I Shot The President!

With a camera of course. President Bush held a rally in Arkansas Monday to shake hands with the Arkansas gubernatorial candidate and tell people to vote Republican in Tuesday's Midterm election.

Since it happened Monday, the photo would end up on the front page of the paper on election day. The editors didn't want to give the Republican candidate any sort of advantage, so going in I knew they just wanted one shot. They wanted the president with the republican candidate for governor, and next to that would be a second photo of his Democratic contender from whatever event he was doing Monday. It seemed fair, but that meant everything else I shot would never see the light of day. So here are some out takes I like as well as some behind the scene photos.

This is the scene when I arrived. The rally was held in a big hanger at the airport so the president could minimize the amount of time he would actually have to spend in Arkansas. As you can see the media was way in the back.

Since we didn't get pool access, I got stuck on the risers with these people. It got kind of crowded because the writers all decided they couldn't see from their seats so they invaded the camera risers.

The media had to be in place about two hours before the president actually arrived, so I had a lot of down time. But there was plenty to see in the crowd.

There was something odd about seeing this portrait being waved around. As if this woman thought the president was the Pope or something. It really became odd later when people were practically body surfing their babies over the crowd just so they could touch the president when he walked by.

I thought this was interesting. A pair of soldiers watch the skies from the top of a trailer on the runway. I wonder if they were snipers. They looked all over the crowd before the plane arrived. At one point they were looking at me looking at them.


So the plane finally arrived, and of course the people went nuts. Air Force One is huge, by the way. I can't imagine why one person would need such a gigantic plane to cruise around the country in.




When he gets on stage he waved some more and shook some hands. I didn't anything great of the president greeting the candidate. They were always turned to the side or blocking each other awkwardly or something. I kind of expected the president to say a few words and then split. But once he started he just kept talking and talking.

And talking.

And talking.

And talking

And talking. And of course this is all useless to me. They didn't want a picture of the president. They wanted him and the Republican candidate together. So when he finally finishes talking, we get the money shot.

This is what ended up in today's paper.

It was quite an interesting day. It was my first time shooting the president, and I thought it was way cool. Some of the other photographers warned me that it would be a big pain. It took all day, you sat there doing nothing for hours, you get stuck in one spot while you briefly shoot the president, then have to fight the crowds out of there. So yeah, it was kind of a pain, but it was all part of the experience and I thought it was great.