I wonder if I sent this photo to Obama if he would autograph it. Maybe I should autograph it and send a copy to him…
It’s hard to believe that a relatively short time ago (26 months) it was pretty easy to get this close to the man that was just elected to the White House. I’ve photographed Obama three times throughout the past few years and things have definitely changed a bit when it comes to access.
One time, I saw him in Mattoon and was able to shoot some stuff behind the scenes as he waited to speak. I wish I still had those files… at that point he was a no-name politician speaking to a small crowd in the lunchroom of a community college. I didn’t see the importance of archiving those images.
Idiot.
When he came to Charleston a couple years ago he was more popular and filled a pretty large ballroom in the Eastern Illinois University Union. Security was almost non-existent since I was able to walk out to his motorcade and get up in his face with a wide-angle lens (that’s my sexy face behind the camera lens in the above photo). I had similar access as before, shooting some stuff on the side and after his talk. Looking at the photo below, which is my most popular image on Flickr, is poorly toned and not very good, but I was at least smart enough to save the files. Now it’s just a matter of finding them… which is what I plan on working on in the next couple of days.
A couple months ago I went to Springfield to cover Obama’s announcement that he had chosen Joe Biden as his running mate. Security was tighter than Fort Knox. I wrote about it before, but there were secret service checkpoints, police dogs, snipers on rooftops and who knows how many undercover agents in the crowd.
Needless to say, I wasn’t able to get behind-the-scenes access with the Senator this time.
It’s amazing how much can change in a relatively short amount of time.
I’ll autograph it for you. But only if you autograph the mirror image you took of me.
That moment was so lame. We looked at each other and in an instant knew what to do. I think there was a little ‘Night at the Roxbury’ style pointing back and forth. It was kind of bromantic.
I was thinking about this same thing. I remember when we were writing stories in The DEN about him and he was relatively unknown…Crazy…
Erin… remember when the DEN called him O’Bama?