Senator Daniel Inouye takes in the scene and the history-making moment at Pearl Ultralounge.

Now that the elections are over, and the public has had time to simmer down about who is to lead our country next, I thought I’d share some of my election photos that didn’t run in our newspaper on that history-making night.  Emotions were strong everywhere I went, from Obama’s Hawaii campaign headquarters to the Pearl Ultralounge Democratic reception, hopes were high for the Hawaii-born president-elect.  

It was actually refreshing for me to cover more of the presidential side of the election rather than the local/mayoral race which I did during the Primaries.  What was challenging was trying to make a picture of people watching the television, and I spent down time between shots pondering how I was going to make a storytelling image later that evening at Pearl Ultralounge.

The scene at Pearl was much like a Barfly assignment–if you are familiar with my colleague Jason Genegabus’ column.  Drinks, pupus, music, merry people.  It was when the polls closed that I was able to make some great jube photos.

When it was apparent that Obama was to be the next president, the reactions from the packed house were just through the roof.  Everyone cheered.  Many screamed.  All were elated, including this gentleman:

Needless to say, Barack Obama’s speech left many–including myself–just chickenskinned and overcome with emotion.  That was the hardest part of the whole evening.  The feelings of that moment were captured in these two photos:

Hearing that speech and trying to capture the essence of that moment with my camera was perhaps one of the toughest things I have ever had to do–not because I was listening to the speech, or because of the sheer magnitude of emotion–but because with these few frames, and that amazing man speaking in front of 250,000 at Grant Park, Ill. and addressing the whole world, I came to the realization that our nation could finally believe in itself again.  That’s heavy.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 2:51 am and is filed under news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.