Getting Beat in Paradise

The somber looking Obama arrived at around 7:30 on Thursday night. He’s here in Hawaii to visit his ailing grandmother. Many think it will be the last time that he sees her since she is gravely ill. Since it is highly unlikely that the traveling press pool will see him during his visit, we all blast him with our flashes as he walks off of his plane in the dark. Nothing like a direct flash picture. Pretty.
The traveling press pool is comprised of three stills, me AP and Reuters. Our coverage is primarily protective coverage, you know, just in case something major happens. There are no scheduled public events during this trip, he’s only here to see his grandmother.

From the airport, the motorcade went directly to his grandmother’s house and Obama’s car went down into an underground parking garage, eluding the line of TV cameras out front awaiting his arrival. There were a couple dozen people standing across the street, some with signs, others pointing up at the top floors of the apartment building where Obama’s grandma lives. Unfortunately for all of them, they wouldn’t be seeing Obama tonight.
Have you ever had one of those days at work when things just don’t go the way you wished they had? Well, that was my Friday.

Friday started out early with a 6:30 am call time for the pool. The motorcade went back to the apartment complex where we would sit out front for most of the day. We were informed after about 3 hours into the day that Obama would be going for a walk around his old neighborhood and we (the pool) would be able to follow him for a block or so. This was good, an unexpected surprise since we all thought that we wouldn’t see him until he got on his plane later today to fly back to the mainland.

Me, Alex Brandon of AP and Hugh Gentry of Reuters along with a pool reporter and pool TV camera were escorted by our press agent and staff to the underground garage where we would rendezvous with Obama. While we were holding there, one of his aides said that he had already left and was down the street. We all moved out to the street and sure enough, he was about 3 blocks away.

The pursuit began. It first started out as a fast walk and then escalated to an all out run as Dean (our press agent) prompted us to pick up the pace. We’re all running down the street, cameras dangling – full paparazzi mode. People in cars are laughing at us. I feel as if I am on assignment for TMZ and Paris Hilton just walked into a Starbucks. It was a little embarrassing.

After about four blocks we finally catch up to Obama. We’re across the street from him as he casually strolled through the residential neighborhood. He seemed to be caught off guard as we all came storming down the street. He actually looked a little pissed. He stopped walking and looked around before saying something to the agent that was shadowing him.
This is where things started to go wrong for me. Obama continued to walk and then started to cross the street towards us. Then he stopped, turned around and went back to the sidewalk. He stood there for a minute and then started heading back towards the apartment building. Alex and Hugh were about 25 feet behind me. I was snapping frames of Obama as he walked away and then started to move over to where the others were but I couldn’t get there fast enough and missed a really good picture. Obama had crossed a footpath in part of the neighborhood that was very representative of where he grew up. I had seen this little path when we were running by it earlier. It was a real bummer to not get that shot. Everything about it worked. He was wearing jeans and flip flops, walking in full stride past palm trees and homes in a lower-middle class neighborhood. It was painful to see. Wrong place, wrong time. Sometimes there isn’t much you can do about your timing. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.

There is nothing worse than missing a gem like that, especially when it was the only opportunity of the day to photograph him. I certainly did beat myself up over it. But, you know, that’s the nature of this profession. Sometimes you get the shot and others are envious and vice versa. That is unless you’re some sort of perfect photo god. It’s a healthy competition between photographers that I like but at the same time can be tough when you don’t perform to your personal standards.

Tomorrow will be another day with more opportunities to redeem myself. Hopefully I will have better timing and luck.