Katrina Tulloch

Adventures in Upstate New York KATRINA TULLOCH

Ken Sturtz

Katrina Tulloch doesn’t like heights or uncontrolled speed, but there she was perched on the edge of a zip line platform. A guide cinched her into a harness and attached it to the line. As she neared her turn she felt her GoPro lurch forward and discovered it dangling off her helmet.

“Oh God, oh God, oh no,” she thought as she struggled with the camera. Finally, she turned to a woman in line and got help screwing the camera on tightly. Moments later came a scream as she sped downhill.

Welcome to Katrina Tulloch’s office. The 32-year-old video journalist for Syracuse.com and NYUP.com is one of Central New York’s most multi-talented women working in media. Bubbly and smart, she balances softer features with more serious accountability journalism and finds time to assume the roles of teacher and advocate.

Now she’s embarking on a new project called “Adventures in Upstate NY,” a video series meant to nudge people out of their pandemic stupor.

“After a taxing year cooped up indoors due to COVID-19, Upstate New Yorkers really need a good dose of cabin fever relief,” she says. “So, let’s get you outdoors and offer some ideas of where you can travel, where you can do fun activities either with your family or your friends.”

In February, Tulloch and her boss, managing director of photo/video Lauren Lon, began discussing a video series talking about things to do outdoors, but quickly decided that if they were doing video, they’d want to bring people along for the adventure, not just tell them about it. At the time they had no idea what the pandemic would be like in a few months, so they decided that for safety reasons Tulloch would work on the project solo.

Long encouraged her to rethink her initial ideas and aim to share interesting ideas people didn’t know they wanted to learn about. To add a touch of excitement, she suggested they play on Tulloch’s fear heights and going on fast rides. Why not face her fears and do some of those things?

“And so, I said ‘OK, I’ll try,’” Tulloch says laughing. She penned a new list that included ziplining and riding a roller coaster. She added whitewater rafting, parasailing and hang gliding, anything she would be unlikely to do on her own. After several trips on progressively higher zip lines at Greek Peak’s Adventure Center in Cortland, Tulloch rode a roller coaster that weaved through the wooded hillside.

“You control the speed of the coaster, which was terrifying because there were people behind me,” she says. “I kept thinking if I slow down they’re going to jam into the back of me.”

Although part of the goal is to capture Tulloch’s reactions, not all of the episodes will feature extreme activities; many are meant to be family-friendly ideas. For the first installment she visited The Wild Center in Tupper Lake. The third episode will feature wolves, bears and birds of prey at the Adirondack Wildlife Refuge in Wilmington. Other episodes will include treehouse glamping (staying overnight in a luxury tree fort), goat yoga (it’s actually a thing), and spud chucking (hurling potatoes at a target with a giant slingshot).

“This is all stuff that’s super goofy, but it’s just supposed to be fun,” Tulloch says.

It would be a mistake, however, to assume someone working on fun features wasn’t serious about journalism. Tulloch is in her second year leading the Syracuse Press Club, which includes all of Central New York. As president she spearheaded an initiative to provide care packages to journalists working through the pandemic and led the club in calling for action after an officer aggressively knocked down a veteran photographer who was covering protests.

And last year she was appointed to Advance Media New York's Editorial Board (the company owns Syracuse.com and NYUP.com). As the youngest member, she’s been an influential voice as the Editorial Board addressed matters of community importance. She also found time to teach multimedia classes at Syracuse University, where she’s an adjunct professor.

Growing up in Albany, however, Tulloch couldn’t have imagined filming herself riding zip lines, writing editorials or even shooting video for that matter. She knew she wanted to work in journalism, but didn’t pick up a camera until graduate school at SU.

“I didn’t really think I’d go into video journalism,” she says. “I thought for sure I’d go into print or only writing.”

After graduate school Tulloch completed an internship that exposed her to working with video. In 2013, she went to work at Syracuse. com as a feature reporter. She occasionally made videos, but her focus was on writing. Then, in 2018, she moved to a position on the video team and began producing longer video projects in addition to her daily video responsibilities.

She started with a series highlighting slices of life in Central New York. There were projects on the state fair and on food in Upstate New York. Tulloch even filmed a series on wedding planning before getting married last year. When restaurants were shuttered due to the pandemic she and her husband, who also works for Syracuse.com, produced a series of videos attempting to replicate meals from popular local restaurants in their home kitchen.

As much as Tulloch enjoys her job, it’s not easy. Working solo takes considerably more effort and means she is responsible for every aspect of the production.

She sets up the interviews, drives to the site, shoots the footage, writes the scripts and stories, conducts the interviews and edits the video afterward. It means a lot of multitasking. Ideally, Tulloch prefers to break stories down into bite-size pieces. For example, she might shoot the footage she needs and do an interview later, giving her time to set up her equipment and place a microphone on her interview subject. With her current series that hasn’t always been possible.

“We’re hiking to the top of a mountain and I’m also carrying my tripod and it’s very heavy and I’m sweating bullets,” she says. “And I’m trying to also listen to what the person is saying, but also set up my GoPro on my head so I have it.”

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Working alone also means there’s no one to help load and unload the equipment or lug it to the site. Tulloch chooses to view the glass as half full; the equipment she totes to and from shoots is much smaller and lighter than in decades past. While acknowledging her job can be physically demanding, she says it’s also good motivation to try to stay in shape. And since she doesn’t particularly care for working out, sometimes she counts lugging all that gear as exercise.

There’s also an upside to working alone. When Tulloch sits down to edit, she doesn’t have to wonder if the photographer got the right shots or what her producer has cut from the story. If anything goes wrong she says she knows she’s at fault.

“I’m pretty used to it. I’ve done the one-woman-band thing long enough to know what my threshold is,” Tulloch says. “It’s kind of a fun challenge. It makes me feel extra proud of the work that I produce at the end of the day because I know it’s all mine.”

Despite the physical demands and the challenge of frequently working solo, Tulloch says she’s been fortunate to be surrounded by many women photographers and visual journalists with significant experience, such as Long. Women and minorities have traditionally been underrepresented in newsrooms, an issue that’s remained mostly unresolved for decades. “This is why representation matters,” Tulloch says. “You want to be able to see other people around you who are like ‘I can do it.’ So that makes me feel like I can also do that.” Tulloch plans to spend most of the rest of the summer working on the “Adventures in Upstate NY” project in-between her day-today responsibilities. She hasn’t decided how to end the series yet, but would like to save the most terrifying activity for last. Tulloch has no plans to slow down anytime soon. She recognizes that there’s an expiration date on her fast-paced lifestyle, but to her that’s all the more reason to keep moving.

“We are nimble and young and mobile right now,” she says. "We might as well get out and do as many cool adventurous things now while we’re young and able to do that before we get old and are creaky.” SWM