Through my newfound connections, I got myself invited to a dinner with the New Hampshire Democratic Party. Me and 2,999 other New Hampshire residents. It was amazing. Although let me start with one disclaimer: it used to really get under my skin when people would take jabs at Democrats for being disorganized. But between a Youth Democrats of America conference I went to with some college colleagues and tonight, I’ve come to the following conclusion: Democrats are great in government, but terrible at organizing conferences. It took us a good 20 minutes to find a parking spot. It wasn’t that it was crowded (it was), but it was that the people telling us where to go were utterly inept! They’d tell us where to go park, and we’d arrive and have someone else tell us that they had no idea why they sent us there, since we couldn’t park there, and send us somewhere else. So we zig-zagged across the Hampshire Hills complex for quite some time.

In typical style with these posts, I’ll probably mix political and event commentary with some comments about photographic conditions. All photos link through to the Flickr gallery, where I’ve uploaded 21 highlights from tonight.

Let’s begin with the trivial. It was held in a huge dome, newly built at the posh Hampshire Hills dome. Since I’d been there last (a couple years), they apparently built an enormous stadium capable of seating 3,000:

Media swarmed the place, since with Iowa done, we were the next big thing, second only to the news that Britney Spears was taken to the hospital…

So really, the whole nation’s–even the world’s–eyes were upon us. It’s our time to shine… or to embarrass ourselves:

We were all there to see the Democrats running for President, but they made us sit through an awful lot of other stuff. For example, who–or what–is this?

Carol Shea-Porter spoke briefly. While I think everyone in the room was to credit, I was secretly proud for having voted for her. Not only is she spot-on when it comes to the issues, but she’s an outstanding speaker.

A few photography notes… For one, if you ever find yourself in charge of lighting at an event such as this, please consider bringing a photographer in to give you some guidance. The flag had really strange lighting on it. The goal with the black backdrop and intense lighting on the podium may have been to ensure that the background was non-distracting. It’s surely better than the glossy poster behind Bill Clinton. But it threw my camera’s metering through a loop, and I ended up shooting in full-manual mode most of the night. It was so dark that I was using ISO1600 at f/3.5 (as fast as my wide lens goes) and getting exposures of 1/15 second. Terribly dark. But then I was using ISO800 and getting 1/500-second shutter speeds shooting candidates. This is good, except that the light was really harsh, and all the lights were of different color temperatures. So our beloved flag was maroon, white, beige with a hint of blue, and black, while the whitest of speakers had intensely red skin. If the speaker was properly exposed, the podium was underexposed, and the sign in front was overexposed.

John Lynch, New Hampshire’s (Democratic) governor spoke a bit, too. Here you can see another problem: my 200mm lens (effectively 320mm with the digital camera’s crop) was far too short… They need to make a 100-600mm f/1.4 lens for situations like these. (Such a lens would probably weight at least 100 pounds and cost as much as a house, but it would take great pictures!) I honestly don’t know a lot about what Lynch has been up to, but it’s the same way I felt like when Clinton was president: things seem to run smoothly. National politics is a crisis week after week. With both Deval Patrick (MA Governor) and John Lynch, I think no news is good news. (I forget whether it was Lynch or Shea-Porter that mentioned it, but 2008 marked the beginning of civil unions in New Hampshire. So it’s not all no news. I’m frankly kind of proud that what much of the country probably sees as a quaint old farming state is at the forefront of…. rights?)

John Edwards was a no-show. I’m not sure what happened. I’d imagine that he was doing something else, somewhere else, but I’m really not sure why, especially after the surprise of beating Hillary in Iowa, he’d chose to avoid a forum with 3,000 New Hampshire Democrats and cameras from every news network in the country.

So Kucinich went first. While the Caucus results show him having received 0.0% of the votes, he didn’t seem phased by trivial polls.

If you think this is an unflattering photo… You should have been there. I agreed with a lot of what he said, but it was how he said it that I think resigns him to getting 0.0% in important polls. He spoke about how it’s wrong to spy on our citizens (a reference to Bush’s wiretapping), and how we should end the war, etc. But he seemed almost as angry as Zell Miller’s legendary segment on Hardball.

It seemed a lot like a fire-and-brimstone speech, except, instead of shouting about Jesus, he was shouting about the Constitution, and, instead of waving the Bible, he was frantically waving his pocket copy of the US Constitution:

What pictures can’t convey is that he was furiously pounding on the podium and began jumping around a bit. Hopefully one of the news stations that was there will broadcast that.

It was assumed that this was his wife:

…although she appears more like a giant than a wife.

We also got to hear from Howard Dean:

He was actually a great speaker, and has a quality I love in politicians: the ability to poke fun at himself a little bit. He started talking about the need for a strong showing not just in Iowa and New Hampshire, and then began to list a few more states with early primaries. “But they tell me I’m not supposed to do lists anymore,” he said, an obtuse reference to his infamous yell. And then he made the reference much clearer by pumping his fist and acting as if he were about to reenact it, drawing laughter and applause.

Tonight’s hidden gem was Bill Richardson.

I’ve liked him for a long time, and he’s a very close second to Obama on my list of preferred candidates. (An Obama-Richardson ticket would be incredible! Hint hint, Obama!) While he doesn’t always photograph well (or maybe I just have bad timing), he sure knows how to give a speech. But perhaps most powerful was what he said about the need to pull out of Iraq. He talked, with evident sadness in his voice, about how he looks forward to the day when he can stop taking down the New Mexico flag to honor yet another of his residents killed in action. It was a really powerful way to put it, and the way he did it was flawless: it seemed like he opposed the war not just for political reasons, or as a soundbite, but because it truly pained him as governor to see his citizens being killed. Wow. Just wow. I really can’t do his speech justice here, but suffice it to say that I think his was the best.

And, of course, Hillary Clinton was there. I didn’t get (m)any pictures of her, because her supporters were standing and completely blocking the podium. (More on this later.) Bill and the much-forgotten Chelsea were there, too. But she began something that left me feeling uneasy: throughout the whole thing, there’d been an awesome sense of compatriotism. Some of us were there for Obama, some were there for Hillary, and some for other candidates. We were all in it together, not for our candidate, but for our future.

Hillary let loose a verbal barb clearly aimed at Obama, saying that we need strong leadership to end the war, not just hope that it will happen. This really rubbed me the wrong way–this type of bickering is exactly what has so many people fed up with politics. I also started to pick up on a sense of animosity between the Hillary fans and the Obama fans. I mentioned earlier that the Hillary fans crowded the stage and remained standing. None of us could see the stage, but with two enormous screens projecting a live feed, it wasn’t a big deal.

The Hillary camp somehow also wound up with all their tables right in front of the podium, while the Obama fans were assigned to tables in the corner. It turns out I was far from the only one to find this a little strange, as the Obama organizers decided to have us all stand and walk up to the stage when Obama came out. This ended up being an utter disaster, though.

Since our seats weren’t anywhere close, we ended up blocking an aisle. This didn’t sit well with the fire marshall, who (emphatically) cleared the aisles. We were still standing, just with a big fire-safety aisle between us, but an announcer demanded that we sit down before the event would proceed. A number of Hillary supporters were also getting testy with us. While really just a minor thing, it seems to me to show a lot of deeper problems: Obama supporters ended up coming off as brash and obnoxious, and I think Hillary fans and Obama fans came to dislike each other a little bit more. This is what we can’t have happening.

Of course, not everyone sat down as requested, leaving those of us who can follow instructions to get some pretty lousy pictures.

Obama, as usual, gave a great speech. He talked a lot about hope (which sums him up well). But he indirectly had a great comeback to Hillary’s jab, saying that, while he acknowledges that he’s a “hopemonger,” it’s time for a President with a can-do attitude, as opposed to focusing on the stale ways of Washington that we’re all so fed up with. Unlike some of the other candidates, he really didn’t use the opportunity to give a basic “You should vote for me” speech, as much as a, “The time is now” speech.

I suppose it’s neat to have him framed by his signs, but I’d hoped for better.

We’ve got a few more days to go. I’m attending a house party tomorrow (Deval Patrick’s coming), and it looks like there’s a Nashua Obama rally. Sunday’s more phonebanking, and Monday’s a Manchester rally for Obama. And then Tuesday is the day. And then it’s all over for us, with the candidates and the news getting a few days rest before scuttling on to the next primary. And an incredibly awkward period of waiting will emerge, leaving us in suspense for months before candidates are finally chosen.