It’s strawberry season! The Farm and Field column in Tuesday’s paper was a feature about this most excellent time of year, and I went to Whippoorwhill Farm to take some photos of the Pick-Your-Own crowd of strawberry people. Whippoorwhill was only open to members of its co-op, since a frost had destroyed too much of the crop for everything to have a go at picking–but a surprising number of people still showed up for their berries.
I spent the first part of Sunday afternoon at my cousin’s graduation). I had to leave right afterward, though, to go cover a student art show at Sense of Wonder Creations in Vineyard Haven.
It was a nice little event- Sense of Wonder has been around for 20 years and is becoming an Island institution of sorts. I loved that the kids got to set their own prices for the art they’d made- they looked so thrilled when counselors would find them and hand them the dollar or two they had earned (half of the proceeds went to UNICEF).
Plus, there was a fire juggler. She was impressive.
And there were stilts! Also impressive.
In exciting news, talking with some of the parents at the event has gotten me started (I hope!) on a new photo story (it has nothing to do with art, stilts, or fire juggling). More on that in the next couple of weeks!
I have been to a few graduations in the past several years, but for the most part- they’ve all been mine. With the exception of my cousin’s eighth-grade graduation five years ago, I didn’t ever find myself on the audience side of things.
But on Sunday, that same cousin who I watched enter high school is now leaving it and moving on to other things in life (hello, gap year!). I was so relieved that I didn’t have to cover the event for the Gazette, because, frankly, all I wanted to do was take photos of Seneca, since it was her day and all. Sometimes you just want to be the family, not the photographer.
Guess who had the bare feet!
I still took some photos during the processional and seating, though. Then I went back to the family and enjoyed the rest of the show.
Not Seneca. This person just happened to be looking near me when I took the crowd shot.
Nobody makes fires quite like my uncle Jeffrey.
Turns out I did get to go back and shoot the MV boys in their second MIAA match against Ashland. I wasn’t as happy with these shots as from the first go-around (of course); I had much better, tighter action shots from the Friday match. Those weren’t the ones that ran in the paper (actually, these weren’t, either), but what can you do?
In completely insane news, I had so many major assignments last weekend that when the Tuesday paper came out, two of the articles and nineteen of the photos were under my byline. It feels so ridiculous just writing that.
I went out to Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary this morning to photograph a crew of SCA (Student Conservation Association) volunteers doing some restoration work for the area. It’s pretty great- they’d cleared out an entire thicket of bittersweet and brush that had grown up around an old granite foundation on the property. Today they were working on moving more granite blocks from the surrounding woods into the foundation area to create a natural amphitheater for Felix Neck. Hardcore—granite isn’t exactly the lightest of rocks. I think it’d be fun to do an SCA or AmeriCorps environment project sometime.
I didn’t intentionally pose this. Either everybody’s just naturally intrepid-looking (likely) or they saw the camera and were posing (possible).
I had to write an article for the story, too…took me about four hours. I have got to work on my writing speed…
Fairly crazy day yesterday- I had an 11:30 assignment in Edgartown and a 1:30 assignment in West Tisbury (which wouldn’t be a huge deal if I had a car, but my parents still haven’t gotten their new car, which means I haven’t gotten their old car. Phoo.) Fortunately, my aunt was free to pick me up and drive me over to the Charter School after my first shoot.
Which was, by the way, super fun. The 5th and 6th grade classes here spend the last three weeks of school building little solar-powered cars, which they then race in a derby. These kids know more about solar energy than I do (hope for the future!).
Unfortunately, the sun decided not to come out that day (it rained), so the races were held indoors and the cars were powered by little 9V batteries.
I haven’t written the article yet for the event, so I can’t post that part. It’s so crazy trying to report and photograph the same thing, but I think I’m getting better at it.
I wish I had names for all of the kids I photographed, but I might drop by the Tisbury School and Edgartown School tomorrow to see if I can track those down.
After the derby, I went to shoot my first graduation ceremony! The MV Public Charter School has its ceremony a week before the regional high school does (my cousin Seneca is actually graduating IN that ceremony (hooray!), so I doubt I’ll be shooting it). The Charter School had a class of just nine students graduating, and the whole program was very much a personalized tribute to those seniors. I almost cried at one point, and I didn’t even know anybody. I’m a huge sap. It can’t be helped.
I’m moving my blog over to the wordpress.org domain! That means I can post SoundSlides files! (Apologies to iPad users out there…)
To kick things off, here are some color photos from the ballet spread that ran in Friday’s paper (and some that didn’t).
After I shot the first ballet rehearsal (the Peter Pan one), I was heading to the bus stop when I saw a lacrosse game going on at one of the high school fields. I’ve never shot lacrosse before, so I decided to try making some photos just for fun. It’s definitely one of the harder sports I’ve photographed (that might be because I don’t have a clue as to what the rules are—I was so confused when play moved to BEHIND the net), and I’m glad I tried it out before I ever have to do it as an actual assignment.
On Friday, I went to photograph a tennis match; the high school boys’ team had made it into the playoff bracket for the MIAA. They completely smoked their Cohasset High opponents and are moving on to the next round. Tennis was far easier to shoot than lacrosse, but, again, I haven’t shot this particular sport very much (I think the last time was junior year of college), and I hope that I get to go to the second round match so I can practice some more.
I’m officially in Freelance World now. I have to say, it’s not bad so far, and REALLY not bad for a summer gig. I still need a second job to supplement the work I’m doing for the Martha’s Vineyard Gazette, but mostly I’m just glad I don’t have to put journalism on the back burner for four months. Hooray!
I tend to take it for granted that everybody knows about Martha’s Vineyard, but then, I don’t know how much press it gets outside of New England. It’s an island off the coast of Cape Cod, sort of near Nantucket (which is smaller and farther offshore). There are about 15,000 people who live here year-round—and about 100,000 who live here in the summer. Quite the increase (my aunt and uncle, who I’m staying with, are some of the year-rounders).
The Vineyard is also, like Columbia, a place with two competing newspapers. Both are weekly (the Gazette just switched to biweekly for its summer schedule). Both are very old-school (no AP style!). In addition to those two factors (which, coming from the Missourian, is a little surreal to me), the Gazette publishes exclusively in black and white. It also publishes in broadsheet, so a copy of the Gazette is six inches wider than your average copy of the New York Times (I measured).
From a photography standpoint, that latter point is perhaps the greatest thing ever. I LOVE how big the photos are run. I love that there are no teeny mug shots. I’ve always known this about the paper (I actually profiled the Gazette during my Picture Editing class and learned allll about their visual policies), but it’s one thing to know it and a whole other thing to see your own work in giant form.
This is the Lifestyles section of the Friday paper, which is running six (SIX! How is such a thing even possible?) of the photos I took during various ballet rehearsals over the past couple of days. That lead photo is 4×9 (again, I measured)! INSANE! In. Sane. It makes me want make better photos, which is always a good thing.
I’m also doing some writing as part of the job, since the staff’s not big enough to send a photographer and a reporter to every event. The articles (so far) aren’t particularly long ones—500 words or so, and it’s all been straight event coverage, which is in many ways less stressful than other types of news reporting. So that’s nice. The first of these assignments (which was also my first assignment, period), was a Memorial Day parade.
Making this job a little more interesting, I’m working without the benefit of a staff locker, which means that right now I’m working with my baby RebelXT (I’m supposed to be getting a 7D as a graduation present, but that’s been a little slow coming), and the three lenses I own. I just ordered a 17-40mm, which is going to make things a lot easier when I’m indoors (the 18-55 kit lens I’ve been using forever is finally starting to show signs of age, and refuses to autofocus). My 50mm, meanwhile, has been a real workhorse. I would be completely lost without it.
I can’t wait to get that second camera, though—then I can have TWO bodies, and I can finally push the ISO past 400 without having to worry about signs of grain. It will be amazing.
So that’s what’s been happening here in New England…I’m way behind on blogging, but am going to try very hard to post something every other day or so. Happy summer!