Today was absolutely amazing. It was the culmination of 4 year s of hard work. I have been working on photography to at first have fun and now develop more and more into a photographer.
Today I was given the opportunity to photograph President Obama.
Run down of the day
Woke up 6am,7am,8am,9am--- finally 9:30
Prep/ check gear one last time. 10oclock out the door.
10:30 check in. Discover that they won't let anyone for another hour.
sit chat photograph people waiting in line.
11:30 get my photo pass and check in. put my gear in a seperate room. walk out get wanded and panted down.
return to room after the the austin police rummage through my stuff looking for any contraband. get my bag head to another room.
get my gear checked again by the secret service. then move on to the staging area. sit down with the press booth around 12:30.
then i stand up to strech and some other photographer stand up as well and start heading to the photo pit. i was like crap i need to get a move on.
so i briskly walked over and join 4 other photographer standing in the pit.
secret service agents move towards us and 3 of them surround us and tell us "excuse us but you will have to remove yourself and be sitting in the press area"
we are not happy about this and scramble to find event staff. this issue sorts itself out and we are allowed back to where we were.
We have been standing since 11 and now have found out spots and are standing there in a very defensive position waiting to get our shots.
Finally at 2:05 Hail to the chiefs plays and Barack Obama walks out.
I click madly getting nearly 600 clicks in his 10 minute speech. As he walks away and media congrates together to start pushing out images and stories. People nearby are asking "how did you get access?" with that question directed to me multiple times as I was clearly the youngest one there.
My reply: 4 years of hard work, shoot and keep shooting youll get the good shots and get the great gigs.
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wshing/4876513623/" title="Barack Obama by W.shing, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4143/4876513623_f911d82afa_z.jpg" width="427" height="640" alt="Barack Obama" /></a> Photo Link
The last 4 years I have been shooting everything and anything to get experience and exposure. Joining my colleges newspaper was the most difficult as well as the most rewarding thing. A lot of kids with cameras these days don't really work for the opportunities to shoot big things. When I say kids I mean other college students I have observed. They want recognization for everything they do. Some even want to be paid for their inferior work. Anyways back on point after 1 semester of shooting for the paper on a daily basis I applied to be a free lancer for some online publications which gave me access to the music scene in Austin. This allowed me to meet and learn from some of the best music photographers in the industry. I took what I learned and tried it over and over again. After doing a lot of my work for free and just out shooting on a daily basis some bigger outlets started using me and decided to use me for this event today.
My experiences have mostly been music based. Shooting people like Pit Bull, Garth Brooks, Taylor Swift have give me access to lots other photographers and other media sources that allow me to put my name out there.
But starting out I took pictures of anything I could get my hands on. Campus events, public events, just following news events. The main thing is to take pictures because I loved it first. Then after shooting a lot and give people the shots they like really help the networking process and give you more and more opportunities.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4143/4876513623_f911d82afa_z.jpg)
