Saturday, November 03, 2007

Television, trains, weather and the death of a website

Just so everyone knows, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth. I just haven't placed much priority on updating this blog since I've been quite busy with school since the end of August, the 2007 Wisconsin severe weather season was nil, and a hacker attack irrepairably destroyed the entire Stoughton Piston Head Society website, including the weather section and high risk archive, in mid-September.

Anyhow, I'm going to try to revive this blog with more updates and pictures from now on.

To start, here's one of me doing what I've been spending a lot of time on this semester-various work for UWGB's campus cable station, Channel 20. This is now my second semester there and in addition to editing the show "Phoenix Connexion", I am doing a lot more camera work including running cameras in the studio. Some of this semester's shows have been among the best in the show's history according to our general manager. It helps to have a great staff all around, the new producers have been much better to work with than last semester and the other editors have been putting together some great video packages for the show.

















Although I started getting back into it in mid-late 2006, over the past year I have been spending a lot more time on what was for a long time not a priority hobby for me-railfanning. I liked trains as a kid but it wasn't until the last year or so that I began to actively seek them out for photography and videography. I find that trains and the scenery they travel through offer many of the same photogenic opportunities as storm chasing, plus there is the assurance that if you sit by the track long enough one will come by, whereas the same can't be said for even the best-forecasted storm chase!

Many of my train photographs can be seen at my Railroad Picture Archives contributor site, as well as a side aspect of photographing highway-rail grade crosssings and their warning devices at Mike's Railroad Crossing website.

More later.