New Horizons Mele Mason: Cameras and climbs PRSRT STD U.S. POSTAGE PAID OMAHA NE PERMIT NO. 389
A publication of the Eastern Nebraska Office on Aging
Celebrating 50 Years
January 2025 | Vol. 50 | No. 1
I
By Leo Adam Biga nsatiable curiosity drives veteran moving image photographer and outdoor enthusiast Mele Mason to document compelling content across continents. The Omaha adventurer has traveled out of the country every year but two since 1977. “I’ve always been open and wanting to meet new people, learn about new cultures,” she said. “I love to see different parts of the world. When I travel I want an adventure, I want to experience nature. I want to test myself climbing or biking or hiking. I want to experience the country, I want to experience the people. My career has helped open up opportunities to do that. Often I do it with friends that I use in my films.” As a freelance network news videographer she’s shot natural disasters, crime scenes, sports events and covered every Iowa caucus since 1996. The recent general election saw her follow the Midwest campaign trail of presidential and senate candidates. She’s documented mountain expeditions around the world. She’s lit national interviews with billionaire Warren Buffett and chronicled his Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting. She’s collaborated with American Gramophone and Mannheim Steamroller founder
to build a career as an educator and tech expert. Her own wanderlust led her to leave home for college and to circumnavigate the globe for business and pleasure. Siblings have joined her on some adventures. Her first international travel brought her to Japan for a family wedding. Just as she advocates for her community (as president of the North Omaha Commercial Club) she champions travel. “It just expands your horizons.”
COURTESY PHOTO Chip Davis. She’s shot for ABC and NBC News, Meet the Press, Dateline, Inside Edition, CNN, Entertainment Tonight, Oprah, the History Channel and the Discovery Channel. She made video inserts for and captured behind the scenes footage of cast and crew on Alexander Payne’s 1999 feature Election. Creativity runs in the family. Brother Matt Mason is Nebraska’s state poet. Doug Mason is a painter in his spare time. John Mason is a
New Horizons
New York architect. Travel is also in her and her six siblings’ DNA owing to her parents living in South Africa in the late 1950s when her father’s work with Caterpillar Tractor brought the family there during the height of apartheid. Awkward interactions ensued between her parents and Black servants. Matt’s traveled internationally for his poetry, Doug studied art at the Sorbonne in Paris and oldest brother Gordon Joseph went to work on a pipeline in Alaska, where he stayed
FILM FORMATION Mele was born in Peoria, Illinois, then headquarters to Caterpillar and the family’s home base until the Masons moved to Nebraska when she was five. The 1975 Westside High School grad’s love of photography emerged early. She marks seeing Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious as an epiphany. “I was about 11 and it blew me away. It had such an effect on me. It’s still my favorite movie. As a family we would go to movies at neighborhood theaters to see things like The Music Man and The Sound of Music.” They also made pilgrimages to local drive-ins. She saved to buy a super 8 camera. Claymation shorts were her earliest efforts. She advanced to live --Mason continued on page 9.
The art of scrapbooking
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