Week Two––#VirginiaSwift

Week two of my spring internship has come to an end.

This week brought many new challenges and experiences. I saw some friends, met some of my heroes, mailed over forty postcards and photographed several truly resilient and interesting humans. It's nice to be able to focus on my photography again. After having been so immersed with the Slab City documentary (trailer coming soon), it is a relief to be thrown back into photography. However, I'm struggling to be content with anything I photographed this week. I have this quixotic view of what my images should look like and when it is not achieved, it can be frustrating. Thankfully, working for a newspaper means that there are new assignments (thus new opportunities to improve) everyday.

This is Trevor Macfadden. He works at the coffee shop I go to everyday. We did a feature on 25 30 Espresso (the shop) as a part of Fredericksburg's annual Restaurant Week.

This is Evan, a five-year-old with autism. Evan's older brother, Andrew also has autism and his mother just had another child. Evan's house was recently infested with bed bugs and his mother had to get rid of all of the furniture and toys while taking care of a newborn. Evan now owns lots of toy weapons.

This is LeAnn, 55, she lost over 85 pounds in the last two years.

Cleo Coleman spoke at the 9th annual MLK birthday celebration in Fredericksburg. Coleman knew "The Warrior", she says she used to cook for him in Philadelphia.

These little girls eating cupcakes and ice cream at a birthday party for a girl with a rare disease that causes her to have blood transfusions every three weeks (the back of the girl's head can be seen in the right hand corner).

Annnd my first ever self portrait. I needed to give a headshot to some people for an announcement and I didn't have one and my roommate was busy so.... this is my best attempt. I used a tripod to hold the camera (obviously) and then used a light stand with a towel on it to pull focus for where my eyes would be. I think it works well enough, I've never pretended to be a  portrait photographer, after all. 

Anyhoo. Here's to this week, and hoping that the next one is even better.

Wedding Dresses and Homeless Shelters––Week One of #VirginiaSwift

In the last month change has been rapid. I graduated from college (mostly), moved out of my Lary Potter Under the Stairs room in Ventura to an actual apartment in Fredericksburg, drove across the country, left the people I love most in the world, ate some really good Christmas cookies and got some really encouraging news about things to come in the future.

After spending New Years in Vermont, I moved to Virginia. I live above an Irish Pub & Restaurant with another photographer, Adrian Elliott (his work is incredible, checkout it out HERE ). I've found it really comforting to be back in a (relatively) small town. Fredericksburg has just under 30,000 people in it, over four times as many people as the town I grew up in... but small by California standards.

I began my internship with the Free Lance-Star  on Monday. I shot a few assignments this week and was rather frustrated with the images I was making until last night when I photographed a wedding dress fashion show. I'm really looking forward to the next few months here, I think there is a lot of room for me to grow as a photojournalist and I'm really excited to be working with such a talented staff!

Anyhoo, here are some pictures I took this week.

Brittany

Brittany's shoe

Snacks before the runway

Katelyn Pankoke of Project Runway was the dress designer

This dress costs $15,000 because it is sewn with gold thread

Sandy sleeps at the homeless shelter in Fredericksburg

Meet Gene

Gene is 18 years-old and homeless

This is Chance, he also stays at the shelter sometimes

Dog show's are strange

Crossfit is also strange

One of these days I'm going to learn how to take a really good sport photo... or just a good sports photo, I would settle for that