Anna Essling, Florida

Hi! I'm Anna, a videographer from Swedish TV4 News, who has landed in Florida to work for Bonnier Corp.  They publish a large set of beautiful and glossy magazines on various themes and I work for the Marine Group, helping to supply web material for the marine Web sites. This position requested someone with a diving certificate and I hope I will be given the chance to shoot underwater material.  That would certainly be a dream come true!

More about me: I have been working for TV4 for 17 (!) years in Stockholm, but I have my roots highest up north in Sweden (Kiruna) and also on the Swedish west coast. I love traveling and have ended up in India a lot lately. I'm a vegetarian (just starting to eat a little seafood, felt a strong urge for this) and I love the ocean, always did!

For starters, the job is very different from what I'm used to. At home, the organization is a big machine—we are around 20 cameramen and I must have something like a couple of hundred colleagues that I cooperate and interact with in different variations. As a member of the 'Marine Video Crew' I have 3 close colleagues: Jamie the producer, Matt the cameraman and Ken the editor (Matt is also editing in between shoots and Ken is also a shooter). And of course Mike, who is the boss of the operation and Mike's assistant Lisa. It's a great bunch and they have all been very welcoming and helpful. The rest of the people under Mike are mainly working with the web (and they are cool too!)

In the beginning of my stay we went to the Miami Boatshow and I got a jumpstart to see the boat industry and more.  (You can see a picture of Jamie at a boatshow party in the slide show.)

I stayed on some extra days in Miami and rented a scooter to look around. The most vivid memory that never will leave me all-my-life is when I was driving down Lincoln Road and all of a sudden a dove crashed into my face, right between my eyebrows!!! Yes, it is all true. It was quite a blow—my sunglasses took most if it and after I had stopped the scooter and cleared my face of dove-poo (yes...), I found the dove lying 20 meters down the road, stone dead and split open with the guts exposed... It was quite a shock (to the bird not the least ♥ )! 

An editor-in-chief of one of the magazines (Randy Vance) just popped his head through the door and asked if I would like to film the launch of the space shuttle tomorrow from the water. Sounds like a nice trip, especially since it's finally starting to get warmer, so let's hope it will happen... So much to tell and so little time—I might write again before the week is over. Later, 'gater!