XTREMEEEE!!!

I had always seen different specials featuring the 4×4 rock crawlers as they are called on different cable channels but never really paid too much attention. When this event was assigned to me I was excited from the start. I knew it would definitely provide a great opportunity for some nice images and a great time to boot. The event is the Xtreme Rock Racing Association (XRRA) National Championship, which was held in Colorado Springs for the first time Saturday. Teams came from all over the US to compete in one of the toughest courses. When I was made aware of the assignment, Friday, I went out between assignments and scouted the location. This only amplified my anticipation. I got to the location, Ram Off Road Park, at about 7:45am on Saturday and stayed the better part of the day. It was a lot to take in. Lots of running, lots of carnage, lots of amazing people and stories, and lots of 50mph winds and sand. At the end of the day my gear and my body were thoroughly thrashed. Although my assignment did not require it, I had received my audio gear a few days previous and really wanted to put together a small multimedia piece to let people know a bit about this new sport and give them a better representation of what the event was like. Worrying about capturing audio and images was difficult and the weather conditions did not help any, but I believe I held my own. At about 5pm I threw my gear in the car and headed to the newsroom. I spent about 3 hours dwindling 965 images down to 30, editing audio, and producing the piece. There were things I learned and things I would have done differently, but in the end, I was happy with the result given my deadline. The piece was uploaded to www.gazette.com last night and was teased with a story and photo package in today’s paper as well. You can view it here.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 2:08 AM. It is filed under Editorial, Multimedia, Sports and tagged with Colorado, Colorado Springs, extreme, Gazette, internships, Multimedia, national championship, Newspapers, Ram Off Road Park, rock racing, Sports, XRRA, xtreme rock racing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.