Cultivating Health

Some months ago (it took a while to get this one going), I had an idea for a new web series for UC Davis Health. The idea was to highlight the high-tech innovation going on here, as well as introduce the people behind it. What drives them? What gets them excited about this stuff? This idea evolved into “Cultivating Health,” a blog that acts as home to these videos, as well as articles that tell similar stories. Here’s the first two videos that I created in the series, with a new one set to come out every month.

Up next: how a head and neck surgeon is using 3D printers for his surgeries. Coming in May!

Pandemic Coverage

As COVID-19 became a global pandemic, we worked to provide useful information through interviews with our hospital’s experts. I produced several videos over the last month or two to help answer questions, ease fears and provide guidance into how to stay healthy in a scary time.

All other projects have been put on hold for the time being. Hopefully these videos are helpful in these uncertain times!

Surgeons of the Future!

Sacramento High School took a field trip to our School of Medicine to get a hands-on experience in the field of surgery. This is a fun story that I shot/wrote/edited, and reminded me of my younger days as a spry news photog. I sure don’t feel as spry these days. What happened to the spry?

Art of Healing - A Short Documentary on Art at the Hospital

Artwork is everywhere at UC Davis Medical Center, but what really caught my eye when I first started working here was the plaque next to each work of art. Along with the artist’s name and medium, it said that it was part of the UC Davis Medical Center collection. A hospital has its own official art collection?

During my spare time over the past year (which I have very little of), I slowly pieced together a story on the art collection and its purpose within a health system. Check it out -

Holiday Toy Drive

Want to make the holidays more fun for kids in the hospital? Here’s a promo I made for the Children’s Hospital’s annual toy drive, which featured my daughter doing the voiceover. She was rewarded with an ice cream cone for her A+ effort!

Blood Donations Save Lives PSA

Last summer, I was asked to create a promo for a staff blood drive. The organizers suggested we interview this local family, who nearly lost their daughter to a fire. It was a powerful story that hopefully helped inspire viewers to donate.

After the blood drive, we decided to make a generic version that we could share on social media. Here it is!

Exploring with 360° Tours

I’ve had a 360° camera for a few months now, and while it’s a fun little toy I haven’t quite been sure what to do with it. Last week, an opportunity finally came along as we looked to show off our new Children’s Hospital ambulance. While there’s a few things I’d do differently next time, I think it worked pretty well for this type of video! Click around and see what the new ambulance has to offer:

A Hospital Wedding!

Before they could get married, a local woman was hospitalized here at UC Davis, which would likely last through her pregnancy, so the staff stepped up and threw them a wedding to remember! I shot and edited this lovely story, which was also used by local media.

(Side note: This shoot marked my 1 year anniversary with UC Davis Health. It’s been quite a ride so far!)

Messages from Leadership

A new video genre that’s been introduced to me with this post-TV job is the Leadership Message. Gotta make the leaders look good! This was my first time running a solo 2-camera shoot, and I think it worked out pretty well.

"Robotics is Here"

“Robotics isn’t the wave of the future. Robotics is here.”

Technology is changing everything these days, including surgery.

This project took several months and required shooting 5 different surgeries, but it’s finally complete. Check it out:

Explorer 360°

Take a ride into the world’s first full-body PET scanner, the Explorer! I recently got a 360° camera and have been looking for ways to use it. This seems like a good start, but I’m curious to see what else we can do with it.

Livin' Like a Pop Star

It’s been fun getting back into the photog world. After six years of working in Promotions at CBS13/CW31, I kinda missed being out in the world covering news. Fortunately, the current gig gives me a dash of that from time to time with events like this: Make-A-Wish presents Pop Star for a Day!

Here’s a quick video I put together on Makayla, a 14-year-old cancer patient whose wish was to live like a pop star for a day. This included a red carpet entrance, autograph signing and the premiere of her own music video!

One More Emmy!

My last big project at CW31, an image campaign for Good Day, won a Northern California Regional Emmy for Promotion - Campaign!

Emmys for Promotion - Campaign (2019), Promotion - Single Spot (2018) and Light News Feature (2012).

We actually tied in that category with the Golden State Warriors, which to me makes it an even bigger win. With no budget and a small team, we were able to compete and deliver at the same level as an NBA team’s marketing department. Not bad!

You can check out the campaign here! And if you’re curious to see more, don’t miss last year’s winner Good Day Saves Christmas and my classic news feature story that won in 2012, The Seabreacher!

Adventures with Hospital Safety! (or Meetings, Meetings, Meetings)

There’s nothing more exciting than safety! One of my first assignments at the hospital was to shoot a video on daily huddles and how they make for a safer environment. Huddle, it turns out, is just a more exciting word for meeting. So it was a video about meetings. Meetings in the conference room, meetings in the hallway, meetings in another hallway… lots of meetings. Fortunately I’ve spent years covering city council and school board meetings, so this was nothing new. Here’s my best attempt to make safety meetings seem exciting.

Emmy Nomination - One More For the Road

Before retiring from television last year, I got the chance to create an image campaign for Good Day on CW31. It was my first time taking the lead on an image campaign and wound up being a massive amount of work. I wanted to include shots from throughout our market in what amounted to eleven :15 second and three :30 second spots. Lots of planning and lots of driving. But people seemed to like its positivity and that it celebrated many of the things that make our region great. Now I’m proud to say it nabbed a Northern California Regional Emmy nomination for the “Promotion: Campaign” category!

This is my sixth nomination since I started my TV career in 2005, three of which led to a win. Let’s hope this will make it an even four!

Grapes & Jello

How do you train a doctor to perform a heart procedure on an unborn baby? All you need is a bucket of jello and some grapes! Here’s a story I shot on the innovative training procedure.

VR & ADHD

When I was in 4th grade, I attended a birthday party at the arcade on the UC Berkeley campus. This arcade housed a technological marvel that would change entertainment as we know it: virtual reality!

Discover & share this Vr GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

The massive helmet, the boxy computer graphics… it was every kid’s dream! The future is now!

Then it just kind of went away. What happened to the future?

Finally, a few decades later, virtual reality is reemerging, and it’s actually pretty cool. It doesn’t feel mainstream yet, but it’s getting closer, and I’ll take any opportunity I can to relive the childhood excitement that came from playing VR at that arcade in the 90’s.

Which brings me to this week’s story: A study at UC Davis that’s examining if virtual reality can be used to train kids with ADHD to pay attention in class. It’s no Dactyl Nightmare, but I think it’s pretty cool.

Match Day Madness

Match Day is a big day in medical school. All the fourth year students find out where they’ll be going for their residency, and they do it by making everyone across the country open their envelopes at exactly the same time. It was a fun event that was a bit of a challenge to shoot (had to recruit some iPhone shooters to catch reactions) and it had to be turned quickly the same day. Here’s what I came up with:

Printing Skulls (So Metal!)

Surgeons at UC Davis are using 3D printers to replicate bones and prepare for surgeries. In this case, a doctor took a CT scan of a patient and was able to build a portion of his skull to create custom-fit brackets and repair a drooping eye.

Using a GoPro 7 Black, I shot a two time lapses to illustrate just how cool this technology is:

What’s even crazier is when something goes wrong during the printing process. That could give you nightmares.

Rock the Bald

It was a successful fundraiser that raised nearly $50k for the Cancer Center! What was it all about? Here’s my story:

It’s been fun getting back into news photog mode for some of these stories (I retired from photogery back in ‘12). I’m not as spry or nimble as I used to be, but it’s nice to be out and about telling stories again!