“And I do it all in heels!”

Often I notice, in the journalism world today (or at least the part of that world I’ve been exposed to), the group of us who fall into the one-man-band category make up what feels like an exclusive club. The funny part about that statement is, our “club” is probably about as exclusive as the percentage of Italian grandmothers who make good meatballs. But I’d be lying if I said I’ve never caught myself in a moment of confidence–okay, sometimes full-blown arrogance–when comparing myself to my reporter counterparts who never have to touch a camera.

It’s the part of me that occasionally whips up a sentence like, “I upped the shutter speed a touch so I wouldn’t have to increase the gain all the way, and with my iris open it really made a difference in quality. Add that to my slow-zoomed rack focus, and I think the end product will look pretty good. If only we could shoot in Quicktime and weren’t confined to MPEGs”–even when I really only have half a clue what I’m talking about.

My multimedia colleagues and I are probably just trying to convince ourselves that when it feels like we’re working non-stop for little recognition and even less pay, we’ve got our mad camera skills to fall back on as a (please-God-let-this-be-true) security net in a business that sometimes seems as certain as skipping rocks.

Or maybe the girly-girls within us ladies like the fact that this aspect of our job makes us feel kind of tough. As I walked out the door of the newsroom this afternoon, camera slung over my shoulder and tripod in hand, two of my lovely one-man-band cohorts laughed with me, pointing out that they too have had person after person ask that inevitable question, “They make you do it all by yourself??” And the pride in their voices was barely disguised when they both said, almost at the same time, “And I do it in heels!”