When the history of Barack Obama’s rise to President of the United States is done much of the writing about his early political career will focus on his time as state senator in Illinois.  Too bad I can’t go back into history to re-focus one of my pictures.

It was January 8th, 2003.  I was assigned to photograph our newest State Senator William Haine, D-Alton, who was being sworn in.  Here is one of the pictures from day.

We didn’t even use this picture.  Technically it’s fine, it’s well exposed and in focus, but there is nothing special about it.  So it was passed over it and we used a different picture.  But look to the right of Haine.  That’s Barack Obama, pre-rock star, pre-Senator, pre-President Elect.  Obama had not yet even announced he was a candidate for senate, he had only formed exploratory committee.

I searched my raw files from that day.  I’m always back focusing pictures I don’t mean to, I figured I must have at least one picture where my focus had slipped to Obama.  No luck, my focus was perfect all day long, figures.  I would have loved to have had a picture of Obama as a state senator, what great piece of history it would have been.  If only I had rotated the focusing ring a quarter turn, or the auto-foucs had jumped to the background.   Even though it didn’t work out this time, I consider this a great reason why you should keep all your raw files.  Old photos are like wine, they tend to get better and more valuable with time.