Project Summer: Week 9

Posted by Ivy

 

JULY 19: I was lazy today, but not so lazy that I didn’t take a picture at all. Hooray! I biked into downtown OB, near the harbor, on a Friday night to see what I could see. It was, as per usual, very busy. Cell phone photo.

 

JULY 20: The reason I have been biking is because my twelve-year-old car, with its 270,000 miles on it, died last week. I bought a new (well, new-old) one off-Island but couldn’t bring it back right away because there was no space on any of the ferries. So I kept using my friend’s bike to get around. I took this photo when I was on my way to my morning job in Vineyard Haven (doing baking things). The sun was actually far more pink, but my cell phone can only capture so much.

 

JULY 21: This morning when I was getting ready to head off to Vineyard Haven I spotted this girl on my street! It made me glad to be biking, because if I’d been in my car I would never have gotten the photo. You would think the deer would retreat into the state forest with so many people in Oak Bluffs in the summer, but apparently they can make it work. Cell phone photo.

JULY 22: Saw this gentleman while standing in line for the bus in Vineyard Haven. I just loved his festive blue double-bass backpack. Cell phone photo.

JULY 23: I was helping out with photography for a massive coastal erosion project the paper did this summer, and was trying to get high enough up to show just how narrow the barrier road is that separates the ocean (on the left) from the pond (on the right) is. I didn’t really succeed, but I did get a nifty motion blur photo.

JULY 24: Bridge jumpers at Second Bridge (next to you watch Jaws, look for it! It’s the bridge the shark swims under to get in the pond). This came out very well considering I took it from a moving bus.

JULY 25: I started work on a long enterprise story today, and was in Menemsha at the Copperworks when I saw this creation of Scott McDowell’s. When you turn the crank, the big fish “eats” the other one. It’s all handmade, and very nifty.

 

JULY 21:

Project Summer: Week 8

Posted by Ivy

JULY 12: I went to the Edgartown Library to pick up a few books I had on hold, and there was a concert happening on the front lawn! Cell phone photo.

 

JULY 13: The next day, I photographed another concert, which featured a guitarist from Boston (my go-to writing music in the newsroom), a drummer from the James Brown Band and a session musician for Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers. The light was absolutely terrible; I shot this at 1/13 of a second, ISO 3200. Yipes.

 

 

JULY 14: July 14 was perhaps one of the longest days I’ve ever had. I woke up to go into my morning job at 5:30, a half-hour earlier than normal, so I could leave early to go to a freelance assignment, which was fluke fishing. I was on the boat from 7 a.m. to about 3:30 p.m., but the last three hours were basically spent sitting on the floor of the boat completely and utterly seasick. Those open water waves will get you. After we got back, I made it home to get some food in my belly, then had a late afternoon assignment covering goats, and then had a housewarming party to stop by. I think I got home for real around 8 p.m. This photo is from pre-seasickness on the fluke boat.

 

JULY 15: Tonight I covered a Chamber Music Society concert at the Old Whaling Church. I got scolded for moving around too much while the musicians were playing, even though I was up in the balcony most of the time. Oh well. Look at that sunset!

 

JULY 16: This week’s selectmen meeting in Tisbury drew a much larger than normal number of people, all there to discuss the view at the Tashmoo Overlook. I did not know such things as “viewshed easements” existed before I started covering town government.

 

JULY 17: I took this while walking home from the bus stop in Oak Bluffs and thought it was interesting because I’d never actually stopped to look at the Camp Ground and the Tabernacle from this little hill. I was also kind of surprised that nobody else was on this path. A little slice of breathing room in OB!

 

JULY 18: I got off the bus in OB and was immediately struck by a very pressing question: what the heck are those guys doing out there in the water? Is it a meeting? An exercise class? I have no idea, but I’ve recorded it for posterity.

Project Summer: Week 6

Posted by Ivy

JUNE 28: My favorite time of summer is when the snap peas are in season. Just-picked peas from Morning Glory Farm (or Norton Farm) are about as good as it gets.

 

JUNE 29: Pancake breakfasts are a staple fundraiser here, especially for off-Island trips. The Little League All-Stars held one on a drizzly Saturday morning to raise money for their trip to Baltimore and the Cal Ripken Stadium. The breakfast took place at the Federated Church in Edgartown, and one of the players decided to tinker around on the piano in the parish house. Renaissance boys!

 

JUNE 30: Photographed a reception for a very neat event today–the Trustees of Reservation, a land preservation group, and the Vineyard Artists’ Association hosted a Paint-Out, and artists went out onto beautiful Trustess properties across MV to paint what they saw. Some of the projects that were later exhibited, like the above one, had been created in advance but were no less interesting. This is a rendering of a Trustees overland vehicle pass, created by Brian Kirkpatrick, an artist I met my very first summer here.

 

JULY 1: I went roaming around the Oak Bluffs Harbor this evening and came across these cute dogs on their boat in the water. I asked their owners if I could take a photo, and the girls tried to pose the Yorkies…but that didn’t work so well. Cell phone photo.

 

JULY 2: I worked on a massive enterprise piece about the Steamship Authority, the ferry line that is essentially responsible for keeping the Island afloat, for more than two weeks. You can read the piece here. It was a fantastic project to work on because I got to write and photograph it, and it was very fun to ride around on the boats and search for new ways of seeing something that Vineyarders see…pretty much every day. This was taken in Woods Hole, as the Island Home comes in to dock.

 

 

JULY 3: An outtake from the Steamship project. This was taken at the Oak Bluffs terminal.

 

JULY 4: We don’t get the Fourth of July off in the newsroom–but we do get to cover nifty things like the Edgartown parade. I’m including two photos today because one is of our sweet Gazette vintage truck! My coworkers handed out more than a thousand free newspapers over the route, and had a blast doing so. The first picture was an outtake that never made it into the paper because the float went by before I could get the girl’s name (sigh).  FUN FACT: This is the fourth year that I’ve shot the parade, which is a little crazy to think about.