photography in NYC

Last week I went to NYC to photograph a meeting between religious leaders and the President of Iran. MCC was in charge of hosting the event, and so that's how I was given the opportunity to be the official 'record' photographer. The meeting was kind of last minute, and so it was a bit harried getting everything set up and in place for the event to happen.

To me it seemed that dealing with security and the secret service was probably the most tedious part of it all. The building was locked down a week before the meeting with a secret service agent sleeping there overnight. $7,000 worth of scaffolding had to be torn down in case of a protest and the entire block or two leading to the United Nations buildings was blocked off to traffic from all directions. Certain folks needed background checks in order to even be near the president and they had to wear these special buttons that said "A8" on them.

When Larry (MCC coworker) and I arrived at the building early Wednesday morning on the day of the meeting, a herd of secret service guys with dark suits and curly wires in their ears were joking around and drinking their coffee. After having our bags thoroughly searched we were allowed to go up to the 9th floor of the Church Center for the United Nations where all the church organizations have their offices. Looking out the window we could see the United Nations building across the street where several snipers dressed in black were hanging out on the roof and an entourage of shiny black cars were lined up in front of the building with police cars in front and behind. An intern explained that you can tell how important someone is by the size of their "train" of black cars.

It was a great experience, driving up to New York in our 15 passenger van, everyone's cell phones ringing almost constantly, listening as the MCC directors prepared and edited what they were going to say to the president. I liked when our director said, "I'd like to find out if he has grandchildren". And find out he did! At the end of the meeting some gifts were exchanged and one of them was a children's book written by the MCC director's daughter or son-in-law. He asked Ahmadinejad if he had grandchildren and he responded that he had one and the director told him that he hoped he would read the book to his grandchild. He also gave him a gold dove pin, asking him to seek peace. MCC was given a painting of Jesus and his disciples by the president.

If you want to hear more about what was said and what went down at the meeting, you can check out the articles (one here) on the MCC website

and read an article in The New York Times (accompanied by one of my photographs!!!!)

in other news of well-known politicians, it looks like Bush is paying a visit to Lancaster county tomorrow and rumor has it that AirForceOne will be landing at the tiny Lancaster airport!