Patrick McDermott | Visual Journalist

I believe one of the greatest things that we can do as photographers is to look back at our old work from years past.  It allows us to see the remarkable growth that we have had over the years in both our photographic skills but also how we approach the medium. It also allows us to truly appreciate how lucky we are to have the job we have. We get to take photographs and call it work. Pretty amazing in my book. But more importantly it allows us to see where we came from. The two photographs below are ones that I photographed when his Holiness, the Dalia Lama, received the Congressional Gold Medal from President Bush on October 17, 2007. What is special about these photographs is not the content or whom I got to photograph, but instead as I have recently realized that it was on this day I started my career as a photojournalist.