January 24, 2009

The Inauguration of Barack Obama

The Inauguration of Barack Obama - Washington, DC

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A couple of weeks ago, I got a surprise call from Senator Webb's office asking if I wished to attend Obama's inauguration in Washington, DC. Are you kidding!? I'd barely hung up the phone before I was renting lenses and starting to plan the trip.

Within the next hour, luck struck twice when a close friend's sister that lives on Capitol Hill loaned me her apartment for the duration. That put me about three blocks from the Capitol steps (the site of the ceremony) AND the ability to drive since I could park my car there in her neighborhood. I tend to prefer the train to DC, but this allowed me to keep my own schedule and, better yet, take as much gear and crap with me as I thought I might need.

As far as lens rentals go, I snagged two lenses that seemed a good fit for the various possibilities. The first is a Canon 70-200 f/2.8L IS - a lens I have coveted for ages and plan to buy (AFTER I get a 5D Mark II body). Knowing there could well be some serious distance to cover, I also grabbed a Canon 100-400 f/4-5.6L IS, the first push/pull lens I've used. Both were superb and, ultimately, fit the bill perfectly in harmony with the Canon 24-70 f/2.8L that I already own. Security prohibited me from carrying any "large" camera bags, but one of the lens bags that came with the rentals had a neck strap and was within size requirements. Therefore, I carried two bodies and lenses on shoulder straps and a third lens in that bag around my neck so I would have the option to swap off when needed.

The weather was bitter cold (as is so often the case in January in DC), so I crowdsourced a bit among my Twitter compatriots and assembled a great series of suggestions for winter weather gear. A few hundred dollars (ouch) later, I was ready to go with a new wind/waterproof Columbia jacket with removable fleece liner, uber-warm socks, a nice Thinsulate stocking cap/beanie, Manzella Cascade Convertible mittens/gloves where the mitten end flips open to reveal exposed fingertips, and a set of high-tech "long underwear" (for lack of a better description) made by Under Armour. Special attention is to be paid here to the gloves that are ideal for photographers. My hands stayed toasty warm with the mitten ends closed (mittens beat gloves for overall finger warmth), but with a flick I could have my fingertips ready for working the buttons on the camera.

The Under Armour was... interesting. Dignity goes right out the window when a non-athletic guy like me crams himself into a pair of these things. I began referring to it as my "Super Suit" in honor of The Incredibles. This Teaser Trailer immediately came to mind. Maybe not that bad... but I did feel like a human sausage. Fortunately, they go UNDER one's clothes and not even my wife has seen me in them in "raw form". All of that said, they quite literally kept me from freezing during Inauguration as well as utterly eliminating that horrid "freezing while sweating in your coat" situation one so often encounters in the dead of winter. I'm impressed... albeit compressed... while wearing them. :)

After arriving in DC on Monday, I spent the evening scoping things out and getting a sense of how everything was laid out for the big day. Light was fading fast by the time I was out and about, so most of my first shots here are evening and night shots of the Capitol building. The mood around the area was already like a gigantic block party, though, with happy and excited people literally everywhere. The capitol lawn was crawling with folks wanting to see as much up close as possible before the major security wall came down on Tuesday morning.

Monday night was also special because I finally got a chance to meet Steve Simon, co-panelist on TWiP and tremendous pro photographer, in person. As coincidence would have it, the accommodations he arranged via Craigslist somewhat at the last minute were approximately two blocks from the apartment I was using. A mere block walk for both of us brought us to a decent coffee shop in the middle, a chance to chat, and a walk around the capitol grounds to see the preparations. I shared what I knew of the layout, security, etc., for Tuesday with Steve. We were ticketed to be in different parts of the capitol grounds the next day and, with millions of people attending, figured this would likely be our only chance to hang out.

I started Tuesday morning at 5 AM, grabbing a quick take-out breakfast from a local diner and returning to the apartment to eat and pack gear. I was out in the crowds before 6 AM and making my way to my ticket gate. Thus began what I refer to now as "the death march". The next five hours were spent in an ever-increasing mob packing itself into an ever-decreasing space. By 10 AM I was crammed into a barricaded intersection with people packed so tightly that I couldn't raise my arms or even dig my iPhone out of my pocket. I spent much of it with my cameras and long lenses clutched to my body while I was swept along with the crowd if it moved. Granted, movement was rare andnever exceeded five steps in any direction. As the ceremony time approached, the crowd started to get a bit of a cranky mob mentality and I seriously started to wonder if I might end up in a riot or stampede. A lot has been discussed about this breakdown in security and crowd management, especially for Purple Ticket holders.

Fortunately, I did make it through just a bit before the ceremony started and, ultimately, ended up on the back of the capitol lawn. While not close enough for tight shots of the platform - even with the 400mm lens - I was able to witness history firsthand rather than via Jumbotron. Any group of strangers you stood with for even a few minutes turned into a temporary group of old friends. This was most evident to me when a group of about six of us immediately fell into happy conversation and, at the close of the oath, were all tearfully hugging one another. Nobody ever got around to asking names and, I suspect, none of us will ever see each other again... but we sure were happy to be together "again" for that hour or so. :)

I grabbed quite a few shots of people in my vicinity and their various emotions. There are a few shots of the ceremony itself but, as I said, they are somewhat distant. Upon leaving the ceremony and heading back to the apartment to rest for a few and eat, I managed to stumble on the other event I had hoped against hope I'd witness: Bush gettin' the hell outta Dodge on Marine One. As I came around the back of the capitol, the event was already starting and I arrived in time to get - again, distant - shots of the Obamas and Bidens escorting the Bush's to the helicopter as well as the wave from the stairs as the helicopter, thankfully, took one of the worst presidents in US history out of our collective lives. See ya.

After a brief stop to download shots and actually bend at the knees into a sitting position for a few minutes, I bundled back up and headed out in search of some parade-related activities. The parade route itself was going to be a bit of a hike and I'd heard it was already essentially closed after filling up (or at least being locked down) by about 8 AM that morning. My assumption, though, was that Obama's motorcade had to leave from the capitol to start the parade, so I hung around by the barriers there and was rewarded with a nice presidential and VP limo drive-by. People already lined the barricade, so I had to shoot over their heads to get anything... but it was my first time seeing a presidential motorcade and the car they now call "The Beast".

I had originally planned to stay Tuesday night, but I was exhausted by this point and decided against breaking up my next day with driving. I packed and headed out of the city by about 6:30 PM on streets with little to no traffic. This seemed great at first until I realized the city had been chopped into a million pieces with police road blocks and barriers. Ten official Inaugural Balls meant the motorcade was going to be zipping around quite a bit and security didn't want anything or anyone slowing it down. I spent well over an hour winding around the streets of DC with my GPS trying to find a way to get far enough past the lockdown to reach I-66. I witnessed some of the most bizarre, mid-intersection barrier arrangements I've ever seen and my main memory is that the city was either flashing blue lights, glowing red flares or some combination of the two. It was like some kind of scifi escape scene from a movie.

All in all, I had a tremendous, albeit exhausting, time and am thrilled to have been able to witness this historical event firsthand. I have a few shots I really like and quite a few that are just taking up disk space. They are all geotagged and appear here, as usual, in both HTML gallery and slideshow form. Also, for the sake of experimentation, I'm placing them on my me.com account as well. I have a set on Flickr, too, mostly to use their nice Map View for my geotags. Lastly, I'm putting up a Google Earth map with my GPS geologger data overlaid.

UPDATE: Oh, and one relevant bit of audio in closing: Super Suit! :)

Enjoy!
- Aaron

The Inauguration of Barack Obama - Washington, DC

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October 18, 2008

Rally in the Valley - Obama in Roanoke, Va

Rally in the Valley - Obama in Roanoke, Va

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I had the opportunity to photograph Sen. Barack Obama's rally in Roanoke, Va. It's the first shoot I've done for the Democratic Party of Virginia since 2006. I did a great deal of political event photography for the DPVA in 2004, specifically the DNC in Boston and numerous other campaign events. I covered Governor's Kaine's campaign kickoff, his historic inauguration in Williamsburg, Va and the 2006 JJ Dinner with Pennsylvania Gov. Rendell.

I've gotten involved in so many other projects since 2006 (not the least of which is acting as producer for the TWiP podcast and, you know... a more than full time job here at SBC) that I haven't been as involved in Democratic photography. My former blog, Documenting Democracy, has gone silent (no real loss... there are so many other superb progressive blogs in Va that have a vastly more effective voice than I'd ever have in this arena) and serves now more as a 2004/2006 photo repository. My "voice" in this scene is through my photography which I do voluntarily and offer freely to the Democratic party and our campaigns (assuming they find images that they deem useful, of course).

So... anyway... I was eager to cover this event since Obama's campaign is so phenomenally inspiring and, frankly, historic. It's a lung-filling breath of fresh air after the last eight, horrid, spiraling years under Bush's sorry excuse for a presidency. Sorry to my Republican readers, but I'm briefly putting on my partisan hat here at halfpress and calling it like I see it. DPVA hooked me up with a press pass and a nice little reserved spot in the front of the risers and I quickly realized how much I've missed covering things like the DNC and rallies.

My photos here aren't going to win any awards or anything... but I did look for some opportunities to capture a little of the mood. One really needs to shoot from a press riser with some massive, tripod mounted Scott Bourne-class lenses to get the tight, dramatic shots. :) I was using a 24-70L on one body and 70-200L on the other and did a bit of roaming about when not in my slot.

I have more shots to edit, so I might be amending the gallery later. I also made sure to take some shots that represent how the press pool area works (mostly if any TWiP listeners are curious) and you'll see videographers and wire service photogs in there. Most of those are shot with an 8mm fisheye lens both for effect and to give a sense of scale to the arena and our place in it.

I hope to fit in a few more events around the state before the big day when Virginia elects its first Democratic president since 1964. If I do, I'll post'em here.

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October 8, 2008

The Wedding of Shawn & Matt

The Wedding of Shawn & Matt

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This past weekend, Elisabeth, Anne Richards, John Jaffe and I attended the weekend-long wedding of our dear friends, Shawn Brenneman and Matt Labarge.

I'm pretty pissed off with use of the word "event" these days. We have weather events. Television events. All kinds of "world premiere events". Crap. All of it.

This wedding, however... this was an "event". A two-day event at least.

Shawn and Matt essentially rented out all of Bluestone State Park in West Virginia. That's 26 cabins in the chilly, wooded hills of rugged West Virginia. I've been hating summer since it started back in May, so I was itching for some frosty mountain air and at least the start of fall colors. I was not disappointed. :)

It's kind of hard to put into words the scene here... but imagine being surrounded by about 180-200 of the most fun-loving, creative, musical, and happy people you can imagine all pretty much taking over an entire state park for 48 hours. Shawn's scene for years has been one of Contra dance and top-notch traditional music. Matt is an incredible pianist already with a few albums to his name. Their circle of friends includes some of the most amazing guitarists, fiddlers, mandolin and banjo players... you name it. Individually, they are all a force to contend with. Put these folks together, though, and you can see the passion. They LOVE to play together and everyone within earshot is in for a treat.

For some backstory on the photos you're going to see here (in chronological order), you'd best just refer to their wedding website - the master agenda that we all followed for the weekend. You'll learn a lot about the festivities - but also about the unique people that are Shawn and Matt.

I'll quote a few key phrases from one of the pre-wedding emails:

Finally, in keeping with the spirit of fun and frivolity, should you be in possession of an unusual article of clothing or an unusual noisemaker that you're dying for an opportunity to wear/perform in public, this is your big chance! It's encouraged the whole weekend, but particularly during the Wedding Processional. Shawn will be terribly disappointed if there are no viking hats, kilts, liederhosen, Mardi Gras masks, duck calls, pirate hats and swords, or clown pants!

Photos and words won't do it justice. Anyone who was there this weekend knows how special this event was. I, for one, came home relaxed and happy and wondering how we could talk them into doing this again next weekend. And the weekend after that... :)

As you'll see in these photos, I was pretty captivated with the musicians and there are individual images in here I plan to collect (with others) in a specific themed gallery. A number of the photos show a trio that I first became aware of this weekend: Crowfoot. All of the photo editing I've been doing the last few evenings has been while listening to their two albums that I immediately purchased from iTunes. Much to my pleasure, they appear to be playing right up the road in Charlottesville at the end of October. Adam, Jaige and Nicholas: see you there! :)

P.S. Keep an eye out for the photo of the special brew. This is a handcrafted beer by the "mad beer genius", Jonathan Thielen (who ran The Alehouse in Cabin 26 this weekend), specially made as a gift for Shawn and Matt. It is designed to ferment in the bottle for the coming year and cannot be opened until October 4, 2009. The label is designed by the amazing, Ben Crenshaw, whom I was thrilled to finally meet this past weekend (Ben's the dude in the awesome pirate hat in the photos). Our bottle is sitting here on my desk for the next year. Hey - Jonathan said a "cool, dark place". :)

The Wedding of Shawn & Matt

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August 15, 2008

More about reCAPTCHA

Here's a nice article I spotted today in my RSS feeds that gives some insight into reCAPTCHA, the system I implemented here on the blog last week.

Enjoy!
- Aaron

P.S. Screw you, spammers. :)

August 5, 2008

halfpress.com Update

This is just a quick note to let everyone know that I've upgraded MovableType today to the latest version. The version I was running before was quite old and it's been on my "to do" list for ages now.

There are new features I'll try to utilize once I have time to explore them, but my goal for now was to not destroy the current site while gaining the ability to implement captchas on the comment system. Comment spammers have been hammering me to death for years and I finally hit my frustration limit. I'd call spammers the sub-human scum of the earth, but that would be an insult to scum. Scum serves more of a purpose and, as little as I appreciate scum, I respect it infinitely more than I respect spammers.

But I digress...

Anyway, I've implemented reCaptcha on the comment forms, so if you take a moment to leave comments on here, you'll also be helping digitize books! As a Kindle owner, I appreciate your efforts. :)

More to come...

- Aaron

June 18, 2008

Dumb Luck 101: My First "Organic" 3D Modo Project on History Channel

I'm planning to write more about this when I have some time, but I figured I'd link to a local news item about my first "organic" Modo project ending up in a nationally broadcast documentary.

Understand that this is not a suggestion that I have any great 3D modeling experience (I don't)... it was kind of "dumb luck" to be perfectly honest. :)

Mahler's Venus on History Channel

Frankly, the model isn't completely finished yet and, I've had my hands so full with work, TWiP, forthcoming TWiM producing and photo gigs that I've not had much time in Modo recently. I've got a pile of projects I want to do with it soon since the app is just insanely cool.

I'm working on a few things combining Modo models with textures I shoot digitally and equirectangular HDR panos (most recent one here) that I shoot and assemble to use for real-world lighting.

This is the model I started after spending part of Christmas screwing around in Modo and modeling an AMF bowling pin I had sitting on my desk.

June 17, 2008

Of Local Interest: Waterstone Finally Open

I'm pleased to say that a restaurant we've been eagerly awaiting here in Lynchburg is finally open and, more importantly, it doesn't suck. In fact, it's really quite excellent! :)

There wasn't an official Google Maps entry yet, so I just added one for the meantime.

It was last year sometime that I first heard about the plans to open Waterstone, a wood-fired, brick oven pizza restaurant attached to a brewery. It's located on Jefferson Street and is part of the larger Bluffwalk Center / Cradock Terry Hotel complex which also includes Shoemaker's restaurant and The Jefferson Street Brewery.

My remark that it "doesn't suck" is just my general semi-negative attitude about the Lynchburg restaurant scene. Yes, we have some very good restaurants here. We also have a lot of mediocre crap, the worst of which make a play at being creative (surprisingly few make even that effort) and fall miserably short. My wife calls me a pessimist (I'm truly not), but I've found it safer to assume mediocrity around here and to be pleasantly surprised (and very supportive as a customer) when they pull it off. :) Waterstone pulled it off VERY well.

We visited with a couple of friends during the restaurant's first hour of being open to the public and found the whole operation to be very polished. The waiter was comfortable and engaging, the atmosphere was attractive and tastefully designed and, above all, the pizza was superb. As a group, we ordered four ten-inch pizzas including the Waterstone White, Greek, Wild Mushroom and a Sicilian (the most traditional of the four). All had a superb flavor, were not at all oily, heavy or greasy, and each was true to its theme with fresh ingredients and distinct flavors. The Sicilian, with its various sausages, was at the greatest risk of being overly heavy but managed to be just as "light" as the others.

We focused on the pizza last night, but the menu was fairly extensive and there is a lot left we'd like to try. I'm all for anything that brings quality to downtown Lynchburg and can say with certainty that we'll be repeat customers. They have plans for a two-level outside seating area as well as other refinements and their location on that part of Jefferson Street provides a lot of promise for community engagement. Here's hoping Waterstone is the beginning of a positive trend in the local dining scene and a little less having to flee to Charlottesville for a really great meal! :)

In closing, I will mention three other local restaurants of note. There are more, yes, but I want to mention these three right now: Machu Picchu, Grace and Main Street Eatery. Main Street has history and remains a Lynchburg institution, Machu Picchu is simply fantastic for those desiring Peruvian dishes (Elsa is passionate about her cooking) and Grace is probably the single most creative, elegant restaurant in the area and absolutely worth the visit.