September/October Favorites

As always, September and October are the busiest times for me, photographing back to school, spots, and the daily happenings of the Upper Valley at the Valley News while photographing and editing weddings and engagement sessions and booking clients for next year. Things were so busy this year, in fact, that I made the decision to transition to full-time wedding photography and freelance work. As it's been seen on this blog, I've loved my five and a half years spent with the Valley News, first as an intern, and for the majority of the time, as a staff photographer. I witnessed the best and the worst days in the lives of those in the community, and I learned plenty about myself and my photography in the process. I began my photography career as a wedding photographer, assisting my parents from the time I was fourteen until I left college and began photographing weddings on my own. Over the past few years, I've taken the important lessons they taught me about business and managing groups of people and merged it with the documentary style I've shaped in my time at the Valley News and my love for storytelling to create a unique wedding photography style. Jeff and I have worked together to create a working style and schedule that we love, and dozens have couples have fallen in love with it as well, making it hard to do both full-time newspaper work along with wedding work. I'm still in love with photojournalism for publications and will remain active as a freelance photographer. I'll be freelancing for The Valley News, as well as other local and national publications and posting the work here. I'll also be collaborating with several small food-centered businesses to document their processes for marketing campaigns (a side passion of mine). As always, you can view my work here, at sarahpriestap.com (I'll be overhauling this site within the next month), and wedding work at twoofusphotography.com For now, here's a sample of my favorites from the past month, including portraits of student style on the first day of school, a world record attempt at a grape dropped from a hot air balloon, and former President Bill Clinton.