Leaving town

That's Sen. Max Baucus, who played a key role in the battle for health-care reform, headed out barely an hour after the Senate's passage of the legislation. That vote came at 7 a.m. on Christmas eve, after Republicans and Democrats had pretty much worn each other out in round-the-clock maneuvering.

Unless you're trapped in a house fire, you'll probably never see a group of people so happy to get out of a building as they were leaving the Capitol that morning. Still, the senator, who'd spent two years in what often appeared to be a losing battle for this legislation, had time to stop and wish me a Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays!

Stakeout

A magazine client, seeking to illustrate a story on banning the media from certain types of hearings, asked me recently to come up with a photo of a classic stakeout, preferably one outdoors. "No problem," I said. "We get them all the time. I'll send you something next week."

Well, it's been a slow week in Washington, what with Memorial Day and everything, and I was running out of time. But yesterday I was assigned to photograph a speech by Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus, and there were at least a few cameras there, even if this was in the dim ballroom of the National Press Club rather than outside some hearing room. (I actually remember talking to Klaus in 1989 during the Velvet Revolution, when he was a dissident economist working as a bank teller. You never know...)

So I decided to do what I could. I placed a single strobe in the balcony, illuminating not the speaker, but the media. And once I shot and saw how this videographer's face was illuminated, I knew I had something worthwhile. (I was reminded of the classic, high-contrast black and white of a photographer holding a rangefinder.)

Someone could print this and some similar photos and hand them out to new members of congress, world bank presidents, and others in authority here in DC, and say: "Remember, if you don't behave yourself, this is what you'll find outside your front door one morning."