Audrey McAvoy Archives - Marco Garcia Photography

A dip in the Obama pool

I won’t start ringing the bells just yet and start selling off the cameras but my professional writing career is taking off. We should take my statements lightly as I’m not sure if my authorship can cut the mustard, let alone pay the mortgage; however, we have liftoff. With the first published article on Nimitz in the Star Advertiser to two major bylines worldwide with the Associated Press, I am off to a good start…a GREAT start and end to 2013. I am soooo grateful to Associated Press news editor who happens to share my last name as he put his trust in me to report on the big news. And that big news was following Obama and la famila around during their annual Xmas vacation in Oahu. I also have to thank Audrey-san and cuz Jen as they might have been the ones who put my Nimitz article in front of hermano Garcia which convinced him I was the right hombre for the job. Señor Garcia (no relation at all) assigned me to cover POTUS and my reporting seemed to do very well and was sent ’round the world.

My assignment placed me inside the media circus that follows the President around. Permanent staffers from all the major media are assigned to cover the President wherever and whenever he travels or just stay put. The coverage, sometimes affectionately referred to as death watch, needs to ensure every minute of the President is accounted for. It is one of the most taxing assignments any journalist is assigned as you have to be ready to capture that moment. Sadly, you have to sacrifice your life as you live for POTUS. Vigilance through the lens or the pen is crucial to this job as anything can happen at any point in time. A slip in concentration could mean missing the assassin’s bullet or the angry Iraqi’s shoe. No telling when that slip will occur or when the aliens comeback to reclaim their property. The truth is you never know when you’ll have the Zapruder film or classic bloopers from the Bush years.

Sadly Obama strongly disregards the professional media and his administration would rather use social media than independent media to get his message out. He routinely uses hand outs from his personal photographer and fiercely guards his image from the press yet; as he keeps back the pros, regular citizens and paparazzi get much better access. The Obama Administration is one of the most unfriendly administration in history towards the media and clearly lacks the transparency he campaigned on.

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My above video shows the view the media bus gets of Obama and it really never gets any better. Some might argue that the President owes the media nothing; however, the media is needed to ensure the government stays honest. If you allow the government to police itself, there will be very few arrest.

Some of you might recall my so called paparazzi encounter with then Presidential candidate Barack Obama in August of 2008 when I parked myself on Kailua Beach waiting for the future POTUS to make an exit and walk down the shore. For three straight days, Obama stayed away and I figured his security detail just kept him informed of my existence. So I took a gamble and left the beach and snuck around to a different beach access point opposite his hoping he’d think I abandoned my assignment. Sure enough, as I walked from the opposite direction, Senator Obama and his two kids left the house and strolled down the beach, hand in hand, with nary a though to where I stood.

I took some of the most intimate pictures of the Senator with his daughters which I feel defined him as a father and made him human. So many times, candidates fake their photo ops and try to pretend they are just like us. They roll up their flannel shirts and help wash dishes, serve food at a homeless shelter, eat at McDonalds like the rest of us. I’ve NEVER believed these people really were who they are. It was fake. Always fake…Romney and Kerry with their millions, Bush with his dynasty. Obama, on the other hand, was caught off guard, and it shows. I caught him being human.

When the Senator actually realized he was being photographed, he got pissed. He waved his sandals at me and yelled at me to leave. Sorry, Senator, its a public beach and you’re a public figure. Secret Service said nothing. I stood next to them and showed everyone respect and dignity. The future President might have been really upset but he signed up for the whole public image thing. In my view, a politician is owned by the public. We demand to see him. His kids are off limits but whenever the parents are out and about, they are fair game.

As far as the writing assignment went, it was beyond boring. It was a tedious exercise in hours of playing Candy Crush, being pestered and pestering others on the media bus, not to mention snacking on really bad vanilla creme cookies and other terribly unhealthy things Michelle surely wouldn’t approve. Obama kept the media completely away, as in many ways, he should as his vacation is somewhat private but we are not there to paparazzi him but to ensure we cover his every move in the inevitable…well lets leave it at that.

I’m extremely thrilled to have more writing under my belt. I’m aiming to continue to add more bylines and stories to my every growing career.

M9 nuptials…I do…or maybe not?

A colleague and friend here in Hawaii invited me to her wedding and, of course, the big question loomed…”Can you bring your camera and snap a photo of us?”

Sure! Audrey is a close colleague and we’ve done plenty for each. I was planning to attend her wedding to her fiancée, Mike, anyway so to bring a camera isn’t much of a stretch as it keeps me occupied. There is nothing more annoying than to sit still through an event all the while wiggling my toes, itching for something to kill the voices in my head and quell the restlessness. Why not just view it all through the port of a camera and document it as it goes down? Sounds crazy, no?

So thanks to Josh at Hawaii Photo Rental, I took out his new Leica M9 digital camera along with a brand spanking, and rare, 21mm F1.45 Summilux lens he currently rents out of his shop here in Oahu and Maui. As many of my past posts have dealt with Leica and shooting film, this would be my first time to shoot a digital Leica in a “work setting” and see how the results turn out.

Shooting with a 21mm lens might not be the ideal choice for general photography but I made it a point to really capture the “big picture.” Maybe I should rephrase that and say capturing the big and

W – I – D – E

picture as this lens really stretches the view beyond what is really expected. I’m used to shooting wide lenses but there was something uniquely different with the 21mm. My “never take off” lens on my Canons is the Canon 24-70 F2.8 lens. So the 21mm stretch isn’t all that much more but its enough to keep me on my toes and forced me to compose differently. But what I found strange about shooting such a wide lens is that you don’t really see any distortion since the Leica is a rangefinder, not a SLR. You don’t exactly see all you are going to get and the rangefinder framelines are much different.

Hence, Hawaii Photo Rental also rents out the hot shoe 21mm viewfinder that takes a bit of getting used to as you have to focus through the lens then more or less compose with the view finder; two steps that takes a bit of getting used to, especially if you are shooting at a shallow depth of field. Using the external view finder did become a bit bothersome as I am a compose, focus, and shoot type of photographer (or a combination of the two, maybe even all three put together) that I found myself being bothered by the additional step. However, it did help me see that I was cutting off feet, and missing things that I normally wouldn’t have seen, considering the 21mm extend beyond the M9 frame lines.

The one noticeable difference the lack of strong distortion on the corners with the Leica 21mm versus the Canon 24-70. Sure there was slight bending at the ends but it was much more tolerable to me than the distortion from a 24-70 on a full frame Canon body. Also, since the 21mm Summilux is a bright F1.4 lens, a noticeable vignette is apparent wide open and it is pleasingly so. The Hipstamatic app on the iPhone has a pre-programmed vignette so I don’t see how the flawed (yet perfect) optics of shooting at 1.4 on the Summilux is a bad thing. The darkness at the corners is limited though yet its quite nice as it naturally aligns the eyes to the center of the photo.

At the shop when I picked up the camera and lens, Josh did suggest I take his new 28mm F2 Summicron lens along with the Summilux but figured the difference in the focal length can be compensated. Little did I know those 7 degrees of separation would make that much of a difference!

It was my first time to shoot “a job” with the Leica M9 and I was surprised at the handling of the camera along with the files and images themselves. I won’t review the camera other than to write the camera surpassed what I expected. It is surely the Mercedes of the camera world. Lexus makes a superb car mind you but its just not German engineering.

The Leica is not a Canon or Nikon DSLR so don’t expect the camera to respond, handle or create images like they do. It is not going to auto-focus, shoot 30 frames in two seconds, or correct your mistakes when you put it on auto. In many ways, the Leica is as stupid as you. Whatever you don’t know, the camera won’t solve it for you. So if you are don’t know what the hell you are doing, don’t use it.

Hence, before you run out and rent one at Hawaii Photo Rental, remember, it takes a bit to get used to, unless you’ve shot with an M series camera in the past. When I’ve shot my M6, I find myself more careful and a bit more cautious when I snap an image. A digital body creates such a freedom away from the constraints of 36 frames and allows continuous shooting. Again the drawback I found with shooting the digital Leica is the additional editing at the end of the day. In a way, digital takes away the craft of a Leica because you know you can just keep shooting till you get the shot. With film you are actually more cautious as you are limited to >36 chances to get it right. Digital allows unlimited, uninhibited, and uninterrupted shooting.

Again to argue about the editing side of “unlimited shooting” also brings to mind the fact that I consistently overshoot with a Canon body so its really not an issue to me. I guess with a Leica, I just expect to be a bit more concise. Now if I shot with one everyday, I would have a different feel for the camera but it’s a tool that isn’t always available.

Although I doubt the original Leica was designed with Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment in mind, the M9 does put you into a situation where you are further staring through the viewfinder. You wait….watch… compose…capture. With my DSLRs, I just shoot and hope it will be there. I am being to simplistic with my shooting style as I write this but compared to shooting with the M9, I feel like it is a much more composed and visual act. The M9 forces me to think a bit more about the art. Again, because of the nature of digital, I am shooting more in the hopes of getting the right shot when I should concentrate more and focus on that decisive moment.

A few weeks ago, when Josh got the M9, I took out the camera and played around with it in Chinatown. I think the lens was my 35mm Summilux. Now the image is nothing to spin about but I seem to have impressed Josh with the shot.

To note, all the images in this blog were taken with the Leica but were all treated by me at the end to give the look I felt the images deserved…or got stuck with…either way its a little bit of how I saw everything unfold.

Friday Night Lights, no wait…Birds? Ho, brah…

Audrey and I went to Kauai a few weeks to work on a story about Friday night football games and how an endangered species of birds has threatened a traditional and community way of life.

The story appeared all over the country and you can read it here or from here. The New York Times ran it on their web page but you have to sign up to see the story.

I won’t repeat what Audrey wrote about but I will mention something she did not. In my opinion, much of the community in Kauai seems split on how outsiders, namely mainlanders and haoles, have come to the Islands pushing their (righteous) ideas of what is good for the state with little regard to what the citizens of the state want. Yet, we surely can’t allow the peoples to just get whatever the majority wants. The birds are endangered and do need some protection from us; however, how far will environmentalist go to ensure we protect the earth from ourselves? Many would advocate such radical policies that we’d go back to the stone age so there has to be a balance. All in all, the County dropped the ball on not placing proper lighting into the existing stadium (the County can’t get a guarantee that the lights will be a solid solution so why spend the money on what might not work–and still be responsible for dead birds) but the county disregarded the feelings of the community.

You sometimes have to wonder who has the smaller brains, us or the birds…

VOTE.