Beyond Alaska Photo
Multimedia journalism in the Last Frontier

Found this two miles up the Reed Lakes trail in Hatcher Pass.

Website tagline:

“Quotes are for assholes and you can quote me on that.”

Last Tuesday, just as the Ted Stevens indictment story was breaking, a woman called the newsroom saying she had video of a bear attacking a moose calf in her front yard. I didn’t make it out to Jennifer’s house until Wednesday morning, but by then she had shot more footage, this time of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game responding to the area.

Technically the footage could be better — the camera work is shaky, lots of panning and zooming, poor audio — but what an amazing moment to get on camera! It’s a rare event to see, let alone capture, and it was obvious immediately that she had a great story to tell.

After copying the files, I asked Jennifer to describe what happened in an audio piece (one take, two minutes. She totally nailed it) and then shot some b-roll of the area. The finished product took about four hours to produce, in large part because of file conversion problems (VOB to AVI to MOV), but in three days it’s received nearly 30,000 views on adn.com, making it one of our most popular videos of the year.

I frequently hear newsroom staffers (to be honest, usually photographers) ask why we have to shoot video when the views don’t justify the effort. I think this experience provides an answer: By producing video we redefine people’s understanding of the newspaper to include video. When we own online video in our local market users look to us (and not just TV) to distribute their content and, more importantly, they’ll visit our site first to see news video.

An aside: like many long-time Alaskans I’d gotten a little blase about bears. Not stupid, but I certainly didn’t understand what a bear attack looked like. The bear in the video throws that moose around like it’s nothing at all — which is all that’s left at the end.

UPDATE: CNN called the office today looking to run the video. I got this information second hand, so I don’t know if it’s just the website or for broadcast (quality seems suspect for broadcast).

UPDATE 2: The video is now posted to CNN’s homepage. I’m a little disappointed they gave the Daily News a “courtesy” credit instead of a “produced by” credit.

The HV20 screen shouldn't look like this.

Over the summer, desire for video in the newsroom has grown dramatically (I say one a day keeps the editor at bay). But as our Canon HV20 get more use, they are breaking at an alarming rate. We have three as pool gear and one is coming back from the shop (broken screen), and the other two are waiting to go (broken screen; broken firewire jack).

I’m going out of my way to remind the staff that we’re dealing with prosumer gear — they are simply not designed for the rigors of day-to-day journalism (and Canon admits as much). And given the current state of the industry we’re going to have to get by with less-than-pro gear for quite a while.

UPDATE: Repair confirmed water damage, though still fixed under warranty. Sent broken screen #2 in for repair yesterday. Current repair estimate is about $150.

Another 4th of July, another holiday in Seward at the Mount Marathon race. Thousands turn out to cheer racers up the 3,022-foot peak and one lucky Anchorage Daily News photographer gets to climb the mountain to get pictures from the trail. Marc Lester always gets to go (I have to maintain race results on adn.com — honest!) and this year he shot some video with his Canon G9 to go with the video project I was working on.

I shot with a Canon HV20 and, despite some minor problems with the sizes, the clips blend fairly well. If the G9 had a a mic jack for my Sennheiser wireless, I don’t think I’d use anything else (some of Marc’s mountain clips suffered from wind noise — we’ll have to work out some sort of wind screen).

Apologies. I couldn’t help myself:

Exxon Valdez
1/2 oz butterscotch schnapps
1/2 oz white sambuca

–From www.drinksmixer.com

Alaskan Oil Slick
1/2 oz Blue Curacao Liqueur
1/2 oz Jagermeister® Herbal Liqueur
1/2 oz Peppermint Schnapps
Layer blue curacao on bottom, peppermint schnapps in the middle, and Jager on top.

–From supercocktails.com

Oil Slick
1/2 shot Jägermeister
1/2 shot Rumple Minze
Mix both ingredients together in a shaker and serve in a chilled shot glass.

Oil Spill
3/4 shot Goldschlager
1/4 shot Jägermeister
Layer Jägermeister on top of the Goldschlager.

–From www.webtender.com.

Many more with a specifically Alaska history from Keith Saunders, adn.com Spirits guru blogger.