“…. Always second billing, these folks with the cameras on their shoulders. Clearly, what they do is at the heart and soul of television news. Yet in nearly thirty years in the business, working alongside some of the most gifted cameramen and women in the world, I came to understand how rarely they’re appreciated by the masters of the network universe, how consistently undervalued their skills, their courage, and their willingness to put themselves at risk to get the pictures.
Yet without them and without the images they provide, it is — as the late Reuven Frank so aptly put it — only radio. ….”
“…. They come in all shapes and sizes, these cameramen and women.
For example, the midwesterner shooting a 1980 campaign interview with George H.W. Bush, then a presidential candidate, was so obese, he had trouble breathing. His labored wheezing was so clearly audible on the tape that neither my questions nor Bush’s answers could be used in the story.
On the other hand, Tony Hirashiki, a talented and enthusiastic Okinawan who first picked up a camera in Vietnam, is a diminutive fellow who merrily carries a ladder with him on every assignment, including combat. A ladder is not a piece of equipment ever needed by Fletcher Johnson. He’s a big guy — six-foot-six — with hands the size of catchers’ mitts. ….”
“….They come in all creeds and colors, these cameramen and women, as well as all levels of proficiency and competence. They usually have made judgments on which of the correspondents they like personally and respect professionally and those they don’t, and they can reward and punish accordingly with their best effort or perhaps just a little something less. It’s true. They know it and I know it.
There are liberals and conservatives among them; intellectuals, too, as well as plodders and diligent yeomen — and yet without exception, despite their distinct idiosyncrasies, what cameramen and women all have in common is that they know for an undisputed fact that whether anyone says so or not, they are not merely important, they are absolutely essential, and because they clearly understand that, there is about every single one I’ve ever known a muscular sense of self, of dignity and pride in themselves and their work. Individually, they’re very much like the seasoned platoon sergeant who knows that although the lieutenant is ostensibly in charge, he is indispensable. It is his skill and his experience, not the lieutenant’s, that will see the unit through the tough times….”
“….Yet it isn’t merely the quirks of the cameramen’s personalities that are memorable in the end, but the pictures they provide. The images are the lasting stuff of their legacy. ….”