Mitch’s Story… Prostate Cancer

The New York Times just posted a multimedia project I recently had the opportunity to work on, called “Patient Voices” which was about prostate cancer (there are others out there ranging from ADD to Infertility).  For this project I photographed and interviewed ESPN Commentator and all around good guy, Mitch Laurance.  I spent a great afternoon talk with, and photographing Mitch at the Grande Dunes Members Club in Myrtle Beach, while the Hard Rock Park celebrity golf tournament was going on outside.  It is always a rewarding experience when you get to help someone tell their story, especially one as personal as this.

 

 

 

If you are interested in watching the Patient Voices Interactive Feature follow this link.

Biker Heaven

©2007 Brett Flashnick/All Rights Reserved

When the alarm went off at 6am on Sunday morning to get out of bed to go shoot another assignment was the last thing on my mind, especially after having 14 hour days Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and late night of shooting on Saturday. However this is one of those assignments that I “had to do.” Its not like anyone was going to fault me for turning this down, and I almost did, until I found out that this “church assignment” wasn’t your typical church.
©2007 Brett Flashnick/All Rights Reserved

On the last Sunday of the month since April, 2007, the quiet neighborhood on Holland Street, in West Columbia, S.C. has been brought to life by the sound of motorcycles thundering down the road, to Suburban Baptist Church, on their way to “Biker Church” at 7:30am. Inside a group of approximately a dozen bikers, congregate over breakfast, and a small worship service that follows. “And when the weather permits after that we take the church out on the road, because the theology here is that the church is the people, not the building, and even when we hit the road the church is still there,” Biker Church co-Founder, Frank Lengel said.
©2007 Brett Flashnick/All Rights Reserved

To add insult to injury, as I was beginning to work on getting all of my non deadline assignments from last week out to clients, and starting to work on the multimedia from “Biker Church,” my iBook decided to take a yet another dirt nap. In an effort to get work done, I swapped the hard drives of my iBook with a 5 year old PowerBook G4 that was laying around for just such an occasion. Even though it is slow, the screen looks a “little yellow”, and there is some gunk on the screen that I can’t seem to get off the PowerBook is running like a champ so far, and while it took a little longer than normal I managed to produce a multimedia slideshow from Biker Church. Hopefully next week will go better.

To view my multimedia presentations point your browsers here — http://www.brettflashnick.com/multimedia.php

The art of Hurry up… and Wait…

Seven and a half hours of waiting, for six seconds of excitement… That is what Saturday boiled down to. It was the classic scenario of “hurry up and wait… and wait… and wait,” where all I was told was that “We know this is going to happen some time today, but we’re not sure when,” but when didn’t really matter it was the what and why that made this a fun hunt.

The movie “Death Sentence” is being filmed in Columbia, and on Saturday they were going to drop a car off of the top floor of a parking garage in the middle of Main St. In LosAngeles, the fact that they were doing a movie stunt wouldn’t have even gotten a blip on the radar, but in Columbia, S.C. its big news, so I had to do something big with it. I talked my way into the South Carolina Health and Human Services building, which sits adjacent to the parking garage, and picked my location, the 9th floor mens restroom. As the crew was setting the car and cameras below me, I began placing remote cameras in the windows, covering the lenses with gaffers tape to cut down on glare, and making sure everything was set. Its one of those shots that you don’t get a second chance with, so no screwing up.

Reggie, the head of security who had let me into the building, poked his head in the door around 2pm and said “They just called the 30 minute warning.” After seven-hours of standing around on the street corner, the parking lot across the street, and in the mens restroom, every movement on the parking garage below got my coplete attention. Through the tinted windows I could hear the director call “Stand By” and a few seconds later “Action”. As the car began to roll I fired both cameras simultaneously, and didn’t stop until I heard the car crash on the asphalt below. See the Sequence I guess there is something about dropping stuff off of high places that excites us as people, not to mention the fact that when the movie comes out, I can say “hey I saw that happen” and I have the pictures to prove it.

Peace