Today we’d like to introduce you to Paul Emus
Hi Paul, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
PAUL EMUS, a retired Army journalist, English teacher, and County clerk, currently says it’s about “having too much fun.” With freedom afforded by good health, three small pensions, TRICARE, social security, and mortgages paid off, he takes on the occasional freelance job. “I enjoy technical hardware and software to create artistic endeavors,” Paul comments. A perpetual student, Paul scheduled a certificate program with Continuing Ed on the Adobe Creative Cloud software.
“My self-contained Roadtrek RV allows for adventure with my radio-collared fur buddies. We follow the weather, enjoying satellite radio, good books and magazines, from San Diego to the desert, mountains, and sea.” “I swim laps,” Paul says, “and hit the trails with my dog and fat-tire electric bike. I eat superfoods, take supplements, and plan to live to 120 by avoiding sugar and processed foods — and certainly not smoking or drinking,” he says. Paul socializes with clubs, politics, and friends and family. “My cousin says I won’t get Alzheimer’s because of my good hand-eye coordination for flying a drone.” At a charity auction, the mayor bid $100 on his drone photo!
After 15 years, Paul retired from the cubicle with the County of San Diego. At Property Tax Services, he supported rolls of a million bills, plus did accounts payable, labor corrections, and administrative duties. For ten years Paul kept busy as a substitute teacher for a dozen school districts, practicing lessons, multi-media presentations, assertive discipline, supervision, classroom management, and problem solving under pressure. Meanwhile Paul worked night shifts as a security officer, and was an adjunct Professor/Instructor.
A master’s in Communications included writing a 200-page thesis and seminars on research, publications law, ethics, investigative public affairs reporting, and radio-TV newswriting. Paul’s first B.A. was in Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, Berkeley, and Riverside. Professional organizations included Tostmasters speaking.
Paul retired from the Army National Guard as a Journalist, doing magazine editing, film processing, speech writing, surveys, Audio/Visual, press conferences, media escort during emergencies, and overseas deployments. Previously he served in Reserve public affairs, psychological operations, and armor radar, with a Secret Clearance. Paul was Journalist Honor Graduate from the Defense Information School.
Another previous life in lucrative but unstable aerospace produced graphics/reports layout and writing for Army contract courseware. At Rohr, Paul documented aircraft engineering, after Boeing parts catalogs for several years. As technical writer, Paul revised Navy aircraft schematics, maintenance procedures, troubleshooting tables, and structural parts breakdowns.
While editor in Silicon Valley, “must win” proposals for radar countermeasures required managing schedules, illustrators, “red-team” reviews, visual aids, photography, biographies, style formats and classified documents. He created newsletters and contributed to trade and local press. Paul worked briefly as an electronics technician after active duty repairing radar in the Army at Korea and Texas, and 40 weeks full-time electronics school.
Professional journalism previous lives included dailies, where Paul got a first-place award and made extensive front-page coverage of agriculture, business, weather, and public utility. Over 1,000 published articles are from being reporter, editor, columnist, correspondent and photographer for metro, student, and military newspapers and magazines. Managing editor activity included “scooping” police beat, city council, in-depth interviews, hard-hitting election coverage, accurate overnight deadlines, colorful features, business and political columns. Design and layout paste-up production were in the days of “hard copy.”
A native Californian, Paul became Eagle Scout; lived in Europe and Asia; and traveled in over 25 countries, gaining conversational ability in German, Spanish and French. [For more, visit https://www.facebook.com/emuscom/ or go to YouTube and search “Paul Emus”.]
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The economy, the decline of print newspapers, constantly wrestling with digital updates, e.g., WordPress kept updating features plugins, or links for my website making it not work, so I decided to stop paying for it. Also lead generating sites like Thumbtack or Bark that charge for job leads that sometimes seem bogus because of no responses or wishy-washy objectives.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am really retired with three small military, County and teacher pensions; so I don’t need to work. But I enjoy doing creative photography and video in my field, having a master’s degree in Communications. I am 75, but after all, American presidents work at older ages! I particularly enjoy doing drone jobs. One year I made over $9K, with a lot of traveling to warehouses and commercial real estate. I volunteer with the Sierra Club Seal Society with pinniped counts by drone that can see over rocks. A composer, Dr. David Bowser, wanted to produce multimedia events “A Sea Lion Symphony” with poetry, his music, poetry, and my video projected 4K to live performance of a string quintet, which was in La Jolla to a sold-out crowd, and also performed in Canada. I have a YouTube channel you can find by searching my name, Paul Emus, where some videos get thousands of views. Also there is a Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/emuscom/
My technique involves using a drone with smooth point-of-interest, follow-me, and tripod modes. Its camera has a 20-megapixel, one-inch sensor for detailed photos and 4K video.
Complementing this is my 4K 30-magapixel professional camera with zoom lenses, or an actioncam on a flowing gimbal stabilizer, or a 360 camera – or yet another camera for coverage with timed editing and picture-in-picture. Methods employ external and lavalier mics, flash modifiers, motorized pan and fluid-head tripods, and live broadcast to social media.
Processing is done with Final Cut Pro effects and Luminar and Pixelmator corrections. In addition I have current training on the Adobe Creative Cloud programs of Photoshop, Illustrator, in Design, etc. My journalism education has me looking for photos that “tell a story.” The news media, not wanting responsibility for a drone, have used my drone photo/video files shared on events.
Editorial services include solidly-written press releases and professional content without spelling or grammatical errors. To be serious and legitimate, credibility and impact depend on careful copy editing, whether it is a website or a blog.
Who else deserves credit in your story?
The San Diego Continuing Education free Interactive Media Certificate Program really helped hone my Adobe software skills.
The Sierra Club photo section and Seal Society allowed for photo and video experience. And various drone service clients had training and phone support.
Pricing:
- $100-300 depending on work
Contact Info:
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emuscom
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Emuspaul
