Barack Obama Rally, Victory Landing Park, Newport News, VA 20081003

This has been a year of firsts for me this presidential election season. My first time voting in a primary, first time donating to a political campaign, and my first time ever being this incredibly addicted to the daily news (Honestly, I can’t wait for this to be over so I can stop refreshing the news sites every five minutes to make sure there are no horrible surprises).

So I made a last minute decision to attend the Barack Obama rally in Newport News, Virginia, driving an hour and a half, standing in a line that was 16 blocks long when I got there, and quickly grew as far as the eye could see behind me.

16 Blocks to Get In

Among the many wonderful, positive people I met at the rally was Linda, a surveyor for the CDC, who was attending every rally she could make it to. Linda told me she had contributed to McCain’s campaign in 2000, but that he wasn’t the same man anymore, and that she was throwing all her support behind Barack Obama because she felt this was a crucial turning point in our Nation’s history.

Another woman made the excellent point that she was raising her children to work things out without violence, and she needed a president who represented that principle. Everyone I spoke to wore a great big smile and said they were there to witness history.

Linda

The overwhelming majority of the crowd, myself included, had absolutely no view of the stage whatsoever, but we stood in the heat to hear Obama speak. After eight years of George Bush, I’m desperate for an articulate President. Obama gave a great speech about health care, sound bites from which I would hear on the news all afternoon. I wanted to get a photo of the man, a souvenir of my experience, but that didn’t seem likely.

My (non) View of Obama

After the speech, I hung around, photographing people as they left, all of them beaming with energy. Eventually, the crowed thinned enough that I could approach the stage. I wanted a photograph of at least the setting I where it took place. A large crowd was still swarming there, and I soon realized they were all focused on a single point, with boom mikes hovering over it and all cameras pointed at it.

This, I realized, was Obama, and I merged with the crowd, holding my camera in the air and clicking away, hoping it would capture what I could not see. I followed the crowd as the point of focus moved across the park, and eventually vanished behind a large black curtain and a white tent.

Where’s Obama?

The crowd mostly dispersed, but a group of over a hundred remained, chanting “O-BA-MA!” to the tent. This chant became a series of “Shhhhh’s!” after a campaign worker asked us to keep it down as Obama was giving an interview. : )

I took the opportunity to play “Where’s Waldo?” with my attempted photos. I couldn’t tell if I had gotten any photos of Obama at all (I would later find I had gotten plenty of photos of his forehead). I mostly got a lot of photos of other people’s cameras being held in the air, also trying to get lucky.

Several people said we should all go home, that we were being silly hanging outside his campaign tent hoping to catch another glimpse of history. People were asking each other about the possibility of him coming out again, but no one had any idea. We all seemed to be hanging around, knowing our candidate was just a few dozen feet away, hoping for the encore to a show many of us had actually missed.

And then… W00T! W00T!! W00T!!!

OBAMAAAAAAAAAAA!!! (Click to Enlarge)

Even though he was just a few feet from me, I still had to hold my camera in the air and click away, hoping to get a shot. These were the best ones I got. He came out, ducked under the rope, and walked up and down the crowd shaking hands. The crowd, of course, went wild, and I got what I hope will become another first a month from now: my first time seeing a real-life American President.