
Hectic Love
Before I weaseled and annoyed myself into a copy clerk job in the KC Star newsroom, I was looking for ways to play “photojournalist” beyond what I had already grown to love in high school. The 1976 Republican convention was held in KC that year, so I skipped a huge amount of school to spend as much time as I could hanging out at the Crown Center Hotel headquarters.
I watched infamous politicians come and go inside and out, usually trailed by video cameramen from national TV networks lugging huge “portable” cameras with separate, enormous recorders. The whole chaotic and hectic atmosphere was SO COOL. I was falling even-more head over heels in love.
This shot was lucky: I was on a walkway overhang when I saw them converging below. It was one of the first occasions when I could see a photo situation actually coming together, sort of in slow motion. I discovered that I liked those moments so much that they became the fundamental moments I worked hard to see. Be in the right place at the right time, yes, but also with the right lens, on a camera body that has a few frames left, a flash that’s charged: many variables.
It’s funny to remember that the older couple in the center sort of got accidentally penned in by the advancing mics and cameras, press folks and politicians. Also funny: a reporter in the bottom left is trying to make tiny notes like his life depended on it, on what looks like a luggage tag?
I still really like this photo, but knew at the time without faces and just soft of graphic blocks it was something probably no media outlet would use. Today, maybe it’s the kind of thing that would be staged and called a “photo illustration”.

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