Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/01/26
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Today (1/26/99) in Washington, DC, I had an appointment and reason to be on lower Connecticut Avenue, NW. I was only two blocks from the Mayflower Hotel, where the media is conducting its present "Monica Watch," as an adjunct to the Impeachment Proceedings on the Hill. The Mayflower is one of the better hotels in Washington, and its staff certainly knows how to provide accommodation to the media while providing for its clients. I thought it might be interesting to squeeze off a couple of frames of the media stake-out. When I arrived, approximately forty to fifty reporters, camera and boom people were talking and lounging close behind red velvet ropes on each side of the entrance to the Mayflower. My equipment was a M with a 2.8 Tele-Elmarit 90mm, which allows flexibility if you physically move in and out. On the side of Connecticut closest to the Mayflower entrance, the Metropolitan Police had closed the curb lane and were allowing pedestrians to quickly trek in that lane across the roped opening to the Mayflower. After taking a couple of close-ups of the positions that people put themselves in while they are trying to stay in a semi-state of readiness, I noticed that there was an open corridor to the Mayflower entrance by shooting from the other side of the street. I thought the opposite side would give me a better prospective of the stake-out gathering with the four brass portals of the Mayflower entrance and uniformed door man. Moving over to the opposite side of the street, the prospective was as I thought and I squeezed a couple shots off. A shooter with a big, white auto-focus lens/Canon had the same idea, and after a minute or two he exclaimed, "That's her luggage." I thought to myself -- "He knows her luggage?" By this time a black SUV had pulled up to the curb, without blocking our photo corridor. Both the Canon shooter and I moved into the center island between four yellow traffic lines (I quickly checked for "big white vans" which might be moving diagonally into the shooting corridor -- there were none). The media, gathered behind the red ropes, swung into action, and out walked Monica Lewinksy towards the SUV and into my shooting corridor. I squeezed off one at the portal and one just before she ducked her head to jump into the black SUV. The next two shots were of the shooting frenzy around the SUV -- some folks had their zooms pressed to the windows. In the next 20 seconds the shooting was over and the black SUV, with a police squad car leading, sped up Connecticut Avenue to the northwest. My M had just collected four to six frames of side bar history to the Impeachment Proceedings. Oh, the light was great at about 12:20 pm, as the Mayflower Hotel is on the east-northeast side of Connecticut Avenue, and it between f/5.6 and f/8 at 1/250. I will probably develop the film on Thursday evening to see what I got. As an aside, I saw no other Leicas, and I believe that my M and its 90 were the smallest equipment rig there. All in all an interesting 10 to 15 minute shooting day for a non-professional. Best regards and have great light tomorrow, Bill Caldwell Northern Virginia