Views from My Office

For the past four months I've spent roughly 4 hours a day in my car, not only driving to work, but working, looking for standalones, driving to faraway assignments, and going on day trips on my days off. I've listened to NPR, the occasional country music station, and hip hop when I am deep in the country, eaten most of my meals in the car, looked unsuccessfully for moose, and talked to people on the phone. I've made hundreds of u-turns, and almost as many stops at the gas station, as I have driven 11,000 miles since September. I've only gotten one ticket up here, and changed the oil twice.

I've seen some really neat things along the way, some that I didn't get to photograph, others, that I did take a quick shot of and now am compiling on the blog. All of these photos shown were taken from my car within the past four months. The last one in the collage was taken today.

Christmas Day

I worked on Christmas Day this year, the first time I've been away from home on this day, and I think I made the most of it. I worked most of the morning until early afternoon, photographing a bustling ski resort and a large community dinner, then headed to the Bassettes' home, where I enjoyed some venison tenderloin and then went sledding. Finished the night with a goose dinner at Laura's mother's home, which was built in the late 1700's, and now am pretty tired.

Woodstock Girls varsity hockey game.

The horse farm where I work.

Caught in a wave of Nutcracker rehearsals and things like that.

New Post and Contest Winner

The winner of the contest from the other week is Brendan- he gets my Batman photo from the Polar Plunge :).

Christmas is Coming

#300

(An old photo from the summer)

Because this past week was Thanksgiving, I'm gonna extend the deadline of the giveaway to this Wednesday- if you don't have a particular choice as far as photograph I can always pick one for you, and you are welcome to comment on this post or the previous as your entry.

Visit, and a giveaway

Jeff came to visit this weekend- we dyed my hair, watched a couple of movies, went to portland to see the ocean, witnessed a very awkward conversation in a bar involving squash, made up a couple of new songs, played on a playground in West Lebanon, shared the back seat with a couple of old movie theater seats when driving with James and Amelia, and we snuck into the Mt. Washington hotel and snooped around.

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I don't ever do giveaways, as this is mainly just a photo blog, but because my next post is my 300th, I figured it would be pretty sweet to do something.

So, to celebrate, I'm going to give away an 8 x 10 matted print to the winner of the giveaway. The deadline is Thursday, and I'll pick the winner out of a hat, and send you your print :D

So all you need to do is comment on this post along with which photo on my blog (or website: sarahpriestap.com) you would like if you would win.

Good luck!

Getting ready to process the deer.

As I was reorganizing one of my harddrives, I found this gem in a folder of 2009 thanksgiving photos I never bothered to look at after I took them. It's fun seeing how I've changed photographically, and how though my family gets older, we always manage to stay the same.

Hunting: Edit 1

Elizabeth loads her gun before she hikes to hunt.


Justice, Kathryn, and Elizabeth unload their guns after the first hunt of the day, a spot a mile behind their house.



Matthew and Justice on the swings with the deer Matthew shot the day before.



Elizabeth and Kathryn rest between hunts.

More of the Bassettes....

The Rivendell girls' soccer team surrounds their teammate Brianna Wood after she scored the winning goal in triple overtime during the Rivendell versus Arlington girls soccer for the Vermont State Championship game at Proctor High School field. Rivendell won in triple overtime 2-1.
Valley News - Sarah Priestap

Started my new F front today on a family of homeschooled kids that all hunt together- today they took recess to play in the woods.

Soccer photos from the other day in Hanover, NH. Thanks James for the edit.

Because today is Friday, the day where i'm not taking pictures or cleaning stalls, I drove to Middlebury with the sole purpose of getting myself some of their super limited edition pumpkin Cider at Woodchuck, and then took a tour of the plant. I took some photos on the way back too.

Driving around looking for stand alones today- I found these kids swinging. The girl definitely didn't want to have her swing messed with.

Progress Update and Website Info

I just updated my Website, which now includes my butcher project in its infant stage- which includes a few repetitious photos that I still can't decide between. I also added a couple new singles, and took a few old ones away.

The past two weeks, I've felt kind of stagnant, like I haven't been pushing myself hard enough, or looking at enough of other people's work. I've set some goals for myself in the next couple of weeks, especially since we are beginning to hit hammer time for internship deadlines- especially the big guns (Washington Post, St. Petersburg Times, Virginian Pilot, etc, etc). I want to expand my current story, as well as work on my new one on the family tradition of deer hunting.

Goals for my current story:

I have plenty butchering photos of Chet and his son as well as the VT mobile processing unit. Now, I need better photos of Chuck teaching the gang to butcher. I also need photos of the slaughter classes in a few weeks, and some photos of buthchers at home, their overbooked calenders, etc. I have two shoots planned for this week, one for next week, and hopefully more to come.

I think I also need to polish my singles to the point where I am happy with all of them 100%. I am happy with them on an individual level at this point, but I want them all to flow together when in my portfolio.

Jeff came to visit me this week. We met up with Ian for his birthday, then went to a dive bar to play darts. We were all terrible at it.

It's Starting to Come Along....

My in-progress story on the changing face of the meat processing business in the Upper Valley- I've been photographing a lot and thinking a lot, and both will hopefully get me somewhere...

Montpelier at Thetford.

The field there was in the prettiest spot for a sports venue I've ever seen. Light was strange for about half the game, but it was still fun to work with.

First of a few pig slaughters around the Upper Valley area- starting to figure out a tighter focus to the idea of slaughtering/the locavore movement/ new people to slaughtering vs old.

These are probably the last focus-less photos of dance I'll put on here for the next few months: I've finally found a focus for my nutcracker piece:

The City Center Ballet is performing the nutcracker completely by themselves for the first time ever, this year. In previous years the major roles have been filled by professional dancers of the Albany-Berkshire Ballet Company- this year, these roles will be filled by the upper level dancers of the Lebanon-based City Center Ballet. Many of these dancers have been with City Center since the age of five, and all are under the age of eighteen. Three girls this year will graduate, all of them having plans to move away and go to college, leaving the ballet. These three girls for the first and only times, will have the top roles in the ballet.

I will be exploring the idea of the short life of the spotlight as well as the relationships the seniors have with the other girls.

For a feature on a soccer coach who had beaten cancer four times. He was a quiet and humble man, but you could tell he was tough.

Go-Kart Races

More Nutcracker Photos

Family

My family visited me this weekend. We went to Killington and Woodstock and Quechee and ate too much pizza and watched movies and they vacuumed all the bugs from my room and we laughed a lot and celebrated Caroline's 16th birthday. After they left I had to photograph happy families all day- which made the goodbye harder than usual, along with the fact that I won't see them for about two months now- the longest I've gone without seeing them. But regardless, I had a good time while it lasted.

Far.

Golf Practice + skirts

These kids were told they could wear costume during their golf practices this week, so they wore the girl's field hockey skirts.

Vermont 50

A 50 mile mountain bike race on Mt. Ascutney.

Cow Crime Scene

What do you do when told to photograph for a story on some drive-by cow shootings? Photograph the cows that witnessed it, of course!

Clancey the cat and my features front to be published tomorrow.

More Editing

Editing my picture page for next Sunday.

Last Flight

Editing for CPOY and internships for next summer/fall.

The Ed Larkin Contra Dancers

I finished shooting my first F-Front (kinda a featur-y story page) today. It runs on Sunday, so Ill post more once it runs.

First Day Photo

This was the first photograph of mine that was published in the Valley News, from my field hockey assignment on the first day of work.