It’s hard to put in words what it was like to cover yesterday’s Inauguration. It was at the same time awesome and a pain in the ass. :-) It’s probably easier if I just walk you through the day.
Most of us slept over at the Times the night before because we knew it would almost be impossible to get anywhere on Inauguration day. The bridges were being shut from Virginia into D.C. and traffic and the Metro were supposed to be INSANE.
Joe Eddins (our Chief Photographer) and I got up at 3:30 a.m. and were ferried over to the Capitol (or as close as we could get) by our editors at 4 a.m. After a lengthy walk and waiting to get through security we were in position around 4:30 a.m. It was funny when we all started doing the mental math that we now had to just stand here for around 7 hours before anything started. I remember looking and seeing that the air temp was around 17 degrees and that didn’t include the wind that would kick up.
I was on the Balustrade position (bal⋅us⋅trade [bal-uh-streyd, bal-uh-streyd] -noun- a railing with supporting balusters) which is just above and behind where Obama would get sworn-in. The Capitol people marked our positions and I was lucky enough to get the surprise of being behind a huge lamp post. :-( That’s why we get there early I guess — need to work that out. In the end, it worked out just fine. To my right was Time and Newsweek.
The photo above was taken from our remote camera that was in the center riser. Joe was triggering it from his position on the main side riser. This was his view (this was my view during the last Inauguration of Bush): 
The crowd was unbelievable. I have never seen anything like it. When we were first in position, the sun wasn’t up so you looked down the Mall and thought it was probably empty. But all you could see was thousands of little twinkles as far as the eye could see. We were seeing the flashes from peoples cameras the entire way down the Mall. It was unbelievable for us to see that and realize that the entire Mall was full of hundreds of thousands of people that we couldn’t see.
Here is my view of the crowd once the sun came up:
We were right under the Boys and Girls Choir of San Francisco that started everything off:
We were also right under Yo-Yo Ma when he performed. It was very pretty. In the position we were in, we were required to wear black so that when the camera panned up for Yo-Yo Ma, we wouldn’t stand out looking like a bunch of knuckle-heads.
Biden was first to be sworn-in. We were excited because our position usually isn’t that great for the swearing-in (much better from where Joe’s riser was). Of course we forgot how much taller Michelle Obama is so it wasn’t that great.
I originally took 5 cameras out. Three of them were down for the count because of the cold weather so I was shooting with two. One was clamped to the railing and was being triggered every time I shot the other camera. The swearing-in only lasts 30 seconds so you are trying to get as many photos as you can from different angles and different widths (tight, medium, wide…).
Right after the swearing-in, President Obama leaned down to kiss his youngest daughter Sasha. Having a daughter it really almost choked me up when I saw it. 
While shooting wide and tight, I really liked this picture as the “history picture”. I think it just showed the enormity of the event while he was speaking. 
Right after Obama’s speech, he turned around just to make me happy. :-)
I can’t imagine what it’s like to sit there as the outgoing President and watch power transfer to a person who ran mostly on not being you. I guess you just try to be gracious and get on with your life. The hug at the end made for a nice photo:
At the end, Vincent Laforet who was shooting next to me for Time magazine got a photo of me: 
It was a cold day but definitely worth it.
The hard part was leaving. My bags weighed in at 86 pounds which felt like 186 pounds by the end. It was over a mile walk back to the car with all of that through a sea of people to drop it off. Not fun by any means (especially the 100 yard up-ramp at the end).
For any photo geeks out there who wants to know about equipment brought:
Camera Bodies:
2 – Nikon D3′s / 3 – Nikon D200′s
Lenses:
300mm f2.8 / 70-200 f2.8 / 24-70mm f2.8 / 17-55mm f2.8 / 85mm f1.4 / 50mm f1.4 / 24mm tilt-shift / 45mm tilt-shift / teleconverters
Misc.:
cold weather gear / box of hand warmers / camera rain coats / two OverExposed camera plates / clamps / magic arms / Pocket Wizard radio remotes / remote cables / batteries / batteries / more batteries (and chargers) / 74 GB of compact flash cards / laptop / card readers / power strips / step stool / hard drives
I’m sure there was more but I just can’t remember it right now (a bit sore and still very tired).
In an age when my “Where Were You When” moments all involve tragedies like shuttle explosions, Oklahoma City bombings and 9-11-01, it was nice to have a good memory like this. I couldn’t have been in a better position to take it all in — very lucky.
