Saturday, June 7, 2008

Internship, Week 1

The first week of my internship was great, but very tiring. Monday and Tuesday were orientation, but I got to ride along with Susan Stocker on Wednesday morning. We went to an elementary school and turned in three pictures. Then I spent the rest of the day going through more orientation.

Twelve-year-old Genesis Martinez of Miami dances with her friends, (left to right) Samira Manucha, 12, Hollywood, Aldana Ledesma, 11, Hollywood and Aditi Patel, 11, Hollywood, during Hollywood Central's end of elementary school dance on Wednesday, June 4, 2008. "I love dancing," said Martinez. "I just go to my own beat." The dance was held for fifth-grade students who will officially start their "tween years" as they enter middle school next year.

Fifth-grade students Lucia Gil-Morales, 11, Hollywood (in yellow shirt) and Shaina Rivera, 11, Hollywood (foreground), compete in a hula-hoop contest during during Hollywood Central's end of elementary school dance on Wednesday, June 4, 2008.

Kylie Braeseke, 11, Hollywood, competes in a limbo contest during Hollywood Central's end of elementary school dance on Wednesday, June 4, 2008.

On Thursday I got to ride along with Lou Toman, who has been working at the Sun-Sentinel for over 50 years. I shadowed both Lou and Susan about four years ago and they're both great. Lou and I went down to Miami to photograph Bill Parcells with the Miami Dolphins. It wasn't great photo-wise, but it was alright.

While we were waiting for Parcells to come out of his trailer, I saw this guy who looked really interesting, and I spent over an hour talking to him. It turned out he weaves coconut palm leaves. I showed this picture to one of the photo editors and he said to talk to another editor about this guy because they might want to do a story about him.

Miami resident, Dale Silva, weaves coconut palm leaves. Silva learned how to do coconut palm weaving about four years ago when he was recovering from an accident. He can make 22 different palm weaving sculptures, including a rose, grasshopper, angelfish, bat and frog. Silva says that he enjoys weaving palm leaves because he loves meeting different kinds of people on the streets of Miami.

Now here are the pictures I turned in of Bill Parcells.


Bill Parcells, vice president of football operations for the Miami Dolphins, tries out his golf swing in a golf simulator in a setting meant to look like the moon on June 5, 2008. He's helping Gatorade promote Gatorade Tiger, created for Tiger Woods, through a contest where the public tried to get the longest shot in a lunar setting to win a vacation worth $125,000. This contest is a takeoff of the ad with Tiger Woods playing golf on the moon. People tried out for the contest in the simulator at Bayfront Park.

Later in the day Lou let me shoot an assignment for business, but it wasn't visually interesting at all and I don't love the picture, so I'm not posting it.

On Friday I rode along with Andrew Innerty to photograph John McCain in the Everglades. We were there all day and there were Secret Service guys all over the place which was crazy. At first we were going to be on the media pool airboat, and then we weren't, and then about 15 minutes before the media got on the boat, we were going again. So we were on the airboat for over an hour in 90 degree weather. We stopped twice in the Everglades and waited for a long time for McCain's airboat to drive past. The channel 7 news anchor said that he thought it was funny that we went through hours and hours in the boiling heat and sitting on an airboat for a long time, just so forty of us could all get two minutes to get the same picture as everyone else. Which is true, but I guess that's part of the job. Either way, I had a lot of fun and thought it was great. And one of my pictures was on the front page of the paper today!!!!!!

Arizona Sen. John McCain, left, went on an airboat ride at Everglades Safari Park on Friday, June 6, 2008. With him, from left, are his wife, Cindy, his daughter, Meghan and Gov. Charlie Crist.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, backed by U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz said that if elected, he would ask Congress for direct funding of Everglades restoration projects. (This was the picture that made 1A!!!!)

So this week was very exciting and a lot of fun, but I'm really glad that I have this weekend off because my back is killing me from carrying around my 400 lb. equipment! But I still can't wait to see what I'm going to be doing on Monday.

1 comment:

VGober said...

Congratulations on your internship week 1. My husband and I were there also. We were looking for a place to airboat ride and discovered all the media buses, so we stopped, rode the airboat, then waited for Senator McCain to arrive. It was very exciting and probably a "once in a lifetime event" for us as we are senior citizens.