At the Social Matchbox event I reverted to my "used to do" and interviewed people. I say reverted, because I used to be a reporter- Pentagon Correspondent, actually- and sitting around talking to people is what I do best.

So at this invite-only event, there were geeks galore. I affectionately call these types of events "Nerd-Fests" and I have, actually, seen someone wearing a pocket protector :). Sometimes, they are really hard to interview- they don't say anything!! Many Geeks are very quiet, and when interviewing someone, the hardest thing to hear in response to a question is a one word answer. Fortunately, I'm married to a Geek, and I can get most of them to start chatting away and viola! Great video ensues.

There were a multitude of presenters at Social Matchbox and my goal was to interview them, ask them a few specific questions, and have them tell me about their company... all in a three minute interview that I was going to remove the background on! Robert Neelbauer, the guy in charge, took a picture of me while I was setting up Nicholas Tolson for his interview.

Greenscreening has it's own unique challenges. For one, you need good lighting. At this event, I was actually under a couple of terrible lights and in the middle of a hallway, so, I had a jolly good time later having to adjust everyone's color to be "not-yellow." Florescent lighting is terrible for giving everyone an odd hue.

I then took the video home and the process began! I had fifteen videos that I needed to put up within 48 hours, and no, you can't do a big bunch of them at a time, they've got to be done one by one. One of the videos, Keith Casey of Blue Parabola, was not a presenter at the event but was just my very patient husband who sat down and let himself be interviewed for the fun of it.

The greenscreening process involves up to seven video filters and a whole lot of tweaking. It works by removing anything green in the frame, and the reason *that* works is because green is the only hue not present in human skin. You can also do it with a blue screen although it's more difficult. So, I sat there and patiently tweaked and adjusted, shaded and smoothed, and eventually ended up with a person sitting in front of a "nothing" and therefore I could put them in front of "anything" that I wanted.

In this case, the background was simply a blank color with the person's company logo behind them. The logo pulsed once, hung out while they talked, and then fizzled away at the end right before they were done speaking. In some of the videos I made the background black, some were white, and some where a color that corresponded to the person's theme. It all depended on the logo. Embedded here is the video of Joel Selzer of Ozmosis, a nifty doctor's resource.

This one was one of my favorites, because Joel was really a dynamic speaker.  A lot of times, people have trouble looking directly into the camera (a problem I solve by standing right behind it with my face right next to it) but not Joel- he looked right into the lens and said THIS IS ME. It was great!

Greenscreening is one of my very favorite things to do. It's tremendously fun because it's manipulating video and making it... well... COOL. I think these videos came out well, and they were also well received by the people that had appeared in them! The Social Matchbox crowd was happy with it too, so hey- I am thrilled.

Here are the links to all the videos made at that event:

Luc Castera, ShareMeme

Stephen Sklarew, DubMeNow

Greg Bardwell, Innovative Query Inc.

D. Keith Casey Jr., Blue Parabola

Dan Coffing, Mingle 360

Nicholas Tolson, FitFeud

Scott Tranter, Vlytics

Reed Atkin, Legal River

Dave Weinberg, Amplify

Ben Slavin, GeniusRocket

Georgi Dinkov, Euraeka

Kit Cody, Trusty's

Thomas McLeod, PageLime

Juliana and Robert Neelbauer

After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, everyone and their momma that was in the news business ended up in New Orleans. I, personally, went to New Orleans twice, and after the second trip I made a ready-for-television half hour special.

It's designed as a half-hour spot, and is segmented into three parts (for commercials). The idea was long, slow, fades, lots of voice over (provided by yours truly), and enough personal interviews to make the video touch the viewer on a base level.

To see the second and third section of the video, click here and here.

I stayed in New Orleans for a total of two weeks, interviewing volunteers at Catholic Charities, the President of N.I.N.A. (a non-profit group), and driving around through the lower Ninth Ward a lot.

A lot of the challenge was finding the people I needed to talk to about the rebuild effort. I eventually got some original footage from the hurricane itself (shot by Bryan Jacobs, from his house in the Seventh Ward), and ended up having to film myself eating soul food because I couldn't get someone to do it otherwise (third piece).

I didn't have much of a problem convincing the college students to talk to me... one of them kept flexing the whole time... it was really funny :)

Overall, the lengthy passages and long interviews make this special a good one, albeit slower than I think most people are used to seeing. I was quite happy to be able to use the Coast Guard's footage, and was trying to show that "other side" of the well known story of Katrina. In today's world of "hit you in the face with the fast tempo and short scenes," this video tends to stick out!

Sunny, beautiful weather, San Diego sky for an outdoor wedding, flowers, cakes, nervous bride, Starbucks run at five am, way too many guests... wind.... clouds.... three video cameras.... main photog defunct.... erm.....

Okay, so it was the biggest thing in the AV side I can think of. The wedding of Stephen and Shaela Opgenorth had a full Audio Visual setup including three video cameras plugged into a mixer, and two photographers, one of which was me.

Except, actually, that the other photographer got sick and then it was only me.

So the day started off with me bounding off to Starbucks to get everyone coffee. Actually, that gave me one of my very favorite photos, since when I was at the Starbucks I had told the girl behind the counter which one of the slushy-coffee-whatsists was for the bride, and she labeled it that way:

I thought it was cute. And... it made the bride laugh, which was a bonus, since the bride was extremely nervous as all brides tend to be.

So this lovely wedding of two fantastic people was taking place on a balmy San Diego day, and it was outside in a fantastic backyard that was full of flowers and grass and WIND.

I had two problems.

One, I was the only photographer. This is not normally a problem, and I'll bound around from front to back and crouch my little butt (ok I'm really tall) behind the pastor and hope no one notices. But this backyard was enormous, and there were about thirty rows of chairs!

That entailed me taking off in a dead run right after the ceremony so I could be at the OTHER end of the pathway in order to take pictures of them as they walked off as a newly married couple.

The other problem was the video cameras. This was the first time I'd encountered three of them at once- one was at the back of the row, and two were in the front. Why was this a problem? Because I was trying not to get in the way!

I crouched and crab walked a lot that day.

The day started off, as I said, at Starbucks. Then I wandered around the house, taking pictures as the Bride was getting dressed (those pretty ones where the mothers are helping adjust her veil and helping her put on her shoes), and photographing the Groom as he shined his shoes and tried not to look quite as pale as he was feeling.

Once the wedding started, I was up under the gazebo, crouched under a video camera, and poking my zoom lens through the vines and trying to look inconspicuous. I had two cameras slung around my neck, and trust me, that's heavy.

Being right underneath the pastor's armpit was useful! I got some fantastic photos of the Bride and Groom as they said their vows and kissed. It's very difficult as a photographer to not get emotional at how beautiful weddings can be!

After the ceremony, I took off running, as I mentioned before, and luckily I'm not going to say something like "I fell over a cable" or anything like that. Nope, I made it to the other end just fine, and after the receiving line, I started lining everyone up for those posed shots everyone needs, like the "Grandmother, mother, daughter" shot, or the "Groomsmen giving the new Groom a hard time" shot.

However, my favorite photos always come from when I'm snapping away BEFORE they start posing. I was lining up the Mother-of-the-Bride in her picture, and they were talking and laughing before the shot:

At the end of the day, when all the rice was thrown and the Newlyweds had driven off in their car, I transferred all seven hundred plus photos onto a CD and put them aside for them.

I'd say my biggest nerve wracking moment was wondering what they were going to think... since Stephen is himself a professional photographer as well!

He must have liked them- he used one of my photos as their Christmas card... yay! All those leg cramps I got the next day from crab walking underneath video cameras was worth it :)

Step One: Insert cats.

Step Two: Arrange flowers.

Step Three: Adjust lights.

Step Four: Snap away merrily.

Well, that was the plan, anyway.

There is nothing quite like stuffing two cats in a small lightbox, poking them with long stemmed red roses, and pointing bright lights at them in an attempt to make a greeting card.

They climb on each other, climb out of the box, bite the roses, and pull the background down.

These two black and white cats, Hal and Mo, were actually quite cooperative. The lightbox was actually a small 2’x2’ cube, and I propped it on a table on the far side of the room because I was going to use my zoom lens on them.

The "zoom in!!" idea was necessary due to the odd lightbox- it had this strange small opening. If I wasn't stepping back all the way, it wouldn't let me see all the way in without showing the doorway. Not such a great design for a lightbox, that's for sure!

Since cats are normally inquisitive, it wasn’t hard to get them to smell the roses and sniff them appreciatively. At one point, Hal took a great big bite of the rose that was being shoved near his nose. I cracked up.

Cats always look like they're smiling when they fold their ears back half-way, close their eyes, and carefully poke their little pink noses into things.

Hal died two months after this shoot, and this photo was used in his memory. He was a beautiful tuxedo cat, with a deep Siamese sounding meow.

The cats put up with this odd treatment for about twenty minutes. I ended up taking about a hundred shots of them in that time, and I wasn't doing that fancy multishot thing, either. Point click, point click- voila! Kitties with roses!

Along the way, Mo decided to take a nap. This, actually, is one of my favorite pictures I have ever taken of a cat- and I’ve taken lots of pictures of cats!

None of the photos actually ended up being used as a greeting card, but apparently they did end up being quite a few people’s wallpaper.