I had to get rid of the stripper before I could shoot Obama. We were already half way there before I realized I only had enough space for a few shots. I wasn’t sure if Dybzinski had taken his turn with the red pleather clad vixen, but my fingers were itching to get to work. Deep inside the nested menus, I killed one pretty face after another.
As I plowed through her pile of pics I tried to keep a few in case he hadn’t grabbed the ones he wanted (Dybzinski had used the Paper’s camera to shoot an ad for Emerald City). By the time we arrived at Obama’s party, she had already worn me out.
We got there early, unsure of the access we’d get. After showing our cards to the chain smoking gatekeeper, we were ushered to the press table. We signed in and made our way into the auditorium. Getting there early had worked, but we soon realized that he wouldn’t go on until two hours later. Newshound Hambrick returned to the paper to do some work and I was left to practice my wakeful meditation skills.
After a while, the doors were opened and the crowd (which had lined up around the block) filed in. I staked out a spot near his impending entrance and waited. Minutes before he came in, his press secretary informed all the still photographers that we couldn’t shoot there because “he needed a clean entrance for the video cameras”.
I sat in the stands a few feet back and tried to get the same shot a little further away. As he appeared in the doorway, A/V librarians from the high school swooped in with little point-and-shoots and ruined our shot. Arrgh.
Obama went right into it and I circled around for a good shot. I wasn’t expecting to win any Pulitzers there, but was experimenting and trying to get something different. In the viewfinder, the dreaded “CF” flashed back at me when I tried to shoot. The card was full.
I kneeled down in the aisle and cycled through the shots, trying to cull the wheat from the chaff. In what I’ll call a City Paper Moment, I found myself switching back and forth from stripper photos to Obama, deciding who got cut. I started laughing and then realized the guy in the seat next to me had been watching the screen. His face betrayed a vague disdain that made me laugh harder.
He didn’t speak for very long and Hambrick and I blazed a trail out of there. I checked my shots while riding back to the office. There she was again, her buxom body taking up 6.5Mb per.
