The Obama Quilt.

You never know when a quick hit-and-run assignment can turn into a nice little story. I was assigned to shoot people sewing a quilt that had scenes from Barack Obama’s rise to power. It was scheduled at 3:15 p.m. for a community news assignment, meaning that it had no story to go with it and most likely would be one picture, used inside the paper, black and white.

I went into the job thinking it would rank just above a grip-and-grin assignment, but as soon as I walked in, I had a feeling it was going to be more. The first thing I noticed was the beautiful natural light coming in from the large windows. This got my creative blood heated up. I then saw that there was a large group of women sitting around a colorful quilt. Now my creative blood was boiling.

I started shooting and was told that if I wanted to I could go up into the loft for an aerial shot. I did, and it was a nice scene setter. I then started to make some nice shots of the people sewing and some tight shots of just hands and portions of the quilt.

During my time shooting I was listening to Dr. Joan Gaither, the woman who started the project. She was talking about the different sections of the quilt and what they meant. I made some shots of her speaking and then she told me about the journal that people wrote in who worked on the quilt. The journal would travel with the quilt and people wrote what the election of Obama meant to them and how they felt on election night.

The Internet department has been pushing us to work on more multimedia projects at work, and this was a good candidate for an audio slideshow. I asked Dr. Gaither if she would sit for a quick interview and she agreed. We found a quiet room and started recording. The Capital does not provide audio recorders for the photographers to keep with them, so I use the back of my camera and the built-in memo recorder. It is rather limiting since it is not made for interviewing people. The built-in microphone is less than perfect and I am limited to one minute of recording at a time, but I made it work. She talked a little about herself and her project and read a couple of journal entries.

I went back to the office and put together a nice audio slideshow. After the editors saw the shots and heard of the slideshow, they assigned a reporter to write a story. It ran on a Saturday as the lead story and got played nicely.

So have a look:

http://www.hometownannapolis.com/slideshow/1232032712TheObamastoryquilt

I also stitched the letter P for Paul in the quilt.