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!