When It Rains, It Rains A Lot...

This day was a bad day to be a photog. It was constant rain overnight and it's still continuing as I type this. Rain is the great morale breaker. You can wake up with a great attitude and can't wait to get into work only to find the weather has turned against you. It changes your mindset. You go into defense mode. It's all about keeping yourself as dry as possible as well as your gear.

It seemed like my day was set for me. Just live beauty shots of a foggy downtown Cleveland landscape which would have made for a mostly dry morning by keeping me inside the live truck for the most part. I should have known it wouldn't have lasted.

My phone rang about 5:10 a.m. after my first second live picture. Russ, our desk guy, informs me that there is a working fire at a Beachwood apartment complex and they're calling a MABIS, basically a mutual aid broadcast, for surrounding communities to send equipment.

I broke down my live shot and punched the address into my GPS and took off for the fire. I fought my way through very heavy rain to make it there first. I was delayed a little because the apartment complex is gated and I needed to wait to get the o.k. from him. When I did, the Beachwood police were waiting to escort myself and the other stations to a staging area. I have to give the Beachwood P.D. major thanks for working with us instead of against us. They could have made it a real pain to do our jobs but they really cooperated with us this morning.

We did have to walk to the scene of the fire but we could get pretty good b-roll from the distance we were away. It was a three story apartment complex that was missing most of it's third floor. It was a quick moving fire, and the fire departments were doing a pretty good job keeping the flames down and localized.

I guess I automatically switch into "auto-pilot" when I'm on a big scene like this because I didn't really notice the rain. It was just shoot, shoot, shoot...get back to the truck...establish the signal....feed video back....run cables....set up camera...go live.

When Derek and Obie joined me after leaving their own live shot, I guess the adrenaline wore off a little and I noticed for the first time, "Damn...I'm soaked!!" My wireless receiver got wet and it proceeded to give out a static filled signal. There was so much rain, the a/v dongle that we plug into got wet and proceeded to put a bad hum in the audio which needed troubleshooting. After fixing that, I realized that I was really, really really soaked. The down into your underwear, uncomfortable kind of soaked. It's the worst feeling especially when it's cold and you're that wet.

What was the topper of the morning? Thanks for asking. It was when the Beachwood fire chief held a quick presser. My reporter Obie was holding an umbrella and as I was shooting, the runoff from the umbrella made an arc directly down in between my rain jacket and shirt. I nudged Obie over a little which helped until he adjusted the umbrella and started a Niagara-esque waterfall right between my glasses and into my eyes. It was like trying to shoot underwater without a scuba mask. All I could do was try to hold as still as possible while the chief was talking.

It was a cold and miserable drive back to the station because of slow traffic and equally as bad of a drive home. The hot shower I took when I got home was the best part of the day. That time I didn't mind getting wet.