Like everyone else, we freelancers are getting our share of bumps and bruises. So it never hurts when you can photograph a high profile event with some relatively well-know guy like, um the President shows up in your backyard to shake hands at a graduation.
This time, a hot, sweltering day inside a concrete and steel bowl, that is Sun Devil Stadium made for a long and brutal day waiting for many hours to photograph President Barack Obama as he addressed the graduates of Arizona State University.About the time Obama took his seat on the stage, the heat had faded from blast furnace intensity to a hair dryer on medium allowing the braincells to begin functioning again.
In spite of what began as some pretty brutal heat for May, this is one of those things that I really do enjoy about my job, the opportunity to photograph some pretty amazing and interesting people in news-making situations.
What I enjoy even more is when there is time to be thorough.
In photographing any event, thoroughness tells a better story. When there is time to pick up your feet to explore multiple perspectives, multiple lenses the collection provides a more complete view of an event. It also means, trying to find windows to see through the clutter, the teleprompters and stage rigging, that obstructed some vantage points and provided distracting photo content in others.
Who doesn't love a challenge?
Obama provided the opportunity to do that exploration by doing more than just delivering a speech and hitting the road. He stayed for most of the event, shaking hands with all of the doctoral candidates who crossed the stage to be recognized for their years of hard work.
You could call Obama's visit a sort of a stimulus package for freelancers. The longer Obama spent at ASU and the more he did to interact with students, the better the collection of images became. The stronger that collection, of course, the more play it will get.
Nothing like a little personal involvement in stimulating the economy.
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