This Is Life – My Senior Thesis

At art school, we do things a little differently. I never had to take math or science, we’re encouraged to have our voice in essays, performance art is accepted as a presentation/report, and to graduate we work on a senior thesis project. I did my senior thesis on Mabel Sawhill- a 97 year old inspirational woman who lives to help other people.

I decided to do my thesis on seniors who were defying the stereotypes of aging. Most of the stories I had seen on seniors were sad and depressing, usually of someone losing their home or their memory- or both. I was determined to do something positive showing that retiring and growing old doesn’t mean you have to go into a nursing home or stop being active. The original idea was to do profiles on multiple people. I found a 76 year old hockey player (on the GeriHatTricks) and an 80 year old farmer among others. But none of them could compare to Mabel who at 97, was old enough to be their mother. So in late December I began to focus solely on her.

I shot with Mabel a little over two months following her to different catering jobs, church functions, Costco (her second home), and even into her home where she showed off her impressive shoe collection. I had a nice video about her philosophies on life, how she functions her catering business, and the relationships she shares with her wonderful niece and her family. She began catering as a second career (after teaching and working for the Navy) to send her great-nieces through private school and college. Then in late February she tells me shes flying to Iowa to throw her sister a 100th birthday party. How could I not go? The deadline for having thesis done was March 28 and on March 14th I flew home from Iowa with hours and hours of footage. Needless to say it was kind of a crunch to get it all sorted. I had a 5 minute story on Mabel here in DC and when combined with footage from Iowa, it just wasn’t as interesting. So at the last minute I edited all of DC down to about 1 minute to kind of establish who Mabel is and the rest of the final video was Iowa. So much for shooting for a whole year. I’m debating going back and putting more in- what do you think?

One of the benefits to going to the Corcoran is all senior thesis work is shown in the Corcoran Gallery of Art. I was fortunate enough to have a black-room where the video was projected and audio played through speakers. It is on view from April 23 – May 22. On the 23rd we had a large opening for the students and guests so Mabel and her family attended. She hadn’t seen it before and it was great to see her reactions for the first time. She liked it!

Photos by the wonderfully talented and supportive Jay Westcott.

The Ups and Downs in Politics

DC has been… exciting, to say the least. Last Sunday, May 1st, I was at the Verizon Center covering the Capitals losing at home - again – and after the post-game conferences were over I joined most of the media hovering around a tv tuned to CNN. My boyfriend, who is also a photojournalist, picked me up and we immediately started following twitter where we first heard about the death of Osama bin Laden. As soon as we got home we turned on CNN and the first thing we heard was “and there’s a large crowd gathering at the White House” so we grabbed the gear, went back to the car, and got to the crowds in about ten minutes. I think we were only home 30 seconds. It was absolutely amazing to be able to cover this historic event. This was why I wanted to become a journalist in the first place.

I have never seen anything like that, not even after the 08 election. It was amazing to see so many people from so many different backgrounds singing and celebrating together.

A month earlier this city seemed divided. Bets were on the government shutting down since little compromise was happening towards a budget. A last-minute rally was organized by mostly State Department workers so I ran down to cover it.

There’s more to D.C. than lobbyists and CSPAN…

…There’s food-trucks and zombies! As most of my catch-up blog posts, these two videos were created months apart. In the summer I pitched a story on the food truck craze sweeping Washington. Although there’s a hot-dog cart on almost every corner, the policy had recently changed in D.C. for other vendors to be able to offer food. Soon people were waiting in line for over an hour for some lobster rolls and running around the city to grab some curry or cupcakes. I went to the Red Hook Lobster Pound truck and Fojol Bros. truck to see what the big deal was. I’ve been chasing food trucks ever since.

The week before Halloween I got a pretty fun assignment: zombies were supposed to invade the Lincoln Memorial early in the morning. It was a promotional stunt by AMC to stir up excitement about the new TV show “The Walking Dead” which was to premiere Halloween night. But of course the organizers hadn’t arranged for a permit, so it was more like the side of the Lincoln. There was a large amount of press out there for the busted photo-opp and I decided there had to be a better story somewhere. I try not to shoot what everyone will already see on the evening news, so after speaking with some of the PR folks I found out they would be descending upon the busy Farragut North Metro station.

What do you think?

Adaptive Baseball and Women Coaching Football: Times are Changing.

As you know, I’m a big sports fan. So to be assigned a story on adaptive baseball at National’s Park was right up my alley. I consider National’s Park my second home during the summer and I’ve been volunteering with people with disabilities literally my whole life (I even knew some of the people volunteering there). This is one of my favorite videos I’ve done for the Post, and not just because I got to be on the field, but because Michael just melts my heart. This story was also the first time I really felt like my journalism was doing something positive. I got a call from Andrew of Dream for Kids saying how my video got them a grant and what an impact it had on donors. I will never forget the feeling I had when I got his voicemail.

What do you think?

I was also able to jump into the Natalie Randolph media train. She was very put off by the media, which is understandable since a lot of people just tore her apart after going 0-5 to start the season. It was a bad program when she started and her gender has nothing to do with her losing (she ended up going 6-6 which is respectable). She was predicted to win against Anacostia so I headed down to Calvin Coolidge High School (which is where my grandmother graduated- yes, I’m a local).

What do you think?

Will shoot sports. Really, I want to shoot sports.

I love DC sports. I am a die-hard Nationals and Capitals fan. I support my Redskins, used to be a Barra Brava member, and always cheer for Maryland. So the great people who assign me stories and give me feedback at the Washington Post tend to give me the sports stories. Which I love. So right before the Washington Redskins had their home opener against the Dallas Cowboys the Redskins PR launched “Honk if you hate Dallas” day. They we’re supposed to have some big deal at Union Station. So I get there and talk to the always-a-pleasure-to-work-with Redskins PR staff and find out it’s just a train taking off honking. With all the local TV coverage there, I know it’s not the story. This is an online publication- no one is going to watch the same story they saw on the 6 o’clock news with someone’s voice-over on it.

By the way, I hate voice-overs. I’ve done one and it’s awful. The story should tell the story, not the reporter. If you can’t get all the audio you need out of an interview and maybe a small text-block- you didn’t get the story.

So I find out that the Hogettes will be in Georgetown holding signs getting traffic to honk. Bingo. I head down to M and Wisconsin and am the only one there. Mikey T and Howiette we’re awesome! Getting people honking, more than nice to me shooting and interviewing, it was just a great environment. And this is definitely one of my favorite videos. Simple, short, but what more do you need?

When the cars were honking at Mikey T and he said “there’s some honking right there,” I thought it would be tough to edit, but I actually found it a blessing. And when I asked him “do you have anything else to say I didn’t ask you about?” and he responds with the snorting, it made my day. The local news channels didn’t have snorting.

What do you think?

I was also given the assignment to shoot the Washington Wizard’s midnight madness to open training camp. It was also where John Wall (over-all #1 draft pick- aka a big deal) was introduced. Normally midnight madness is only for college, so the NBA doing this was also part of the story. I was happy with the fans I spoke with although I was expecting Wall to do the “dougie” when he was introduced (his signature dance).

What do you think?

I got that B-roll

If you don’t get the title of this post, you obviously haven’t seen the hilarious “We got that B-Roll” video. Or you don’t know what “B-roll” is.

So after the UMD yoga video I was sent off to do a quick man-on-the-street video. Metro was hiking its fares and I was on a mission to find what people thought about it. For a such a simple video, it took me a long time. I almost got arrested and it took me an hour to find 3 people to speak with me. You’d think a nice girl going “excuse me I’m with the Washington Post and I was wondering if you had a moment to talk to me about the Metro fare hikes” wouldn’t make people uncomfortable but most people I began saying that to ran like I was trying to mug them. And this was in Ballston!

Trying to get the b-roll of the metro proved difficult as well. Not knowing there was a no-tripod rule in the Metro (I’ve only been using it my whole life, should have known that) I was told to leave the tripod at home and I could film as long as I had my press-pass out. No problem. As I hand-held my camera attempting to balance it at Metro Center security swarmed me. Leave before they call Metro Transit Authority. Apparently every employee has a different policy they refer to in regards to press filming. Nothing but headaches. But I got that B-roll.

What do you think?

Speaking of B-roll, I also did a cute piece on the new Elephant Trails at the Smithsonian Zoo. Some bits from the manager and the curator to some shots of the elephants.

I underestimated how many people like elephants. For such a simple story, it got a lot of hits. What do you think?

New Year : New Updates

Happy New Year! It’s more than fair to say I’ve been pretty lax when it comes to blog posts. I had no idea how busy I would be this past year and the blog was put very low on the priority list. Working every weekend (weddings, etc), working during the week, full time school, internship, and all the editing of said weddings took up a lot of time. As someone who’s never been a fan of “new years resolutions” that last till about January 20th, I can say that a goal for 2011 would definitely be to blog more.

2010 will be a pretty hard to beat. I spent my 21st birthday in Fenway Park, got to see Strasburg’s debut game, and watched the Capital’s home opener on the ice (“working”). I got a new tattoo, my dream internship extended twice, met some great people, moved in with my boyfriend, changed my thesis story about 3 times, and applied to grad school. The scariest moment of the whole year was taking the GREs considering I go to art school and haven’t taken a real math/science/English class in five years.

This year I’m continuing my incredible internship as a videographer with the Washington Post. I was brought on to help edit shows like On Leadership and then started doing “DC Bar Shots.” Almost every Thursday I would be out at a bar taping the environment and the draw of the place. Fritz Hahn aka the Going-Out-Guru would then do a voice-over talking about the bar. I had no experience doing video and learning simple techniques like panning, editing, the importance of details, being able to go up to a lot of people for the video, and just simple trial and errors made it the best way to learn video. Working directly under some of the best in the business made it even better. I had the pleasure of visiting Cantina Marina, H St Country Club, Biergarten Haus, Meridian Pint, and P Brennan’s.

Later the video department was re-organized and I was kept on for news/feature stories. I was sent off to do my first story and to say I was a bit nervous would be an understatement. The University of Maryland football team had been practicing yoga in the off-season as a way to stay flexible and prevent injuries. Of course they did these exercises in a dark classroom lit only by two emergency ceiling lights at either end. And, never one to have beginner’s luck, the sd card I was using in my recorder corrupted, leaving me forced to use the audio from my Mark ii. Yuck. Of course I’m thinking “this is the Post they’re not going to let me do another one.” But I actually got a lot of good feedback on it, despite the audio, and it’s one of my favorite stories.

A couple days after the story ran, ESPN used my video for their story! I couldn’t believe that the first story I did, that I was so worried about, got picked up by ESPN. So I snapped some photos of my TV with my iPhone.

What do you think?

Finally, Spring!

Finally the 55″ of historic snow we got has melted, the cherry blossoms have bloomed, and I get some outside assignments!

First Lady Michelle Obama planted her spring garden with the help of students from Bancroft and Hollin Meadows Elementary Schools March 31, 2010.
Also, being World Water Day March 23, actress musician and water activist Mandy Moore (R) was on the Hill with Alexandra Cousteau (L) of Global Water Challenge with students from local schools behind the “world’s longest toilet queue” as part of a demonstration on the need for sanitation and safe water in the developing world.
Also on the Hill was Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and a rally by Doctors for America.

Marriage, cars, and a First Lady

D.C. just made history by legalizing same-sex marriage and I ran out to the courthouse to meet some couples who were getting the first licenses.

There hasn’t been a terrible amount of interesting things going on, but I did get to photograph a Senate Armed Services committee hearing. I sneaked a photo of Sen. John McCain, on the left, and Secretary of the Army John McHugh and Army Chief of Staff General George Casey Jr. testified. Also, Toyota dealers got together to show their support for a smooth recall and Michelle Obama spoke about childhood obesity to the National Governor’s Assocation.

How many ways can you shoot a guy at an oversized table?

So it’s been a bit since I’ve posted, something I hope not to make a pattern. A lot of my assignments can be kind of repetitive. People speaking at over-sized podiums, people pointing at over-sized graphs, and people sitting at over-sized desks. Trying to make that seem interesting is a bit of a challenge. I work for a wire, so I get the typical head-shots and “safe” shots generally used and then set goals with myself of how many different ways I can shoot the most mundane subjects. Something new, something different.

Recently there’s been a lot of budget hearings. First Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen (R) were on the Hill discussing the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy. Then Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner testified about Obama’s Budget as well as Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag.