(The three American hikers and Suzanne Nossel, executive director for Amnesty International USA, left, are interviewed by local TV news outlets.)
I covered my first full, eight-hour shift as a freelance photographer for The Denver Post this past Saturday. It was exhilarating, sometimes overwhelming, and an all-around a fantastic experience. (Though I definitely had a few wide-eyed, white-knuckled, hang-on-for-dear-life moments along the way.)
The first assignment was to photograph Amnesty International’s Annual General Meeting, held this year at a hotel in downtown Denver. Specifically, we were tasked to document the keynote speakers: Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer, and Josh Fattal, the three American hikers formerly held hostage in Iran, and U.S. Ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford.
(Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer, and Josh Fattal)
It can be difficult shooting in a conference setting such as this one because the scene in front of you doesn’t often offer a lot of variety. It is mostly a person, at a podium, with a microphone, talking and occasionally (if you’re lucky) gesturing. So your mission is to try and make a compelling photograph from a pretty standard setup.
In this case, I think I largely came back with the “safe shots,” so to speak. The ones that captured the main characters, but remained pretty standard in their composition. While these got the job done, I definitely left feeling like the gauntlet had been thrown. It really gave me the drive to step it up, keep shooting, and next time, think a little bit further outside the frame.
