A few weeks ago, I came in contact with Linda Meloche, the host of Around Town With Linda, a show on Chelsea’s local cable channel.  For her show, Linda interviews interesting people in and around Chelsea; however, since it seems she couldn’t find an interesting person in or around Chelsea for this slot, she asked me to appear on her show.  We taped the interview a couple weeks ago, and the finished product should start airing today.

For those of you who don’t remember my previous post about my public speaking abilities … well, here’s a refresher:

Just keep that in mind as you watch the interview.  But I know they did their best to edit it to make me sound good, so maybe they cut out the duhhhs and bwahs.  Guh bah dhay gwah!  Coo coo ca choo.

Also, I think I need to expand on two of my answers that I am assuming will be in the final cut:

• We were talking about my sports photography, and then we started talking about my work for the newspaper; that was an easy transition because my sports work frequently appears in the paper.  As I recall, Linda asked me if my work for the paper is paid work; though I now think she was asking about all my newspaper work, I was still thinking sports, so I told her that my newspaper work is unpaid.  This is only half true.  I provide my sports photos to the newspaper for no charge (which is why, if you read the photo credit, you’ll find that it says “Photos courtesy of Burrill Strong”) and make money only when someone makes a purchase from me; however, the other work I do for the paper is actually paid freelance work (which is why, if you read the photo credit, you’ll find that it says “Photos by Burrill Strong”).
• Linda asked me if the advent of affordable digital cameras is a problem for professionals like me; in response, I talked about how there is now a bit more of a misconception that it’s Not That Hard for Anyone to Take Great Photos (a misconception that’s most unhelpfully advanced by camera manufacturers’ advertisements), but that when people get into more difficult situations like ice arenas or football games under the lights, they find out their consumer kit equipment isn’t really up to the task.  This is true, but it’s only half the answer I should have given.  Equipment matters, but there is a more important element to photography: the photographer.  Modern cameras can get the settings right more often, but if people don’t have the basic knowledge required to use cameras’ capabilities, they’re going to hit a wall a lot sooner (“Why is my picture blurry?”  “Well, your shutter speed was half a second.”  “My what?”).  And on the more nebulous creative side, if people don’t have the eye to see and compose a good photograph, all the nice cameras in the world won’t produce compelling photographs.  So, in summary: yes, it’s easier to take pictures, but no, it’s still not easy to be a photographer.

If you watch the interview and have questions about anything else I said, feel free to post them here.