Wanderlust & Awakening

Guns stories

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 16:04:00 -0400

In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shootings, I have been assigned to work on stories about the gun...

Photo blog “The Image, Deconstructed” interviewed me...

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 11:55:00 -0500

Photo blog “The Image, Deconstructed” interviewed me and did this profile on the project I did about survivors of gunshot wounds who are wheelchair-bound. See the profile here.

Inauguration coverage is always a challenge because you know...

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 11:50:19 -0500

Inauguration coverage is always a challenge because you know every other news organization is out there covering the same event along with you, so you want to get something different. Our team decided to create a piece with perspectives throughout the city during inauguration day instead of just focusing on the official events. Brad Horn went to a family’s home in southeast D.C., where people would be watching the events on TV. Gabe Silverman went to a gym and a restaurant and got some street scenes away from downtown. And I stayed on the mall, getting reaction’s to Obama’s speech. After we all got back to the office, I gathered everyone’s footage and edited together this piece. It was a 23-hour work day to make it all happen, but a lot of fun to create nonetheless.

The Swing States

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 08:37:00 -0500

Over the past couple months, Joel Achenbach and I traveled to four of the swing states that will...

Reporting on "In D.C., another measure of gun violence: Men in wheelchairs"

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 16:14:00 -0400

Several years ago I noticed what seemed like a tragic trend happening in Washington, D.C. I saw...

A couple of weeks ago I headed to Tampa to cover the Republican...

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 17:37:41 -0400

A couple of weeks ago I headed to Tampa to cover the Republican National Convention. After about 24 hours on the ground, I was back at the airport, headed to New Orleans to cover Hurricane Isaac. When I arrived, I headed out to hunt for a pre-storm story and found people swimming and kayaking in the suddenly rough surf of Lake Pontchartrain. I produced this piece about the fun they were having before holing up in my hotel room in preparation for the impending storm.

Sitting in my hotel room, I felt anxious because I wasn’t out producing anything. But it was decidedly unsafe and too dark to go outside. So, I set up the camera to look out onto Canal Street from the fabulous view I had in my room and recorded a timelapse for about 12 hours. I put together this quick piece to show the storm blowing through downtown New Orleans.

After the storm passed, Ricky Carioti, Manuel Roig-Franzia and I headed out to survey the damage. We heard about flooding in the suburbs of New Orleans and headed to Slidell to check it out. We found people rowing boats through feet-deep flooded downtown streets rescuing people from their homes. I shot this piece and edited it quickly in the car on the way back to New Orleans.

Br Friday I was back on an airplane, returning to Washington, D.C., happy to New Orleans was spared on the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

In mid-June a group of us from The Post took off for Fort...

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 18:21:00 -0400

In mid-June a group of us from The Post took off for Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada to check out oil sands operations before driving down the route of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. I produced a story about the environmental impacts of different types of extraction methods companies are using to pull the oil out of the sand there, as well as a story about what it’s like to live in the boom town that is Fort McMurray. I put together this moody piece about our departure from Canada and did a quick story about the town in Montana, with a population of only nine, just over the Canada/U.S. border.

We went a little off course to North Dakota to check out the oil boom happening there since some of that oil will likely be shipped to the Keystone XL. We found that infrastructure has not been able to keep up with the population growth in the western part of the state and many people have struggled to find affordable places to live. Jobs, however, are plentiful and the pay is good. It felt a bit like a modern day gold rush, with people flocking there to make a fortune of their own.

In South Dakota we met rancher John Harter who has been fighting TransCanada in court to try to stop them from bringing the Keystone XL across his land. But TransCanada recently won the case on the grounds of eminent domain and Harter could not have seemed more downtrodden about this. Harter is now hoping he can at least demand more money for the inconvenience of having a pipeline built across his land. I didn’t realize a private company like TransCanada would be able to obtain eminent domain, so it was interesting learning more about how that works and how people like John Harter are impacted by it.

My last stop was in Nebraska, where we went to a cookout and fundraiser in Spalding for state senator Ken Haar. People there wanted to thank Haar for his work to redirect the pipeline from their land, the Sand Hills and the Ogallala Aquifer. Many of them also gathered there to talk more about how to completely stop the construction of Keystone XL because they see it as a threat to the water and land throughout their state.

In all I spent two weeks on the road before hopping on a plane in Omaha to head home. My colleagues, Steven Mufson and Michael S. Williamson, along with Mufson’s daughter Natalie, kept going after I returned to Washington, heading down to Port Arthur, Tex., to see where the refining process will happen. They stopped at some Native American reservations in Oklahoma along the way, which was a part of the trip I was especially disappointed to miss. Keep up with the rest of their journey at www.washingtonpost.com/keystone.

It was eye-opening to get a firsthand look at the oil sands operations in Canada and to see how folks along the proposed pipeline route may be impacted if it comes their way. Environmental, social, economic and political effects will be important considerations if plans move forward to put this pipeline into place.

See these stunning National Geographic images from Pine Ridge,...

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 10:20:57 -0400

See these stunning National Geographic images from Pine Ridge, the Oglala Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota. I volunteered as a coach at a photo camp in Pine Ridge in 2010 and was struck by how much beauty and suffering both exist there. The children of Pine Ridge are especially wonderful as well as vulnerable. It was eye-opening to see how they viewed their worlds through the photography they made, and it was exciting to take them exploring through the outdoors into areas many of them had never been to and to do activities many of them had never tried before.

The project Zero Day: Exploring cyberspace as a new domain of...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 10:49:16 -0400

The project Zero Day: Exploring cyberspace as a new domain of war was a collaborative effort between motion graphics designer Sohail Al-Jamea, reporter/writer Robert O’Harrow Jr., web producer Greg Linch, interactive projects editor Kat Downs and me. I interviewed cyber security experts across the country about how threats to privacy and industrial controls systems are increasing via the Internet, and Sohail created beautiful motion graphics to offer visuals analogies to show what this all means.

She first insisted she was a boy at the age of 2. “I am a boy”...

Mon, 21 May 2012 14:36:00 -0400

She first insisted she was a boy at the age of 2. “I am a boy” became a constant theme in struggles over clothing, bathing, swimming, eating, playing. Eventually, a psychologist diagnosed gender identity disorder. Now Tyler’s parents allow him to live as a boy, and the 5-year-old is reveling in his new identity. I produced this video that tells their story.

I actually completed a different version of this story several weeks ago that included interview shots with Tyler’s parents and b-roll shots of the family interacting together. I was really happy with what I had put together. But at the last minute, The Post decided we should think more carefully about protecting the identity of this family. Being transgender, especially as a child, is still a really controversial issue in our society. This is evident in the back-and-forth comments we got in reaction to the story after we published it yesterday. We decided to use the name his parents would have given him if he had been born a boy, which is Tyler. And in the written story, we used the parents’ middle names. We also decided to remove any images of Tyler’s parents and sister.

As a result, this re-edit was really complicated. I always lean on interview shots and other characters’ faces to transition between scenes. There wasn’t time to go back and shoot more, so I had to utilize cutaway shots to avoid jump cuts and unsettling scene changes. Luckily I had just enough cutaways to make this work. It doesn’t flow perfectly, but I think it turned out fairly well given the limitations.

I updated my Vimeo channel with some new stuff! Check it.

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 11:06:20 -0400

I updated my Vimeo channel with some new stuff! Check it.

This is why I love video stories. I want to go to Caine’s...

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 11:49:48 -0400

This is why I love video stories. I want to go to Caine’s Arcade.

npr:

A 9-year-old boy who built an elaborate cardboard arcade inside his dad’s used auto part store is about to have the best day of his life.

—————-

This is fantastic. My faith in humanity is restored. — Tanya

I produced this video on bounce beat music, which is an...

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 11:37:12 -0400

I produced this video on bounce beat music, which is an off-shoot of go-go. The D.C.-based band TCB created the sound in 2003 and have gained a lot of followers of the music since then, especially younger listeners. However, a lot of traditional go-go artists see the music as too heavy and too up-tempo for their taste. Some say a generation gap has formed for go-go music.

Our homes, our work and our self-esteem all inform who we are as...

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 11:31:00 -0400

Our homes, our work and our self-esteem all inform who we are as people. We interviewed six black women about these themes, which were identified in a nationwide survey conducted by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation. Each woman posed for video portraits that represent each of these themes. The women describe what they see when they look in the mirror and explain what it means to them to be a black woman today.

Grace Koerber and I worked on this project together. I shot the video portraits and interviewed the women, and she produced the interactive. This was a really fun project for me because I got to play with studio lights so much and refine my skills as a portrait photographer. It was also just to try a new approach to storytelling, which I think turned out to be pretty successful.

postvideo: Iowa’s economy on voters’ minds With an...

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 11:04:08 -0500

postvideo:

Iowa’s economy on voters’ minds

With an unemployment rate hovering around six percent, Iowa’s economy has fared better than most states’, but the economy is still the issue that most concerns voters in the Hawkeye State. While the farming industry is booming, the manufacturing industry there has faced significant challenges as Iowa heads into the caucuses on Jan. 3. (Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post)

Whitney Shefte is in Iowa right now to cover the first caucuses. She’ll have coverage coming from New Hampshire as well. Meanwhile, get some insight into what matters to Iowans in Whitney’s video above.

Be sure not to miss the rest of the 2012 election and caucus coverage on washingtonpost.com/politics. And follow @postvideo or go washingtonpost.com/video for the latest video updates.

See the work we visual journalists at The Post did this year in...

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 13:57:45 -0500

See the work we visual journalists at The Post did this year in Best of the Post 2011!

Check out the post I wrote for our PostVideo...

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 16:21:25 -0500

Check out the post I wrote for our PostVideo Tumblr.

postvideo:

Check out the entire Seat Pleasant project on washingtonpost.com, including written stories, video, text, photo and interactives.

When I first learned about the 59 fifth-graders from Seat Pleasant Elementary School in Seat Pleasant, Md., who in 1988, received the offer of free college tuition if they graduated from high school, the story possibilities seemed endless. How many made the most of the incredible gift they were given just for being at the right place at the right time? How many squandered it, perhaps due to the circumstances of living in a crime-ridden and poverty-stricken neighborhood? Twenty-three years later these people surely have found themselves in very different places in life from one another. But when I started making phone calls, I quickly learned that reaching these individuals and getting them to talk to me would be a formidable challenge. With only ten of these students graduating from a four-year college, many felt they had failed by not taking advantage of the offer. And who wants to tell the world about their failures? But after getting some of the “Dreamers,” as they were called in school, to talk with me, I learned that success means different things to different people. While I was unable to get most of the “Dreamers” to go on camera, I was able to find enough of them who could offer a varying picture of how life turned out for different people.

William Smith and Jeffery Norris are two of the “Dreamers” I spent the most time with. They are two men who were good friends in school and have similar stories but have ultimately found themselves along divergent paths. William dropped out of high school just four credits shy of graduating. Only several weeks later he suffered a violent attack at a nightclub that left him unable to walk again. Without a high school diploma, Smith says he makes his money as a “hustler,” selling whatever he can on the streets. In June, police found 77 grams of crack cocaine in William’s apartment. Jeffery graduated from high school but soon began a lucrative drug-dealing business. Only after he suffered a terrible car accident and barely escaped a decades-long prison sentence did Jeffery say he chose to live differently. He now plays the organ in his church choir and cuts hair for a living. He says he brings home about $50,000 a year and now owns and lives in the house his grandparents lived in when he was growing up. Neither of these men graduated from college but both say they gained a lot from being part of the “I have a dream” program.

One of the other challenges I grappled with was how to tell a story about something that happened so long ago. Talking head videos generally bore me silly and I wanted to be sure this video did not end up only as a mash-up of different interviews. I tried to track down television footage from the announcement in 1988 but failed at every attempt. Luckily The Post has a good archiving system and I was able to get hold of the photos our staff photographers made that day. I relied on general b-roll of the school and the town that I shot to fill other gaps. In some of the sidebar personality profile stories I worked on, I was able to gather b-roll of the characters living their lives now.

Ultimately this project took a significant amount of time to complete due to the challenges mentioned and the sheer number of characters we had to account for in one way or another. But it is a story that asks a lot of questions and explains a great deal about education, class, race, crime and other social issues. For those reasons, we think such in-depth reporting and production is of great value to our viewers and readers. We hope you agree.

Check out the entire Seat Pleasant project on washingtonpost.com, including written stories, video, text, photo and interactives.

postvideo: A different campaign in Iowa The Washington Post’s...

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:03:13 -0500

postvideo:

A different campaign in Iowa

The Washington Post’s Dan Balz examines the changing political landscape in Iowa, where GOP presidential candidates are spending less time meeting caucus voters in intimate settings and more time at debates and on social media. (Whitney Shefte and Dan Balz)

Washington Post VJ Whitney Shefte spent last week in Iowa, reporting in the state whose caucuses mark the opening of the presidential nomination process. Whitney, along with national political correspondent Dan Balz, learned that things are changing in Iowa, as they change across the country. From Dan’s story:

DES MOINES — Four years ago, Iowa was awash in presidential candidates crisscrossing the state. Campaign headquarters were packed with staffers and volunteers. The airwaves were clogged with political commercials. Excitement was palpable. Today, everything seems different.

Iowa still holds its coveted position as the state whose caucuses will mark the opening of the Republican presidential nomination process. What happens here Jan. 3 will still have a major impact on the Republican race. But at least for this presidential cycle, Iowa has lost much of the unique character that has marked previous campaigns.

Read the rest of Dan’s story here. And check out our interactive primary graphic here, and our presidential campaign ad tracker here.

This video from Iceland is totally spectacular. I’ve never...

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:15:31 -0500

This video from Iceland is totally spectacular. I’ve never had any specific interest in visiting Iceland before this, but I certainly do now. I never would have guessed how beautiful and awe-inspiring the place is. And the shooting and editing of this piece is just really terrific. Makes me want to make nature videos.

ilovecharts: NPR did this awesome video visualizing how quickly...

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:40:31 -0400

ilovecharts:

NPR did this awesome video visualizing how quickly the world’s population has grown to 7 billion people.

-bridgetodonnell