It’s been almost three years since I’ve done any filming or video editing for work so it was great to get back into the swing of things yesterday, filming and interviewing passersby on the National Mall. I usually spend most of my time behind a desk… in front of a screen, so I was relieved to get out on such a beautiful Saturday and spend some time re-familiarizing myself with video equipment and my old shooting techniques.

*Most people probably don’t know that I used to be a videographer in college for the student yearbook, La Vie. I haven’t had many opportunities to shoot video since starting as a multimedia designer at Gannett, but I jumped at the chance to join my colleagues downtown yesterday, getting back to both my roots as a videographer and on the ground in my native hometown of Washington, D.C.

There’s something very calming yet exciting about shooting video that I have missed dearly in recent years. It’s truly an art and, in my opinion, the most raw form of journalism there is.

So yesterday was great. I spent about five hours interviewing folks on the Mall with coworkers Maria Fowler and a new addition to our team, Elizabeth Bewley, who just graduated from Yale. Elizabeth and I worked together interviewing a diverse crowd with some really interesting stories and opinions. We got a about three tapes of footage to go back and edit in Final Cut and eventually post to our work-in-progress site on civil rights.