I'm still here and before I go...

Happy Holidays everyone!!! I know, I know! It's been over a month since I've posted anything, so now that I'm back from Thanksgiving break for my last two weeks of school, I'll catch y'all up. So this final post will catch you up on everything I've done in DC. I'm back to the Northeast next Friday so here's the beginning of the last shots and stories of my first adventure in our capitol.... For quite awhile, there was nothing to update you on. Things were very slow up to election day before Congress wasn't in session and DC was just plain dead. So I spent most of my time just kind of hanging around, watching movies, shopping and catching up on random things. Then after Election Day the profiles began. Each of the print journalism students here were required to write a profile or feature story for our Political Reporting class. My assignment was to get pictures for all of their stories. This made the last two weeks before Thanksgiving very busy, especially compared to the weeks prior to them. Before we get into all that though, I did get some pictures of of President-Elect Obama at a rally in Leesburg, VA a few weeks before Election Day. It was one of the first freezing cold days down here and we had to wait almost three hours for Obama to appear, but it was worth it. I turned this pictures in for class and got an A- so I guess that's a job well done. I didn't send them to any papers, so no links to include, but I still like them.

So on to the profiles. Each student picked their own subject so they were quite varied from  a top-notch chef to beetles. All the photos are in the one slideshow so they're easier to view. You can click on the "captions" button to see the captions with each photo and I've included the name of the paper and reporter in each caption. There's no sound with this one, so you have to click through the pictures. Gives you a chance to read the caption though. 

After all the profile work was completed, back to the Hill I went. Congress came back for their lame duck session and there were lots of photo ops that I had to go to. Most of them involved new members coming to town. The first of these assignments was to snap the new member class photo on the steps of the Capitol one cold November morning. They all looked very excited to be in DC and to be doing all their fun orientation events. 

Then there were a lot of press conferences in the Capitol involving different delegations and leadership and such. I made it to two fairly interesting ones. The first was with all the newly elected Senate Democrats with Harry Reid. The press conference started about 20 minutes late and then they came out, Reid said about 10 sentences and they all ran away again. They had us jammed into the tiny space in front of the Ohio Clock so all us photographers were on our knees trying to keep a good spot for all that time. It was very uncomfortable and proved to be totally pointless since no one even used my pictures. But here's a couple...

                   

The next press conference was a few days later and it involved the Connecticut Congressional Delegation. The idea was to welcome newly elected house member, Jim Himes, who represents my home district, to Congress. Unfortunately for Himes, the day before this press conference was the day that Senator Joe Lieberman secured his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee for the next term. Needless to say, the focus wasn't really on Jim. It was a very intimate press conference with mostly staffers and a few reporters. They each spoke for a few minutes and then hung around to answer questions. I got a chance to introduce myself to Mr. Himes and spoke to Senator Dodd for a few moments too before I had to run off to another assignment. There were enough for a slideshow this time so here they are. (No sound again so you have to click through. Couldn't think of a good song.)

Hopefully, you all feel very caught up now. There are a few more things to update you on, but those will have to come on another day. I'm currently working on my final project which is a photo essay about the new Capitol Visitor Center. I've been there almost everyday this week and it's really coming along. So that'll be up sometime next week. 

Sick Sick Sick...

Well things have slowed down...a lot

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, I was sick all of last week and this week there just hasn't been anything to do at all. We all thought this would be such an exciting time to be in DC, but if you think about it, there's nothing actually going on in DC at all. McCain and Obama are everywhere but DC, Congress has gone home to work on their campaigns, Bush has basically been the invisible man for the last few weeks and so the theme of my life is just boredom.

Despite all that, I do have a few things to fill you in on. While I was sick, I managed to do one assignment last Tuesday that was pretty cool. I dragged myself out of bed bright and early to head to the White House with Jordan, our reporter covering the Norwalk Hour. I was excited about this assignment cause most of my Dad's family is from Norwalk and get the Norwalk Hour so someone might actually get to see my work!

The event was the entire olympic team was going for their White House visit with Bush. The were all arranged on the South side of the White House and it was a lovely fall morning so the light was great. I must say, some of my favorite pictures from the event are of the South Lawn looking out towards the Jefferson Memorial. We had to just wait around for awhile so I just turned around and started snapping some pics of the fountains and the Memorials. I included a few of those in the slide show cause I like them so much.

Bush gave a nice little speech and was presented with an Olympic jacket and then there was a press conference with the super stars afterward. That was fun cause I got to shoot Michael Phelps, Shawn Johnson and Nastia Luikin from about 5ft away. Not sure if I was more excited to see them or the Celitcs but it was definitely fun.

The other exciting thing that happened in the last week was that I got to see lots of people I love over Columbus Day weekend!!! The visitors included my parents, my sister Emily, her boyfriend Stefan, my friend Zoe, and David's father and grandmother. So there were lots of people around!

I saw Zoe and her friends on Friday afternoon which was lots of fun. We wandered around Georgetown in the gorgeous weather and just hung out and chatted. It was really great to catch up with Zoe since we're both so busy we don't have a lot of time to keep up with what's going on. Made me very excited about my week in Boston in Decemeber when we'll really get to hang out.

Mom and Dad arrived on Saturday morning and we spent most of the day doing some fun stuff in DC. We went to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, had a "snack" at the Johnny Rockets in Union Station, walked around the Capitol, went to the Botonical Gardens and had wine and cheese in my apartment. Then we headed down to Alexandria, VA where we met up with David, Stefan and Emily. We had dinner at our favorite pizza place, Generous George's Positive Pizza & Pasta Place, with them gang plus Stefan's parents. The rest of the evening was spent watching the Red Sox game in Mom and Dad's hotel room.

Sunday Mom, Dad, David and I got up and went to church at the National Cathedral. It's always fun to go there, especially with a super Episcopalian like David. Dad had a good time looking around the Cathedral and especially enjoyed perusing the gift shop. Then we headed to Arlington where we had brunch at Harry's Tap Room. David and I had been there a few weeks earlier and really enjoyed it so we had to take my parents. We all agreed that brunch was delicious. Then we did the trip to the grocery store before heading back down to Alexandria. The rest of the day was fairly quiet. David gave my parents a tour of the seminary and Dad took a little nap in David's room before we went over to Panera for a light dinner. After dinner Stefan, Emily and Emily's good friend Kelly joined us in David's room for dessert. We watched lots of slideshows by various people and just hung out. We were all pretty exhausted from the weekend's activities. Once the parentals left, the children had a rousing game of charades before heading to bed.

Monday was another early morning. The whole gang met up at Panera for breakfast and then packed into the cars and drove up to the FDR Memorial, the only memorial my parents had never seen. We spent a good hour walking around the memorial and having a photo shoot by the Tidal Basin. Then we said goodbye to Kelly and went downtown for lunch at one of my favorite places, thanks to Andy Dow, Gordon Biersch. The kids treated Mom and Dad to a yummy lunch before sending them on their way back to CT. Then Stefan, David, Em and I took a trip up the Postal Tower for a nice view of the city. David's Dad was arriving at Union Station around 2:30 so we picked him up and drove back down to Alexandria for nap time. We were invited to David's Aunt and Uncle's house outside of DC for dinner that evening. The food was delicious and I even got to take some home since I'm the poor college student of the bunch.

So it was a busy weekend, for sure. Stefan and Emily left Tuesday afternoon and we were very sad to see them go. Makes me miss Boston and them even more. Can't wait to go back in December. So since I took so many pictures, I put together a slideshow of them too! Enjoy!

Today, I'm at my internship at Cox. Nothing to do, so I'm just watching CNN and hanging out. It's nice to be out of our building though and sitting somewhere different for a change. There's a possibility that I'm going to a McCain rally in VA tomorrow so keep an eye out, there will be pictures if I go!

What a week this has been...

Well, it's been a crazy one, that's for sure. 

I'm sure that most of you have heard what's been going, since I don't have too many friends who are living under rocks, but just in case you didn't, here's a brief...

Monday the House voted on the "Bailout Bill," which is actually named the "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008." (One of those names that students 5o years from now will have to memorize, but it's a good one cause the date's already in the title, one less thing to remember) To much surprise, the bill failed and chaos ensued. The stock market dropped 777 points, the most it ever has in one day, and people were less than thrilled. Yesterday, the Senate resumed after the Jewish holiday and voted on the bill. 99 of 100 Senators were there to vote, Ted Kennedy was in MA, and they passed the bill. Then the bill went back to the House on Friday and it was finally passed and signed that day. So it was a busy week for Congress, and for me!

I was at the Capitol for all three of those votes. Monday's vote was the craziest because no one expected the House to vote on the bill and not have it pass, so that was just chaos. A reporter from Cox and I ran over from our office, which is right near the Capitol, just to kind of see what the scene was. Just as we imagined, it was crazy. There were press everywhere and the staffers running all over the place, but my favorite part was the tour groups walking around who had no clue what was going on! They all just looked really confused. I jumped into a stakeout waiting for Pelosi and then followed her over to the Democratic leadership press conference and got some shots there. The I had to run back over to the office to make deadline. A couple of the shots made it on the Atlanta Journal Constitution and the Austin Statesman's websites. 

Tuesday was a quiet day, but then came Wednesday!

The fun didn't start till late Wednesday because of the Jewish holiday. We all just mostly hung around the newsroom all day but we'd heard that the Senate was planning on voting on the bailout bill later that evening. So around 5pm, Courtney and I went over to the Hill for a little happy hour before heading over to the Senate press gallery. We felt very privileged to witness such a legendary vote in the Senate, where all but one Senator was present. (Ted Kennedy was still in MA due to his illness) It was truly amazing. It was really nice to not be working too and to just be there for the fun of it. 

Then came another unexciting Thursday, but Friday the bill was back in the House. They voted at about 12:30pm so I was there to catch the leadership news conference again. This time the bill passed and there was a huge sigh of relief. It was crazy! I've never seen so many photographers in my life. Nancy Pelosi actually signed the bill at the press conference too, so that was cool to see. Since it was Friday, I was shooting for Cox again. I'm not sure if the pictures were published anywhere, I think a couple were online but I never found them.

Basically, it was a crash course in Congress for all of us and a really crazy week. Something I'll never forget, and I'll probably never see again. 

It's like Massachusetts is following me...

I thought I left MA, but I still can't seem to get away from it. Two more assignments at the end of the week, both about MA. 

The first was on Thursday. I took a lovely trip to the Capitol with two of my fellow Newsroomers, Courtney and Rachel, for lunch and a committee hearing. We had lunch at the House dining room and then headed up to the 2pm hearing that featured MA Governor Deval Patrick! The hearing was on a program known in the Newsroom as LIHEAP. (Low income home energy assistance program) MA has benefited greatly from this program so Patrick was in town to basically say thank you and feel free to send us more money if you've got it. 

Most of the members of the House Select Committee on Energy and Global Warming, the committee that Patrick testified before, were not there seeing as there was a much more important debate about spending going on at the Capitol. So it was a pretty empty room and I was the only photographer there, but it was still a good experience. I would say I spent some quality time with Patrick as I knelt in front of him for his entire testimony. We had a few laughs. Not a terribly exciting assignment but we had fun and it did end up in the New Bedford Standard Times. 

My latest assignment was on Saturday, yeah I wasn't too happy about that. One of our newsroomers reports for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, and there's a big story going on up there that had a tie in down here. A freshman at Becker College, one of the many schools in Worcester, was killed at a party last weekend. He grew up in Scotland, MD which is pretty much as far south as you can go in MD. The other reason this was a big story was that the student's uncle is a famous college basketball coach, Tubby Smith. He's the head coach at the Univ. of Minnesota. So the funeral was in Maryland and the paper asked us to cover it since we were pretty close, and by pretty close we were two hours away. So I was up at 7am on Saturday to drive down to MD and do the shoot. Definitely not a fun day.

I borrowed David's car and Rachel, the Worcester reporter, and I drove down in the pouring rain. When we arrived there were hundreds of people in a line coming out of the church. Apparently people had been lined up at 8am for the visitation. By the actual service at 11am more than 1,500 people had been through to say goodbye to the young man. I've never seen anything like it. What was really crazy too was that the funeral was at a really tiny church, so there was no where to put all those people. There were about 100 people standing outside in the rain for the 2.5 hour service, including me.  I got about 10 pictures, luckily one of them was pretty good. The story and picture made the front page of the Worcester T&G on Sunday. 

So that brings me to today, the start of another week, I wonder what I'll do today. My guess...press conference on the Hill. They gotta pass that bailout bill sometime!

Flip a coin... well specifically, a penny

So Monday's assignment wasn't quite as glitzy as the White House, but it was still fun. The assignment was a ceremony unveiling the new penny that will go into circulation next year. The event even featured a Lincoln impersonator!! 

So, I showed up at the Memorial nice and early to get the lay of the land. Nothing too exciting was going on, just a whole lot of suits standing around waiting, so I got to take some nice shots of the memorials. There wasn't a whole lot of press there either, so I got a pretty good location for the ceremony.

The ceremony consisted of a few speeches from people from the U.S. Mint and the Lincoln Bicentennial Commission which were not terribly exciting. Then Lincoln himself got up and gave a nice little speech about what it's like to be on a coin. I think the best part was that they brought in a class of third graders from Georgetown to watch the ceremony and basically be people who were excited about the new pennies. They each got to take a penny home with them, totally not fair cause the press just got media packets...boring!!

For those of you that are curious there will be four new designs on the back of the penny each representing a different formative period in Lincoln's life. They will be released throughout next year, the 100th anniversary of the Lincoln penny and the 200th anniversary of his birth. 

Nothing too interesting, but kind of a fun event. My photo was published in two papers, the Austin American Statesman and the Palm Beach Post! 

More assignments to come! Check back soon!

"Let Garnett be Garnett"

First trip to the White House = Done! (and no, I didn't steal anything. sorry Em!)

As some of you may have heard over the weekend, I completed my first assignment at the White House on Friday afternoon. Not only did I get to go to the White House though, I got to go to the White House to shoot the Boston Celtics ceremony!! 

The Celtics were at the White House for a ceremony that Bush spoke at honoring their championship season and all that. It's basically a photo op with the President where they bring him a jersey and a ball and he makes a fool of himself. So a good time all around. 

The event was at 3pm so I had to get there at like 2pm to get my pass and be escorted to the East Room. When I arrived, I was instructed to go to the northwest appointment gate on Pennsylvania Avenue. So I get there, and it's literally a gate with a little button and a speaker on it. My deductive reasoning skills told me, I probably had to push the button, so I did and a guy says, "Name." So i said, "Sarah Yoder." A few seconds later he says, "You're on the list, come on in," and the gate opened. 

What was hilarious about this whole process was that there were a whole bunch of tourists lined up against the gate taking pictures of the White House and after they let me in I heard one of them say, "Wow! Wouldn't it be cool to say your name and have a guy say you're on the list and let you into the White House!" Which was just funny cause that's exactly what I was thinking. 

So after I went through security in the little gatehouse, they gave me a press badge and sent me on my way. I step out of the gatehouse and now I'm just on the driveway to the White House. That was surprising because I had no clue where I was going. So I'm just walking up the driveway to the White House hoping I'm not gonna walk in some door that I'm not supposed to even be near. Luckily, as I got up the building, I saw a bunch of people on cell phones with press badges around their necks hanging around one door so i figured I'd found where I needed to be. 

Sure enough, I open the door and it goes into the press briefing room. Cool. So now I'm just standing in the White House press briefing room with a whole bunch of TV camera guys and a couple of reporters. Luckily, my internship supervisor, Rick, had prepped me about where to go once I was in the briefing room. I headed downstairs to where Cox has a desk so I could put my bags and my laptop there. Totally awesome that I had a desk at the White House. 

After that, I headed over to where we were supposed to wait to be escorted to the East Room. As press, they trust us, but not enough to let us walk by ourselves up a flight of stairs and in a door. Of course, once we got to our positions, we had to wait for like 20 minutes for all the guests to be seated and what not. 

Finally, only a few minutes late, they begin. Bush gave a speech that he thought was funny, but no one else did. Then Paul Pierce got up and said a few words before presenting Bush with a ball and a jersey. Then there was the photo op and the handshaking. And then they left. 

I immediately just followed the other photographers cause I had overheard a few of them saying something about a press conference outside. Sure enough, there was a press conference outside the door to the press briefing room. This would have been an opportunity for some great pictures of the Celtics, but the sun was in an awful position, so we were all having a hard time. It was, however, where I got to talk to Kevin Garnett, which was awesome.  

Long story, sorry. But it's a good one. =) 

One of my picture made it in at least one paper so far, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. I'm waiting to see if it's in a couple more too, so i'll let y'all know!

Hope everyone had a great weekend! I've got an assignment tomorrow that I'm sure will thrill you all... the unveiling of the new penny! Don't get too excited! lol. 

Living in "the District"

Well, I made it. I moved in during a tropical storm, but I made it. Things have been kinda crazy around here for the last week, but I finally have some time to write a little about what's been going on down here. 

Last week we had orientation...all week. It was a lot to take in, but it was nice to have a little time to get adjusted before we just jumped into everything. For those of you who don't know much about what I'm doing down here, I'll explain. 

The program that I'm doing is called the Boston University Washington Journalism Program. The program consists is, in total, 16 credit hours. Four of those are the one class that I will take entitled, "Political Reporting," which doesn't leave much to the imagination. 

Another four credits are for an internship. My internship is with the Washington Bureau of Cox Newspaper Company. Cox owns several papers throughout the country, most notably the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Austin American - Statesmen, and the Palm Beach Daily News. My internship supervisor, is the photo editor, Rick McKay. As it turns out, Rick is also the entire photo staff, so now it's Rick and his intern, me. This is actually great for me because it means that I can shoot any assignment I want. As Rick said, "I've been here 24 years, I've shot it all. It's Washington, everything's an annual event." (That's me at my huge cubicle. I know you can't see if, but I even have a little TV to watch CNN on!)

The remaining eight credits are for "Newsroom." The students who participate in the Washington Journalism Program are essentially working for the Boston University Washington News Service. It's hard to explain but basically, all of the print journalism students are paired with a New England newspaper and become their "Washington Corespondent." They write stories about things that are going on in DC that relate to the newspaper's district. My job in all of this, is to shoot for all of these papers. Anytime there are photos that could go with one of the student's stories, it's my job as the sole photographer to go out and shoot it.  It'll be a lot of work, but it means that my photos could in appear in papers ranging from the Keene Sentinel to the Norwalk Hour. 

So that's what I'll be doing down here. I guess I'm not too terribly surprised that we needed a whole week of orientation to get that all straightened out. Along with telling us all we needed to know, we also got to see some of DC from the top of a double decker bus during a DC bus tour, met with alumni of the program and got an insiders tour of the Capitol. Which leads me to the most exciting part of orientation... CAPITOL PRESS CREDENTIALS!!! I am now free to, basically, go anywhere in the Capitol that I'd like. It's kinda a power trip. =) I've also got IDs for my internship, but they're not nearly as interesting. I finally feel like I fit in around DC cause I've got like 4 IDs hanging around my neck at all times. 

Tomorrow is my first day of Newsroom so I'll have to update you on how that goes another time, but I'm assuming things are gonna be pretty slow this first week. Congress will only be here till the end of September and then things will be really dead because of the election. We're all a little worried about that, but we're hoping that there will still be some interesting things going on in town. 

So now that you're all super excited about what I'm doing. Let me show you where I'm living! The housing is in the same building as my classrooms at 2807 Connecticut Ave, NW. It's a BU owned building, of course, that has apartments on the top floors and classrooms, and our newsroom, below. Each apartments has three double bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a kitchen/common area. I lucked out and managed to get a double bedroom all to myself. I have four lovely roommates, two from BU and two from Butler. So here are some shots of my room, I'm sure it'll look familiar to a few of you, seeing as it has all the same stuff my BU room had in it. 

There's probably more that I could tell you, but at the moment that seems like enough information for one day. Oh, yes today was day one of my internship. Nothing too exciting, just got my IDs and hung out. We watched the Palin/Clinton sketch from SNL about a million times, went out to lunch, and then we went home, around 2pm. Now if only I was getting paid for this...lol. 

Tonight's our first political reporting class so I've gotta run a few errands before then. Hope everyone is doing well! - SBY

Almost time!!

Lame first post, I know...

but I'm heading down to D.C. in a few weeks to start my crazy semester of shooting for a millions papers during the insanity of election time. I'll be keeping y'all up to date by posting my various assignments here along with fun little antidotes about the trials and tribulations of being a photographer in our nation's capital. Check back soon!