Years ago standing next to photographer Dinah Rogers in the Saudi Arabian desert and surrounded by a gaggle of service men and women, I didn’t think much about the future. Dinah and I were more worried about getting photos and stories from the folks working around us.

She had a camera and rolls of film to develop. I had a reporter’s pad and pencil. Always preferred pencils to pens simply because they didn’t run out of ink or smear if it rained and I didn’t cry if I lost one because they didn’t cost that much.

We had cell phones, but had left them stateside because satellites didn’t carry the signal over. No flip phones here, and who the heck knew what a smart phone was?

I thought about these things the other day when I flipped over to the New Orleans Times Picayune site and saw a photograph from the Gulf Coast that bore Dinah’s name. She’s a talented photographer.

Bet she’s enjoying the digital photography these days. We sure could have used digital over there back in the early 1990s.

These days I sit in the back of The Selma Times-Journal’s newsroom with a rocket-speed laptop, couple of screens, smart phone, desk phone and digital video camera that carries a card for still shots.

Most afternoons, the little corner becomes a piece of high-tech heaven. The headphones go on, the big screen lights up and video downloads from a camera or two into the rugged little laptop.

For the next few hours, movies of you, yep you, flicker across my screen. Some of you talk about an event or cause. Some of you work, play or create. It’s all captured here.

Creating a video from the footage we shoot every day here at The Selma Times-Journal is similar to getting the best of you. We watch you through the camera lenses; you notice us at first, then you forget. We have seen many of you at your best and not-so-good moments.

Editing those videos is similar to telling a story in print. There’s a beginning, middle and an end. The quotes are all there and in context. Nobody can argue that we were there; video is evidence of that.

We try to take care in telling that story on video as we do in print — get the names correct, let the people talk and put them in their context, down to the smiles and grimaces.

But the biggest thrill is knowing you’re watching them — that we’re getting the message out to you and you’re receiving in your own space and time.

We’ve come a long way from the desert days technologically speaking, but the basics — getting the story — have only evolved. They’ve never changed.

Leesha Faulkner is director of digital media at The Selma Times-Journal. You can reach her at 410-1742 or e-mail her at leesha.faulkner@selmatimesjournal.com. Oh, and view videos at selmatimesjournal.com.