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.