I've come to look for America...

I feel like the Simon and Garfunkel song they're currently using in Volkswagen commercials fits my bizarre mood at the moment - it reminds me of a wanderlust and paranoia that I don't actually possess but kind of want. Well, more the wanderlust than the paranoia but I digress.

It's been a while since I last wrote here. I've tried a few times to take a crack at writing again, and while journalistically I've been fairly successful, the personal writing that I used to have a good groove at I've gotten decidedly, well, rusty. So here's hoping that draft number 5 sticks!

I count myself incredibly lucky. As much as I despise long stretches of active travelling (being on a physical plane, bus or train for 6+ hours), I do really love to travel. I've been able to do a lot of that recently. I've been to Washington, D.C. twice (for inauguration-related things), New York City twice (WPPJ and the Globe),  Detroit, Michigan (the Globe) and most recently, Manchester England. 

I've learned an awful lot about travel and myself these past few months. For one: I don't much mind living out of a suitcase at this juncture. 

Also, if I travel with a camera I take a lot of pictures. Hundreds. Only about 10% of these ever see the light of day, and travelling more has built a backlog of images, but nonetheless they exist for me to mess with as I see fit. 

I don't remember how I got into photography, but I do know that I've been getting progressively better and smarter with it. I prefer landscapes to people (which shouldn't surprise anyone who knows me well) and I prefer vivid color and depth to brightness. 

There's a fine line between documenting a trip and actually experiencing that trip. There is no way to non-intrusively document a trip. For the most recent trip to England, I attempted to do so by isolating my intense photography to two days and keeping a personal audio recorder with me to record little things like the tramlines and the behind-the-scenes of a radio show.

I should probably explain why I was in Manchester. I was in a group of eight Point Park students (3 animation students, 5 broadcast students and 2 equally displaced and confused professors) and went to study radio in the UK as well as seek a cultural exchange. It was a ten day trip most noted by the outside for day 8 when some soulless fellow decided to detonate a bomb outside an Ariana Grande concert. 

I've said my peace in the media swarm that followed, and I maintain that I personally don't add anything to this story. To me, my 10 day stint in Manchester was a wonderful cultural exchange where I met some amazing people - like Tom Hinkley who works with Shock Radio, or Samantha Potter who was on a two week intensive with the BBC, or Geoff McQueen, a fascinating lecturer from Scotland who served as our general guide throughout the Manchester Experience. 

I consider myself incredibly lucky: I've been afforded the opportunity to travel to some amazing places for minimal expense (DC both times, NYC the second time, and Detroit were completely paid for by the University). I'm now working a summer job with Forsythe Mini Golf as well as at an internship with 90.5 WESA, Pittsburgh's NPR News Station. 

And I'm not satisfied, or remotely comfortable. Which I consider a blessing. A wise man once challenged me to get out of my comfort zone. Never too far, but far enough that it's something new. In that case, it was camping with the scouts. Which led to a New York City trip 8 years ago. And I have kept moving forward since. 

I have this philosophy on life wherein if I'm comfortable either I'm not trying hard enough or there's something amazing about to happen. 

I consider myself lucky: I've created two radio shows, a television show, planned four floor events as a resident educator, and a 50th anniversary event for a newspaper that I have no business heading just yet but am anyway. 

I start getting super introspective during the summer, because for once things slow down a little. I've always had trouble properly relaxing, but I feel like I'm getting a little better with that.

I'm not sure where I'm going next, but frankly I welcome that unknown. 

Something Shiny

So I finally have my computer working. Sort of. Basically I reinstalled the OS and started over. Not really an answer, but alright, whatever.

It's a requirement for the graduation project at Carlynton to either do an interview or job shadow. I thought it would be a lot more beneficial to do a job shadow, so I decided to ask my Aunt Marie (of John Green, KDKA fame) if she would ask around KDKA and see if anyone would be willing to let me shadow them.

I want to break here and say honestly: I had no idea what I wanted to do really. I just knew I wanted to go into journalism of some sort. I was open to shadowing any form of reporter, editor, or whatever. My aunt suggested feature reporter Dave Crawley and he agreed.

So this past Tuesday I went on a job shadow. Dave Crawley (we learned after like a half hour of twiddling my thumbs at his desk) apparently was on vacation in Columbus, so I wandered into the 9 am meeting with no one to really shadow.

The 9 AM meeting is where the 4, 5, and 6 o clock news truly starts. Reporters converge in a conference room and the assignments are handed out: reporters take stories, and photographers are assigned to those reporters fitting the need (ie if they need a live truck versus a regular van without the mast). Following the meeting (which was actually pretty fun. I've heard horror stories about morning meetings, but these seem pretty chill) I went back to Dave Crawley's desk. His desk is across from Heather Abraham's desk, who was working on a piece for sweeps and was explaining how that process works. She's a morning reporter and is a very kind person answering a lot of my strange questions. His desk is also next to Lynne Hayes-Freeland, who started talking to me about what was going on. I asked her if she'd be willing to have me shadow her for the day, and she kindly agreed.

Her assignment for the day was a follow up on the previous day's story about guns at a Propel charter school. She was looking for a direction to take the follow up, seeing as both suspects were in custody and no official word had come from Propel about changes (or lack thereof) to their security policy. So she looked at another angle - the parents.

She reached out to different people and waited for a response. In the meantime, one of the news director people took me aside and showed me how the microwave/broadcast trucks get from really tall mast to television screens. Basically, there are towers in every nearby county that they beam to, and with those towers they can either take in the live feed, or record their video packages.

I then talked to a producer (she was producing the noon news, which was about a half hour away) who showed me the insane program that connects assignments to reporters and anchors and directors and basically the thing that makes the news run. Each story has a spot, a source, and a script to accompany that. It's a lot of moving parts and she says for the noon news she starts at 6AM scripting.

Since we hadn't heard back from anyone about the gun story, I was then taken to the control room to watch the noon news. About 3 minutes before the broadcast, Ms. Hayes-Freeland told me that there was good news, and bad news. Bad news was that we had to go interview someone. Now. The good news was that I could watch the 4, 5, and 6 o clock news from the control room.

I met up with her and the photographer (who fittingly enough is the father of a former scout in our troop) and we went to interview two parents with two separate opinions.

When we got back to the station (around 2 at this point) we had nothing to do but wait for the stuff to upload to the server, so I took a lunch break. When I came back I listened to the footage we had and she gave me an assignment: see what sound bites I would use if it were my story. We picked entirely different clips from the same footage. Interesting.

She shared her script for the story, and then introduced me to an editor, Kenny (not editing our story, but something for the 6). I spend about half an hour with him and he was about to hand me the reigns (which I honestly didn't have a clue how to use the final cut/premiere/after effects hybrid) when I was tapped to watch the 4 o'clock news from the control room. I watched the 5 from the telepromter/camera operation area. All in all it was a fantastic day, I learned a lot about the industry ("you do realize this is a dying field" - I was told this at least three times) and saw a newscast from start to finish. It was amazing and kinda confirmed that this is what I want to do with my life.

So again I'd like to thank my aunt, Ms. Hayes-Freeland, Mr. Colabine, Kenny, Erin Shea, and everyone else who made it possible for me to have this experience. It was the most exciting day of my week at the very least.

PICTURE TIME!!!

The Teleprompter Deck

Look at All Those Monitors (Control Room)

The View from the Teleprompter Deck

The Robotic Camera System

This is the KDKA 5 O'Clock News Pano

And I Would Drive One Hundred Miles...

[A note: I wrote this on 8/1/14, but for some reason (probably because it's disjointed) didn't post it. So here it is.]
Yeah, don't tell me, I know those aren't the lyrics. I don't care.

Recently I was going through my SD cards (the cards that I plug into the camera to take pictures onto) and realized that I take a lot of pictures. As a side effect, however, a lot of the pictures I take don't see the light of day. For the vast majority of them, it's perfectly fine -  I think I've taken something like eight or nine thousand pictures since the acquisition of the D90 - but for others it's kind of sad. I'm doing my best to take the ones I want to save, edit them, and post them to Flickr immediately.

When I post to Flickr, I inevitably get lost in the thousands and thousands of pictures up there, and I'm always inspired, and always wondering how do they do it? But that's another story for another time, how photographers make the pictures they post. Most of the time though it's Photoshop or Lightroom.

There's something satisfying about letting a creation free into the unknown as 'done'. So my updates to flickr and everything else are giving me that.

I've also been given creative license to write the script for this year's halftime show. It's the end of the two-week band camp already, and so I sat and wrote the script last week. It's very simple, and we follow the same pattern every year:
[Ladies and Gentleman please welcome the Carlynton Golden Cougar Marching Band!
The band is under the direction of...] and then I proceed to list everyone on staff. I've timed myself down to about 37 seconds last year with enunciating every director, section leader, dog, cat, and even me. It's an interesting process. Then I announce the drum majors, and finally what the show is.

Here's last year's: http://novelwithoutanending.tumblr.com/post/94064523221/alexanderpopichak-this-is-me-announcing-for-the

It donned on me in writing this script that, again, this is my senior year. I am writing the script for my last season. I'm trying to wrap my mind around it, but I don't think it'll hit me until the band festival, or maybe during the last game. Nevertheless, I don't want to dwell on it too much. I want senior year to come as it will: if it will be fast, so be it, if it will dilly-dally, then let's savor it.

This year's show is Batman, and in writing the script I have to explain the differences between the three batman themes (they sound different, but you can't just say 'Batman Theme' because in name they're the same, so I have to source it [TV series, Movie, New Movie]).

Good Morning Carlynton, it's Wednesday (Okay it isn't but just go with it.)

NOTE: The NYC pictures are up on Flickr! https://www.flickr.com/photos/alexanderpopichak/sets/72157644250348029/

These past few weeks have been, well, crazy. Mostly in a good way, but also in the oh-my-goodness-I-have-to-take-the-APUSH-test way. So I apologize that I took a two week hiatus there.

A week ago I was in New York. Well, I mean, it was technically New Jersey where I stayed, but that doesn't matter. I'm calling it New York. Deal with it.

I can't say it enough, I love New York City. I'll keep it to a minimum of moderately humorous anecdotes.

• My favorite part of the whole trip was probably when I got off the bus about two blocks away from Times Square and it was pouring rain. When you've brought along your DSLR you have to improvise some sort of cover. My weapon of choice? a cut-out Post-Gazette bag over the lens attached with a rubber band. I'm glad I did. (See right, click for larger)
• The whole trip began with a tour of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Unfortunately, it was foggy that morning so we didn't exactly get to see the city itself. It all worked out though, it came across like a sheet, and read pretty well on the pictures. We circled Liberty Island for a while and realized at the last minute we had pedestal tickets through the tour. So we essentially sprinted to the top of the pedestal, took a few(quick) pictures (we had to be back at the boat in 7 minutes), and then sprinted right back down. Sounded a lot simpler writing it out than it did doing it. Great view, so worth it.

• Fog made another appearance when we went to the top of the Empire State Building. A great view up there of - nothing. But then of course the fog cleared once we got to the bottom. Luckily, it was an elevator ride up and not a walk up. 
• We saw The Lion King in the Minskoff Theatre and it was all in all, a great time. 
• We spent a total of about 20 hours in New York. Not nearly enough, I want to go back sometime, but at least I have 800 something pictures of this adventure. More to come on Flickr and as I think of it.
• Before I go, I want to attach the "Taxi" picture:
  
• I did a lot of random photography - aimlessly hitting the shutter button without lining up the picture - which yielded a bunch of pictures of the side of Tyler Smith's face, some light poles, and this beautiful image. I took all of the colors except for that of the taxis. There are SO many taxis in NYC it's ridiculous, but I thought this would be cool. Want prints? contact me. 

So that's my New York Trip, and I know I left a lot of things out, and this isn't my usual post style, but this hasn't exactly been a usual week for me.