My mail has been slow catching up with me in Raleigh, NC. Today I got my December edition of "Vogue". You may wonder why a rough and tough news photographer like me would subscribe to such a prissy magazine. I view it as women's version of "Playboy". The photography is pure feminine eye candy: clothes I could never fit into, jewelry I cannot afford and well written articles to fill in the pages between beautiful pictures. I also love the perfumed inserts, "Newsweek" and "Time" don't smell quite as sexy.      

The woman gracing this month's cover is not an pea brained anorexic teen model wearing a $20,000 couture gown with bowling shoes. Rather it is a woman with some wrinkles around her eyes and cellulite on her thighs, with a smart head on her shoulders and a strong will to succeed at something besides perfect make-up and a good dye job. The Annie Leibovitz photo features a stunning Hillary Clinton draped in dark velvet sitting in the Red Room of the White House. The glossy cover suddenly reminded me of one of my final days in New Mexico.       

It was about two weeks before the November general election and the New Mexico governor's race was going down to the wire. The Clinton-Lewinski scandal was playing well for the republicans. The state democratic party decided to pull out all the stops and invite Hillary Clinton to the Land of Enchantment. She was visiting a child development center in Santa Fe.   Since I was the Capitol Bureau Photographer, I shot the round table discussion on education and children. Aside from being carried live on KOAT, my shot was also going via satellite to CNN and ABC.        

I have never really fostered an opinion about Hillary Clinton. I have some about her husband and his extra-marital doings, so for that I feel sorry for her and Chelsea. It is hard enough to deal with such issues in a normal household, I can't imagine what it is like to have it lead the evening news every night for weeks on end.        

As we waited for the First Lady to arrive at the crowded romper room of a day care center, photographers and reporters mumbled among themselves, "Late as usual", "How many times do we have to do this before the election?" "Can't we just roll the tape of the last time she was here?"   As sweat rolled down my back and my ham strings ached from standing on the riser with a dozen other photographers, I scanned the audience wondering why they were here. I spotted the party hard cores whispering on cell phones. The big cash contributors were perched up front fidgeting in their seats. Several made for TV families sat in front of the riser, perfectly positioned for cut-aways and wide shots. Just about the time I was getting fed up with how staged and positioned every one was, she arrived.       

I beared down on my camera as I followed the First Lady to her seat in my viewfinder.   I widened out for crowd reaction and then tightened back up on her for the stump speech. It was like watching re-runs of a sitcom I did not like the first time around but it is the only thing on right now. After the "fill in candidate's name here" speech the discussion started on education in New Mexico. I felt like I was shooting a tennis match from the net. Pan to the speaker, back to Hillary for a reaction, to the speaker, wide to the audience, back to the First Lady. After I established who everyone was and what their sound bite would be on tonight's 10PM news, I started concentrating more on Hillary.  

Then I saw it.       

It was a brief moment, less than 30 frames of tape, not even a second of my life. Hillary was listening so intently to a high school boy talk about his ROTC program. The young man said something very sweet and the crowd roared in laughter. Hillary laughed as well and in the time it takes to blink an eye, I saw a glimpse of her soul. She stopped laughing, even smiling for less than a second, and I could see all of her reality down deep inside. Shattered trust, questioned love, re-directed pain welled up in her big blue eyes, then it was gone. Like the ocean erasing bartprints in the sand, her strength and determination glistened over her hurt heart.       

The roundtable discussion ended and she worked her way through the crowd. I watched her spread her Technicolor inspiration. It then struck me I was observing this in a monochrome viewfinder. She smiled and hugged and greeted everyone in her path, making them feel special, like she was only here to see them. This woman, with all her troubles, with all her pain inside, worked so hard to make others feel good about themselves. Moments later she was gone, headed back to Washington.       

That night as I was editing the sound bite laced story on Hillary's visit, I searched for that look, that moment. But for some reason it did not stick to videotape, I only saw it through the viewfinder.

Behind the Viewfinder - A Year in the Life of Photojournalism
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