Certainly the new president seems to be good news for those still in Guantanamo – and perhaps it won’t be long before London can welcome back two former residents, but so far I haven’t been too impressed by the photographs I’ve seen of the event.
You can read the story of how Chuck Kennedy got his widely published low angle shot from a remote Canon 5D Mark II fitted in a Pelican case to muffle the shutter noise on Poynter Online (thanks to PDN Pulse for the link) but despite showing some great ingenuity I think it makes the president look rather odd and doesn’t really convey a great deal in the way of atmosphere. But of course I’m not from the USA.
Of course at a huge events like this, only one camera got that front row space and all credit to Kennedy for coming up with the idea and getting permission. But another picture, which doesn’t include the president, seemed to me to to say far more about the occasion and to show you don’t need special facilities to photograph major events. Published on the Heading East blog, it’s an image by New York freelance Rachel Feierman (her work is distributed by Sipa Press) and you can see more of her impressive work on Politics 08 and other projects on her web site.
Thanks for the link to Rachel Feierman a very impressive body of work. The series of the inauguration http://www.rachelfeierman.com/Inauguration.html reminded me of the HCBresson coverage of the Coronation coming back without a shot of the King but his crowd shots …
Yes, I’d thought about that also, and of course its been very much in the mind of many photographers as they photograph events since.
But that single picture by Feierman is on a different level to the rest of her work on the inauguration.
Thank you so much for including me on your blog and for your kind words!
Lovely to hear from you Rachel!
Peter