far. I got a tip of some heavy damage to trees and signs at the Woodlawn area and used the remaining gas I had to go down there. There, I took shots of downed trees and water and hail damage in the campground and the golf course.
From the time I was a kid to today, I always thought those hurricane reporters and tornado chasers had one of the most exciting jobs imaginable. You’re literally at the centre of a storm, what people will be talking about for a long time. It’s the adrenaline rush that attracted me to this field to begin with, and maybe even pushed me forward.
As I finished the conversation with the nice neighbour, I walked back in the field to the car but stumbled a bit and lost my shoe in muck.
“You ok?” he asked.
“Yeah, my camera’s ok. I’m good,” I told him.
I used the light of the camera’s view screen to make sure I didn’t stumble again and promised myself I wouldn’t just grab my nice shoes next time.
