Sophomore computer engineering major Lindsey Trotter (left) of Green Bay, Wis., feel her scalp while supporting sophomore cinema major Therese Pechacek (right) of Lakeville, Minn., during the St. Baldrick's head shaving event at the Newman Catholic Student Center at The University of Iowa on Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2013, in Iowa City, Iowa. Students and others shaved their heads and/or donated their hair to raise money and show solidarity for children cancer patients. (Jim Slosiarek/Gazette-KCRG)

University of Iowa students and members of the ministry at the Newman Catholic Student Center shaved their heads to show solidarity and raise money to support children with cancer during a St. Baldrick’s Foundation event at the center Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2013, in Iowa City, Iowa.

Instructors with the American Canoe Association worked with participants for a winter pool paddling skills session at Peet Pool in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Instructors were Piper Wall and Greg Vitale of Ames, Iowa, Max Wellhouse and Al Donaldson of Cedar Falls, Iowa, Glenn Harman of Des Moines, Iowa,

This is the fourth or fifth year for the sessions. Organizer and Cedar Falls resident Al Donaldson says participants each have their own needs to accomplish during the pool sessions. Some want to learn how to roll their whitewater kayak, while others want to improve their individual paddling stroke and coordinate tandem canoe operations.

“I am committed to any actions that I can take to increase paddler skill and safety: providing the winter practice time and the presence of the greatly skilled instructors seems to be a simple way to accomplish this task,” said Donaldson on his motivation in organizing the pool sessions.

A chicken eats around a GoPro camera to get at the seeds of the pumpkin at the home of Phil and Katrina Fristad on Friday, Sept. 25, 2012, in Cedar Rapids. The Fristad's coop is on this year's Tour de Coop. (Liz Martin photos/The Gazette-KCRG)

There comes a time in every visual journalist’s career when they must attempt to affix a recording device to a chicken. That day, for me, was September 28, 2012.

As a part of The Gazette’s coverage of Tour de Coop — an event where residents can travel to urban chicken coops to sample a variety of designs and construction methods — I was charged with creating a video accompaniment.

The event, being light-hearted in nature, allowed for quite a bit of flexibility when setting the scope for the video. And during newsroom conversations, the idea was passed around to attempt and capture a true “birds-eye” view of the coop’s innards.

Up for the challenge, we began discussing methods for attaching our smallest camera — a GoPro — to one of the birds.

Dog collars, stretchy headbands, and even duct tape were suggested, but lacking a newsroom bird to test on, we were all grasping at straws.

And so I learned a valuable lesson: come prepared.

I arrived at the source’s house with: a GoPro, a collapsible stick to attach to the GoPro, a classic TV news camera, a dog harness, a stretchy headband, duct tape, and metal wire.

Our overall goal was to obtain a creative video, regardless of whether or not attaching the camera proved successful. And so bringing the backup options were important, and proved essential.

Almost instantaneously I settled on the dog collar as the correct mode of attachment.

It was roughly the same girth as the chicken, and once the source had corralled one of her birds and I was able to start inching the red collar around it, things were looking pretty good.

The bird was rather calm, a few ruffled feathers, but overall unperturbed by our work. Since a chicken lacks substantial front appendages we cinched it as much as we could around its middle without injuring the bird.

Have you ever wanted to sit and watch the Apple rainbow pinwheel dance across your computer screen for hours? If you have, try making a time lapse with full video in Final Cut X.

On September 10, I was charged with the task of creating a time lapse of the Paramount Theatre’s marquee instillation. The massive metallic structure is ornate, colorful, and needed to be installed in six separate pieces.

Check out Diana Nollen’s story about the sign, along with a photo gallery of the process.

Nesper Sign Advertising employee Steve Edaburn of Marion watches as a large section of the marquee is lowered into place at Paramount Theatre on Monday, Sept. 10, 2012, in Cedar Rapids. The sign has been repainted, LED lights replacing incandescent bulbs and three video message boards replacing the old white letter boards. (Liz Martin/The Gazette-KCRG)

An industrial feat for sure, the entire process was going to start at 8 a.m. and stretch long into the afternoon.

Since the sign instillation was so drawn out, photos and short video clips were not able to capture the entire process in a way that a time lapse could.

For anyone who doesn’t know, a time lapse is a condensing of images or video to show a long period of time in a few moments. Essentially, think of it as fast forwarding a movie.

Frequently, time lapses are performed using still photographs. A photographer will set up a camera in a stationary location and snap a photo once every minute or two. Gazette photographer Liz Martin did this when the National Czech and Slovak Museum was moved.

When the photographs are shown in quick succession, the result is a relatively seamless stream of visuals.

I chose to tackle my time lapse using video for two reasons.

First, I am not a photographer. I have very little experience using The Gazette’s still cameras, and it would have been a process that I would not have been as comfortable with.

Second, while the process was long — about four hours of filming — it was not that long. If I was to use a camera and shoot a still every minute, or even thirty seconds, a lot can change in those thirty seconds. When the crane was hoisting large portions of the sign, it was moving rather quickly. I would have missed large chunks of the process if I were using stills that were shot at designated intervals.

However, dealing with four hours of footage is daunting. I ran through a battery and a half, and filmed over 100 gigabytes of footage. Ingesting all of the footage into Final Cut was a logistical nightmare.

I had to watch, for almost an hour, the little pinwheel spin.

Dew settles on the Paramount Theatre sign before installation on Monday, Sept. 10, 2012, in Cedar Rapids. The marquee has been repainted and LED lights replaced the old incandescent bulbs. (Liz Martin/The Gazette-KCRG)

But the fun had just begun.

Final Cut X is an optimized product. It is very much an “Apple” program. What I mean by that is it is designed to function in a polished, seamless way that allows the user to feel as if the minutia of computing is handled for them.

Case in point: in Final Cut X, you cannot save. Saving is done for you. You are not expected to have to remember to save; Final Cut will be your friend and organize all your files for you.

Most of the time that is great. But there are those moments that it can bug you, and creating a time lapse is one of those times.

Final Cut X has a wonderful feature called re-time. By simply selecting a video clip and choosing the speed (either 2x 4x 8x or 20x) the program will instantly re-time the clip for you, and you are able to see the length of the clip shrink before your eyes.

But the reality is the clip hasn’t been re-timed at all.

The program wants you to think it has done the job instantly, and hopes you will go about your business while it works in the back end to actually do all of the re-timing work.

This would work great for re-timing, say, a minute or two of footage. But not four hours.

If you attempt to re-time four hours of footage at once — like I did — the computer freezes. I sent my brand new MacBook Pro into a perpetual state of rainbow pinwheel.

Backtracking, I was able to chunk the four hours into short, ten-minute segments. Re-timing each of them, shrinking them, and then allowing Final Cut to spend five minutes processing the request. This, as you could imagine, took hours.

Especially since 20x, which is Final Cut X’s cap for re-timing, only shortened the video to about 15 minutes. So I had to export the video, re-ingest the 15 minutes of footage into Final Cut, and re-time it once more to reach the desired length of one minute.

But the end product was wonderful.

I had a seamless time lapse of four hours in just a minutes. The benefit to using video was that when one of the workers was diligently screwing bolts into the sign, even though his motions were tremendously sped up, you are still able to watch a fluid visual stream.

Photos would not provide you with that detail.

I think I reached the limit of video time lapse with four hours. For longer, slower processes such as the moving of a building, or the movement of the sun across the sky, stick with photos.

But for those who wish to try their hand at a video time lapse, Final Cut X’s re-time feature is fantastic.

Just be prepared to wait.

Lisbon High School's Melissa Alger photographed in the high school's old gymnasium Thursday, June 7, 2012, in Lisbon, Iowa. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette-KCRG)

An annual event at The Gazette is our athlete of the year story. Ten finalists, five males and five females, are chosen from athletes throughout our coverage area. Sometimes the athletes bring their jerseys, medals, racquets, shoes, and various balls to The Gazette’s studio for the portrait session. Other times, I’ve traveled to Decorah, Tipton, Manchester, Troy Mills, Williamsburg, and even Madison to a catch up with athletes.

It’s a race against time to schedule the shoots with the finalists. Most have summer jobs,  or are leaving for college or have already left to tend summer classes and/or training camps in their respective sports. I appreciate them making time in their schedules.

2011 Athlete of the Year finalist Cedar Rapids Washington Alex Carr.

Last year I pitched an idea to use my Iphone and an app called Hipstamatic to produce stylized portraits. I also pitched the idea of producing a short video interview with the athletes.

The videos were nothing special. Just them, looking into my Iphone, responding to questions about their most memorable sports moment, disappointments, role models. Everyone liked the video idea so well that when I brought it up for inclusion with this year’s group of finalists, it was met with positive responses.

This year, I wanted to  take it to the next level. Continuing on the theme of where the athletes got their starts, I asked them to provide some photographs that I could incorporate in the video. I also pulled photos from The Gazette’s archives to tie the old photos to the more current ones. I zoomed in or out on the photos as well as panned across them to give them a sense of motion. This is often referred to as the “Ken Burns Effect”. Named for documentarian Ken Burns who uses the effect regularly in his historical documentaries. Some video editing software have an actual “Ken Burns Effect” option. My version of Final Cut Pro lets you do it old school. I had more control over where and when the effect started as well as where and when it stopped.

I’ve never done anything like this before so it was a learning experience. The first one I put together was of Lisbon’s Ben Knake.

Lisbon High School's Ben Knake photographed in the high school's old gymnasium Wednesday, June 6, 2012, in Lisbon, Iowa. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette-KCRG)

I think his and the one of Marcus Paige were the best. The editing is a little cleaner with Paige’s video. It was one of the last videos I put together so my workflow was streamlined somewhat. Plus, it’s tough not to like filming Paige shooting hoops on his backyard basketball court.

Knake’s, however, is my favorite, primarily because of his interview. He was just a relaxed, engaged speaker.

Check out the videos from the other finalists and profiles written by ace writers Jeff Linder and Jeff Johnson.

FEMALE

Melissa Alger, Lisbon

Mackenzie Bigbee, Williamsburg

Annie Dale, Cedar Rapids Xavier

Allie Hutcheson, Cedar Rapids Kennedy

Shelly Stumpff, Iowa City West

MALE

Mark Atwater, Linn-Mar

Jordan Hay, North Cedar

Ben Knake, Lisbon

Marcus Paige, Linn-Mar

Charles Rogers, Iowa City West

Tuesday, a barge crane lifts the mast decking over a hundred feet replacing it back on the USS Iowa. The deck is used to place antennas and radar equipment. The tower of the mast reaches up an additional sixty feet. This is the last major piece to be replaced on the ship before it is towed to Los Angeles in May. The deck was removed by the navy in 2001 so it could clear an area bridge for storage. (Mark Benischek/The Gazette-KCRG)

Updated 11:30 pm, 04-24-12

Today was a very important day in the restoration of the battleship, the returning of the mast.

Mark Carlson and I arrived just after 9 a.m., and a small crowd had already gathered in the shipyard. Mostly veterans that had helped restore the ship a few local sightseers and a few Iowans that had stopped bye while attending a conference in the bay  area.

Becky Beach, the USS Iowa Project fundraiser, came in from Des Moines for the event. She went to the top of the tower where  the mast would attach to the ship and placed several coins including an Iowa Quarter and a gold coin directly under the mast. I joked with her about someone stealing the coins but she said they will be melted and mixed in with the metal as it is welded. She says it is an old naval tradition.

There was a hive of activity surrounding the mast decking. Contractors were busy reinforcing the welds and making final adjustments to the steel. The deck had to fit perfectly on the tower of the USS Iowa.

The goal of the Pacific Battleship Center was to have the deck lifted around 9:30 but that did not happen because of some last minute adjustments and correction with the mast. To keep the people interested the volunteers gave tours of the bow of the ship. That is the front and houses turrets one and two of the 16″guns.  I used the time as an opportunity to get any last minute video or photos that I may need to tell the story later.

Eventually Mark and I started doing interviews with veterans when the mast is ready signal was given on the two-way radio. We quickly moved into place to capture the event.

It was really well orchestrated with a crane on a barge was moved into place  with a tug boat to lift the decking. Then it was slowly moved down the ship to where the crane would move into place to be lifted up and on the tower.

Once the mast was in place you could feel a collective sigh of relief from organizers. This was the last major piece to be put on the battleship before it is finished. With the mast in place most of the scaffolding can now be removed revealing its for grandeur.

The whole process went off without incident.

A view of the battleship from the bow looking back. The two large chains hoist the anchors and each link weighs a 1000 pounds. The ship's bell is orginal from when it was commissioned in 1943. Far, a group is getting a tour of the main deck while they wait for the mast to be raised into place. (Mark Benischek/The Gazette-KCRG)

Crews put the finishing touches on the mast platform before it is hoisted atop the USS Iowa. When the navy removed the platform in 2001 so it could clear an area bridge it was left dismantled in several pieces on the deck of the ship. The crews have to weld and adjust the platform so it fits perfectly when it is seated to the ship. (Mark Carlson/The Gazette-KCRG)

Becky Beach gets her service dog Jake ready to pose for a picture on the main deck of the battleship.. Beach was contacted by Senator Grassley's office to help raise funds for the battleship. Over $6,000,000.00 has been raised so far with three of that coming from the State of Iowa. The goal is $9,000,000.00. Beach, who lives in Des Moines, has made multiple trips to the ship, this one in particular she brought and Iowa Quarter and other coins to be melted into the base of the welded mast a naval tradition. (Mark Benischek/The Gazette-KCRG)

The USS Iowa sits in a harbor in Richmond, Calif.. The mast has the finishing touches welded on it after being off for over a decade. The ship will be towed in May to its final home in Los Angeles. (Mark Benischek/The Gazette-KCRG)

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Mark Carlson and I have been given the opportunity to document the restoration of the USS Iowa Battleship.

We traveled to Richmond CA Sunday,  just north of San Francisco, where the mighty ship is docked. The Pacific Battleship Center attained the ship in late 2011. Since then there has been a buzz of activity getting the ship ready to be a floating museum over the 4th of July in Los Angeles.

The ship has been in mothballs for over 20 years. The Teak Wood on the main deck is all but rotten and rust has invaded deeper than any enemy bomb ever had. Both paid and volunteers have put in many hours restoring the vessel by repairing the wood sand blasting and painting the steel.

Fundraising is essential for the completion of the project. Leaders have thought of every possible way of raising cash including offering weekend tours at $10 per person. Sunday over 400 people toured the ship even though they were only allowed on a portion of the deck and the inside is strictly off limits for now. Most visitors we spoke with came because this was as close as they could ever get to a battle ship.

On Tuesday the mast will be raised in a ceremony to add another 60 feet of height. It was taken off in 2001 by the navy so it could clear an area bridge. Officials tell us this would compare to a topping off ceremony you would see with a building. An Iowa quarter will be put under the base of the mast and be melted in as it is welded in place, another Naval tradition.

Personally both Mark and I are thrilled to be able to cover this as a story. Like most people I have never had the opportunity to see a battleship not to mention being able to tour one. We were able to see the inside of the ship and it is incredible. The navy may  have let the deck go but it spent millions maintaining the interior with large dehumidifiers. That is as much as I can talk about that part of the ship now although I can say the narrow passages of the USS Iowa were not meant for someone of my height and girth.

I will continue to gather and update the blog as I cover this mighty ship.

This is a view the front of the battleshipfacing the rear. Turret one with its 16 inch guns. stand ready for the rust to be removed and repainted. In the distance the mast will be put in the tower Tuesday adding another 60 feet of height. (Mark Benischek/The Gazette-KCRG)

The Pacific Battleship Center is offering tours of the deck of the battleship Sunday. The group is standing on Teak wood that needs to be replaced as well as the turret to the left that needs to be cleaned and painted. Above scaffolding surrounds the tower in front of the bridge so workers can repair and paint. Paid contractors work at those heights while volunteers work the lower levels of the ship. (Mark Benischek/The Gazette-KCRG)

Jeneieve Meyers carries his son Jospeh as he looks at Turret One on the aft section of the USS Iowa. Meyers brought his family 60 miles from Novato Calif. to get a look at the battleship. Meyers was one of 400 people that toured the ship Sunday. Next weekend is expected to be the last to open to the public since most of the area will be closed for repairs. The ship is expected to be in Los Angeles for a July 4th ceremony.(Mark Benischek/The Gazette-KCRG

KCRG Photojournalist Mark Benischek on the USS Iowa . (Mark Carlson/The Gazette-KCRG)

Photojournalist Matt Nelson visits Trustmark Park in Pearl, Mississippi, on Friday, April 13, 2012, for his "Ballparks of the Midwest" series. "Midwest" is a loose definition. (Matt Nelson/The Gazette - KCRG-TV9)

2012 will mark Season 4 of my “Ballparks of the Midwest” series. You can check out the past year’s ballpark visits here.

The new ballpark visits will begin airing in July, however I like to shoot them well in advance as this project then allows me more time to edit the stories. Yes, I enjoy visiting new ballparks (I’m up to 85 total major, minor and independent league ballparks, though not nearly that many for this series), but I also really enjoy the opportunity to take my camera gear to the ballpark to show our viewers the unique characteristics and characters that each ballpark has. Each stadium is different.

So last weekend I was preparing for a trip down South (the series is not entirely “Midwest”) when one team whose ballpark I planned to visit, decided a day before the game I planned to be at, to reject my credential request for reasons I will never understand. When I do these stories, I generally need five minutes of the ball club’s time, and then I’m off on my own. In any case, I had to scramble, and thanks to the fine people with the Class AA Mississippi Braves of the Southern League, I found a replacement ballpark in Pearl, Mississippi.

I guess it goes to show that even though I plan and research this series out well in advance, you just never know what will happen. The Braves and Trustmark Park helped me out on short notice and will kick off the season of ballpark visits in July.

On Tuesday I was shooting a story with Nadia Crow at the Cedar Ridge Winery near Swisher. Our focus was the upcoming frost that morning and what the winerey was doing to prepare the grapevines from being killed. I was just starting to shoot my video when Mike Wagner called and asked if I had a moment. Fearing the worst I said yes tell me what was going on. He replied that he is thinking of sending Bruce and I to the White House Wednesday for an interview. I am not sure if it was shock or excitement I told him OK. As I continued to shoot it started to settle in what the cost of this would be and maybe they would try to find a way to send Bruce alone to save money. As they day progressed I received an email with my hotel and flight information then I knew it was a go.

Wednesday we flew out of Moline and arrived in Washington close to 1800 hours Eastern.

Our interview with the President was at 1440 hours Thursday  and we arrived at the appropriate gate on Pennsylvania and 17th Street at 1300 hours. This is the main entrance for any media types wanting access to White House grounds. We had to go through the first gate with a call box explaining who we were and our business. The next tier of security brought us in front of the guard building. This is where we show them our I.D. and they make sure our background check was OK. It was about a 15 minute wait and the entire time there was a steady stream of people buzzing requesting access as well. While we were waiting there was an area I had to put all of my equipment so it could be checked over for a security reasons.

Eventually we were allowed to the west wing press area to wait further. There were 3 other stations from around the country given the same opportunity and before we could proceed further we had to wait for all to get through security.

After everyone was checked in we were escorted from the press area of the west wing to an entrance straight into the mansion. Before we could enter there was one more security check-point and he had to unlock the door from his glassed in room.We were about to enter an area few tours are allowed in.

When we finally made it inside I felt I was somewhere special. The large arched ceiling of the hallway gave you a grand feeling you were someplace important. We went down about 3 rooms and to the right into a holding area for us to work out of until we were ready to meet the president. This was called The Map Room. It was full of antiques and of course maps. Beautiful furniture including formal chairs a lounge, desks and bookcases lined the room. In the center there were several chairs with white seats they were the only places we allowed to sit. I guess it is a good thing because some of the chairs had information saying they were part of George Washington’s original table at Mount Vernon.

While we were waiting we were brought in to the adjoining room where the actual interview would be held. This is called The Diplomatic Room. This is the official welcoming room for visiting dignitaries. That day it was for select local TV stations to interview the president.  There were 2 chairs in the middle surrounded by lights and 3 camera crews outside of that. NBC News was actually shooting the interview I just provided something to record it on.

We were then escorted back into the holding area until the President was ready. Then one by one each crew was was brought in for or 4-7 minute interview with the President of the United States. First it was a the station from Columbus, Ohio then us, next was Reno, NV and lastly St. Louis, Mo. A staffer told that  stations were selected because the President wanted to talk about the Buffet bill and our states had votes the President needed in Congress.

When it was KCRG’s turn for the interview Bruce went up and shook hands and sat down.

I was not allowed that close but enjoyed the view for 20 feet back.

The interview lasted 8:45 and as soon as everyone was  finished we were escorted out of the mansion and back to the press area in the west wing. The rest of the days was logging the  interview editing on my laptop computer and and feeding it back via e-mail.

We did our live shots from the ABC News spot on the north lawn then finished up with a story four our news at 10.

The flight home Friday was delayed but uneventful.

I was told by people that have visited the Executive Mansion before that regardless of your political views you really gain respect for the office and the grounds while you are there. I had to agree with that.

The Map Room of the White House. This was our holding area while waiting for the interview. Note the chairs in the center of the room are the only place we were allowed to sit. (Mark Benischek/The Gazette-KCRG)

View of Executive Mansion from NW Security Gate. (Mark Benischek/The Gazette-KCRG)

The Oreo Cookie Shoot. (Matt Nelson/The Gazette - KCRG-TV9)

March was apparently the month of…food stories for myself and Iowa City Reporter Mark Carlson. Sure there were trips to cover Iowa in the Big 10 Tournament and Iowa State in the NCAA Tournament, as well as a Vice Presidential visit, but I had a lot of fun working on these two stories. “The Oreo Turns 100,” and “Potato for President.”

“The Oreo Turns 100″ actually started when a co-worker sent out an e-mail noting that she was bringing in Oreos to mark the 100th birthday of the snack. We decided it was time to find a fun way to tell that story. So, we got a daycare on board, the Johnson County Senior Center, a marketing expert from the University of Iowa and then we bought a bunch of Oreos and had some fun in a conference room with them (yes, we put a glass on our cameral lens and poured milk into it, and yes, we took a GoPro camera and submerged it in milk).

An easy way to create shadows for backgrounds in interviews and other shoots. (Matt Nelson/The Gazette - KCRG-TV9)

The lighting for the conference room was done with 3 lights. One light was pointed towards the product and the interview subject, the other was facing the wall and in front of it I placed a piece of foamboard in which I have cut circles. It’s basically a $5 way to make shadows in a background. Put a blue gel on it and suddenly your brown wall is a blue one. The brown wall can actually be seen in the interviews for “Potato for President.” In an effort to make the blue color really “pop,” I also tweaked some settings on our Panasonic HPX370 cameras so that the colors and contrast are adjusted for a little different look.

“Potato for President” started with a press release, and from there, Mark Carlson and I were brought back to our own good ol’ days of college radio wackiness. I never did anything quite like running a potato for student body president though.

The University of Iowa’s Operator Performance Laboratory’s L-29 jets fly a mission over Iowa City Saturday, Feb. 11, 2012 (Brian Ray/The Gazette-KCRG)

Tom "Mach" Schnell was a huge help to this project. He went as far as creating a permanent wing mount on one of the L-29s so we could safely mount a GoPro HD2 outside the plane on the wing. I never dreamed when I suggested to him we do this during a meeting a couple days before the shoot he would be so helpful. (Mark Carlson/The Gazette-KCRG)

Last Saturday KCRG’s Matt Nelson, Mark Carlson, and myself had the opportunity to work on an awesome story about some high tech research being conducted by the University Of Iowa’s Operator Performance Laboratory (OPL) in conjunction with Rockwell Collins. Due to insurance reasons we were told by both the OPL and by our insurer that we would not be allowed to actually fly in the jets. So in order to capture the story we decided to rely on small GoPro HD cameras.

Tom “Mach” Schnell with the OPL was totally supportive of this idea and wanted to meet with us about what we were thinking and our goals for the story. So early last Wednesday morning we met with Schnell in the OPL’s hangar at the Iowa City Airport. In our discussion with Schnell I proposed the idea of putting a camera out on the wing of one of the jets. I was not sure how this would go over because it would require actually drilling a hole in the tip of one of the wings in order to safely bolt the mounting point for the camera to the plane. Not only was Schnell supportive of the idea he was so excited about it that later that afternoon we received a series of photos from him taken on a test flight after he and his team had custom built the mount.

Saturday, when we arrived we rigged up the two jets with seven GoPro HD cameras. Each jet had a camera facing the pilot and one out the front of the canopy. The jet with the simulator pilot also had a camera on him and one on the wing tip. The other contained the camera for the side shot. To see the results of all this effort and find out what the OPL is up to tune in to KCRG’s newscast at 10 p.m. Thursday night and read Sunday’s Gazette. But for a taste and what we captured see the web video below. Enjoy!

Brian Ray and Matt Nelson discuss mounting points for the GoPros in one of the UI OPL's two L-29 Jets (Mark Carlson/The Gazette-KCRG)

Brian Ray and Matt Nelson line up the GoPro HD2 facing out the side of the canopy of one of the OPL's L-29 jets to get shots of the other plane flying in formation (Mark Carlson/The Gazette-KCRG)

The front and rear facing camera in one of the OPL's L-29 jets. (Mark Carlson/The Gazette-KCRG)

Last year the parkade along First Avenue NE in Cedar Rapids was destroyed to make way for the new Cedar Rapids convention center. In order to document this event we set up several cameras including a GoPro inside the blast zone and a Canon DSLR with a 400mm F 2.8 lens. We had a second GoPro mounted on a fence underneath the parkade’s sign but it’s video was corrupted when the building knocked over the fence it was clamped on. When the fence fell and the camera hit the ground the card popped out and I lost everything. Some times you win and sometimes you lose but it’s always fun to try new things.

Jim Slosiarek shot our Cedar Rapids RoughRiders slap shot contest. This is the third year for the contest. Staff reporter Jeff Johnson manned the speed gun. Defenseman Greg Amlong clocked the fastest slapper at 94mph.

Staff Photojournalist Matt Love took a look at the workers and materiel at the rising Federal Courthouse in Cedar Rapids last month.

The story that ran on KCRG-TV9