Portsmouth, NH- I spent yesterday evening at the Sheraton Harborside Hotel where former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown officially announces his plans to run for US Senator in New Hampshire. It has been awhile since I have been in the "media scrum", as it were. But it was a lot of fun and I enjoyed the healthy competition that comes with photographers looking for the best photograph. I think it ups anyones game and certainly an amount of adrenaline kicks in. 

Seems the New Hampshire hotbed for politics is slowly starting to kick-in for what seems like it might be an extended amount of time. WIth this race, and then the presidential race coming up. I look forward to it.

Where do I begin? 

I worked a full year at a newspaper. I never thought I'd get to say that. It was always a dream of mine. I can remember waking up in the morning, my Father having just finished reading The Eagle-Tribune paper; myself trying to find the original creases so that I could reorganize it and look at it. I would always look through for the photos first, articles second. I was curious. I wanted to see what was going on and who was going to change it if it wasn't going well. My Father was involved in politics so we would have good discussions about the hot topics around town and elsewhere. I was always tracking stories and wondering where photos were and when they were there, wondering how they got them and what was the process of getting to that moment in time, that one frame. It was an obsession that eventually let me to photojournalism(among many reasons).

I finished school in 2011 and was a freelancer for about a year and a half. I began seriously applying for staff jobs in the beginning of 2012, thinking to myself that I would go to any place that would take me. Nearing the end of the year in November I got an email back from Foster's Daily Democrat, which happened to sit about an hour north of where I am from, in Dover, New Hampshire. I was young and eager to take the opportunity and within a week, the job was mine.

It has been a trying year. I have learned a lot. There are so many things that you have to learn as a staff photographer for a newspaper that I just never thought would be, or had any idea about. I have covered many firsts for me... fatal car accidents, major fires, spokes people, politicians. I've covered regional history with a new bridge being built where an old one stood for 90 years and watching a frail yet strong 95 year old woman cut the ribbon, an act she completed at the same spot 90 years previously. I covered two stand-offs, one resulting in a peaceful end, one a fatality. It has been a lot to cover and a lot to comprehend. Sometimes you don't really think too much on any of it, which I also never thought would be the case. When I had more time to think about these things, I used to think, 'Surely I'll never go through an assignment without thinking about what just happened'. But more often than not, you are sort of forced to move on to the next one without thought or regard for what just happened 5 minutes ago. It's a high and low I have never truly experience before and admittedly, sometimes had a tough time dealing with. 

Moving into 2014, I am not sure where what my future holds in this business. While I love the day to day, I miss greatly the projects that I once dove into and the freedom of freelancing. Whatever I end up doing, this has been a year I will never forget and a year that will have, for the better, molded me into the person and photographer I need and want to be.

-Ryan