Freelance photojournalist Amy Harris was already outside the U.S. Capitol when the Dearborn County, Indiana, resident saw a crowd coming toward her from the National Mall.
Images of President Donald Trump supporters clashing with police, scaling a concrete wall and taking the Capitol's exterior are some of the scenes the former Cincinnati resident captured.
The crowd expressed anger when police tried to stop them, and jubilation when someone did something like climb up the Capitol and raise a Trump flag, Harris said.
The first incident Harris said she noticed was when three men shook a metal barricade leading to the Capitol steps. All she could see were three women in uniform guarding the barricade.
The three men yelled to the crowd, Harris said.
"These three guys, they started riling up the crowd," she said. "They're like 'Let's take it. Let's take the Capitol'."
There were women and children there dressed in Trump gear, Harris said.
"I don’t know that anybody would have expected what happened yesterday to happen," she said.
A large swath of the crowd did not advance, hanging back to watch.
"Then it escalated," she said. "People started throwing barricades down and attacking the officers."
Harris said tear gas, pepper balls and flash-bang explosions were coming at the crowd.
She was surprised there wasn't more repellent thrown by officers, having spent the last seven months capturing images in 23 cities from Portland, Oregon, to Washington, D.C.
People who did advance toward the Capitol yelled back to the crowd.
"They were calling for more people to come up," she said. "They were like 'we need more people.' And I was shocked."
Harris' photography was focused more around live concerts until most shows stopped happening in March due to COVID-19.
Harris decided to take her camera to cover civil unrest around the country after the killing of George Floyd during a police encounter May 29 in Minnesota.
On Wednesday, she had walked to the Capitol earlier while on assignment following and covering the far-right group, the Proud Boys. She said she became separated from the Proud Boys group when she tripped and fell into a green mesh barricade.
Harris said she feared she would be trampled.
"One of the guys literally picked me up and threw me," she said.
Waves of people started coming to the front and at that point, she decided to shoot photos from scaffolding set up for the inauguration rather than go onto the Capitol steps. Taking photos near about 10 other photojournalists, she heard people saying that someone had gotten inside.
'This is actually one of the few times this summer that people weren’t yelling at me for taking pictures," Harris said. "I think they knew it had to be covered.”
She stayed outside and left the Capitol area at about 5:45 p.m.
Harris said she heard people talking about a woman being shot inside the Capitol and Vice President Mike Pence's stance on certifying all the Electoral College votes.
“They kind of started to realize it was over, and the crowd just started thinning out, naturally,” she said.
Harris' job as a photojournalist started as a side gig. She still owns and operates an consulting firm focused on industrial engineering.
"COVID stuff kind of shut down all my work," she said. "There were no concerts and I couldn’t go into factories."
Her assignment to cover the Proud Boys leader and organization was originally going to continue until President Joseph Biden's inauguration. Now, that's an unknown, she said.
"I don’t know where we go from here, and I don’t know what I cover next," Harris said.
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