By Dan Irwin
CNHI News Service
NEW CASTLE, Pa. -- Most viewers would have been hard-pressed to find someone they knew in TV images of the crowd at Tuesday’s inauguration.
According to Associated Press, 1.4 million people crammed the National Mall in Washington D.C. to watch Barack Obama become the 44th president of the United States. Every network provided occasional shots of the throng, but those seen on NBC came from Tim Bintrim’s camera.
Bintrim has been a TV cameraman in the nation’s capital since 1987. He worked 17 years for CNN, and has done freelance work since December 2003. He was booked in August by NBC News Washington to be a part of its inauguration coverage.
For Bintrim, the assignment was somewhat old hat. After all, he’d already covered five previous inaugurals.
None, though, will stay with him like Obama’s.
“This was a special one,” the North Beach, Md., resident said. “You’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t know if it’s the optimism people have, or if it’s just such a big change from what we had before, or the fact that he’s a younger guy. This is the first time ever the president of the United States is younger than me.”
The crowd shots Bintrim provided from the Capitol balustrade — one level above the platform on which Obama and Joseph Biden were sworn in, and slightly to their right — offered part of the amazement.
“My main purpose being there was to get those long, wide crowd shots,” Bintrim said. “From where I stood, looking down on Obama as he took the oath of office, I had a view all the way down to the Lincoln Memorial, and there was not an open space of grass as far as you could see. I’d never seen that kind of crowd before.”
Nor had he, during his five prior inaugural workdays, ever been so near the new chief executive.
“I’d been in other locations,” Bintrim said, “but it was very exciting to be that close to that kind of momentous and historic moment.”
Bintrim arrived in Washington by 4 a.m., hours before the start of the inauguration ceremonies. All bridges across the Potomac River, he said, were closed to traffic at 3 a.m., and streets around the Capitol were shut down at 5.
“After that, you couldn’t move around much,” he said. “All of this was new.”
The early arrival meant that, eventually, Bintrim would put in a 22-hour workday, because he also was assigned to the afternoon parade and the evening’s inaugural balls. He didn’t go home until 1 a.m., then had to be back in D.C. at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday to provide shots for MSNBC from the Russell Senate Office Building.
Bintrim remained at his Tuesday post on the steps of the Capitol until 6 p.m., at which point he set out across town for the convention center where several of the balls were taking place.
Between the security and street closings, “it was a nightmare logistically,” he said, adding that he could get no closer to his objective than three blocks away.
Coverage for the evening celebrations was split between two media teams, or pools. The first pool, Bintrim explained, traveled with Obama’s motorcade and included multiple photographers, reporters and one TV camera. A second pool was staffed by NBC, and Bintrim served as the cameraman for that one.
The two pools covered the half-dozen balls in tag-team fashion, with one going to one event, the other to another, until they’d hit them all.
Bintrim was shooting the Neighborhood Ball, which featured mostly Washington residents. It was there, he said, that President Obama and his wife shared their first dance in office while Beyoncé sang “At Last.”
“Then Stevie Wonder performed the second dance, and they danced a little faster dance,” he said, “and he (Obama) ended up doing The Bump with some woman. They brought all these people up on stage to dance with them, and this woman was doing The Bump with him.
“That was something else that really struck me — ‘Hey, we have a funky president; a president who does The Bump!’ ”
Like the inauguration itself, the party was special.
“Usually, the inaugural balls are kind of lame,” Bintrim observed. “I’ve covered those before, too. The last Bush, his was a Texas thing. It just was not as exciting; people just weren’t as into it. It was different this time.”
As was the entire day.
“It sure was exciting,” Bintrim said, “and it was great to be a part of a historical moment. It’s certainly something I’ll never forget.”
Dan Irwin writes for the New Castle (Pa.) News.
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CAPTION: North Beach, Md., resident Tim Bintrim, seen here with his wife, Candace, has covered six presidential inaugurations as a TV cameraman with either CNN or NBC. Barack Obama's, he says, topped them all.
