For the past 9 months I’ve been the offiical photographer for the BET 106 & Park app for iPhone and Droid.  It’s the first time I’ve had a semi consistent work schedule since I quit teaching high school in 2000.  It’s a fun gig because it’s live TV (with some pretaped shows) so there’s always an element unpredictability in the air.  The challenge for me is to find new shots each day even though I’m shooting in the same location. 

On a typical day at BET I cover a pre-tape and a live broadcast.  I typically shoot anywhere from 500 – 1,000 shots per show.  The show has 2 hosts so and when they are interviewing a celeb it takes a lot of shots to produce an image where all 3 faces look good while everyone is talking.  There are also a lot of different segments that need to be photographed, so it adds up to a lot of shots at every taping. My workhorse is the Nikon D3s, but I shoot all the green room and commercial break stuff on the Leica M9.  The Leica is technically inferior to the Nikon in every way, but I love the look of the photos and I love using a tool that makes me work to produce something good.  I also have an intern shoot a Nikon D3 on tapings that are particularly hectic.