Editor’s note: The story has been corrected to show the event is rescheduled to Feb. 28.

Ask former White House photographer Amanda Lucidon about a typical day chronicling the lives of the Obamas, and she will tell you there is no definitive answer. It depended on the month, the week, the day.

“We just worked whenever things were happening, which was quite often,” she said from her home in the Washington area. “Some days you would have really long days, like a state arrival, where you would start at 5 or 6 in the morning, and leave at 1 or 2 [a.m.] after all of the events. Sometimes there were slow days, and sometimes those slow days would become busy because something happened in the world.”

Ms. Lucidon was one of five photographers who worked under Barack Obama’s administration during his second term in office, the only woman at the time and one of only a handful of female White House photographers in history. Her main responsibility was to photograph former First Lady Michelle Obama throughout her time in the White House.

There were days of domestic or international travel; day trips where Ms. Lucidon photographed Mrs. Obama on visits to schools and veterans homes, and times when she captured her on the White House grounds. There were moments of pure joy, solemnity, and empowerment.

All of those occasions, those emotions, have been packaged by Ms. Lucidon in her book, Chasing Light: Michelle Obama Through the Lens of a White House Photographer, a collection of 150 photos along with personal reflections and stories about Mrs. Obama throughout those four years. Ms. Lucidon will discuss her experiences with the First Family at 7 p.m. Feb. 28 at the main library in downtown Toledo, one of 11 locations on her public library tour circuit.

Ms. Lucidon’s talk will kick off an exhibition of her work at the library that will feature 10 large-scale photos from her time with Mrs. Obama.

Ms. Lucidon grew up one of 10 children in the suburbs of Pennsylvania. A photographer who studied journalism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, she said she spent much of her time scrapping for jobs she wanted against candidates with polished photography degrees. After several internships at newspapers across the country, she landed a job at Riverside Press-Enterprise in California but took a buyout in 2008 and decided to try her hand at freelancing in Washington.

On Jan. 20, 2009, without press credentials for the first time in a long time, she decided to join the throngs of people who descended on the National Mall for President Obama’s inauguration.

Although she didn’t get to be an insider that day, instead shooting and editing photos into the early morning of the crowd perspective outside, “I felt really good,” she said. “I felt really high for the first time in awhile, like I was where I was supposed to be.”

Ms. Lucidon spent her first few years in Washington doing freelance work and personal projects that would later help her get her foot in the door, including a photo and film documentary, Legal Stranger, that captured the lives and struggles of same-sex couples Ms. Lucidon followed for four years.

She said she never dreamed that when she was invited to sit at the same lunch table with chief White House photographer Pete Souza at a National Geographic seminar that she would just a few years later be called upon to share Mrs. Obama’s life with the world through her camera lens.

“Even when Pete called ... I thought, ‘Am I capable of doing this job, and am I the right fit for it?’” she said from her home. “All of the personal work I have done has always focused on civil rights issues, and I’m a documentary photographer, so to be able to have the opportunity to document the first African-American first family is definitely in line with the work that I’ve been doing throughout my career, so it was a tremendous opportunity and responsibility and privilege to be considered even.”

Ms. Lucidon photographed the First Lady from 2013 to 2017. During that time, she traveled to 20 countries and too many cities to count, often the only photographer documenting the First Lady’s work. She describes Mrs. Obama as authentic, honest, candid, and a role model who always took the time to talk to people, give them hugs, shake their hands, or offer an encouraging word.

“She would say, ‘You don’t know what that means to that person, you don’t know what they are experiencing in their life, or what they are going through in their day,’ and to take that time to say you’re smart and special and you deserve to be here at the White House, that’s really important,” Ms. Lucidon said.

While at the White House, Ms. Lucidon expressed interest in offering some of her free time to speak to students in the Washington area attending schools being served by Turnaround Arts, a national program that works to reform low-performing schools through the arts. The program was founded under Mrs. Obama and the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities and was originally operated from the White House.

Ms. Lucidon would speak to the kids not only about the technical aspects of photography but how the kids should never give up on dreams of working as an artist, said Kathy Fletcher, national director of Turnaround Arts.

“Amanda was one of our kids herself and is a living example of what the power of the arts can do and how you can turn around your life, the things you can do if you believe in yourself,” Ms. Fletcher said. “She has this light around her and is extremely humble and grounded. She is not impressed with celebrity, although sometimes you see she wanted to pinch herself as someone who had been afforded so many opportunities as a photographer for the First Lady.”

After Ms. Lucidon left the White House, Ms. Fletcher said they invited her to be one of the 70 artists working in 73 schools across the country under the Turnaround Arts program, including Sarah Jessica Parker, Marc Anthony, Elton John, and Whoopi Goldberg. A percentage of proceeds from Chasing Light go to the program.

Ms. Lucidon said some of her most memorable moments captured on film include experiences with the Turnaround Arts program, including the “pure joy” on the faces of visiting students from Orchard Gardens school in Boston when Mrs. Obama surprised them in the map room, after they had been granted a visit in 2010 for being named one of the most improved schools under Turnaround Arts. Other favorites include being able to document the day the White House was lit up in rainbow colors to celebrate the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage in June, 2015. She also points out capturing a rare, quiet moment between President and Mrs. Obama in the Diplomatic Reception Room.

“Sometimes people ask me, ‘Oh, what are [the Obamas] like when the cameras are off?’ They are the exact same people,” she said.

The travelling exhibition that will spend a month at the main library includes 20-by-30-foot photos, framed in the same way photos taken by White House photographers have been positioned in the east and west wings of the White House throughout history. Ms. Lucidon said that the 54 frames were switched out with new photos every two weeks.

“It was always great because everyone at the White House was working so diligently on getting a piece of policy passed. Everyone is working so hard and so fast that they are already onto the next thing once they accomplished what they were working toward, and having the pics hang in the hallway was a nice way to reflect on what they have done, what the administration accomplished,” she said. “It was also really cool if you were walking down the hallway and President or Mrs. Obama was staring at your picture. That was an extra [bonus].”

With her time in the White House at an end, Ms. Lucidon plans to focus on her recent induction as a Turnaround Arts artist. The program is run through the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

She will also continue her work as a photographer and filmmaker and said she and her husband, Alan Spearman, are working to create a nonprofit that focuses on using mindful content as inspiration to combat significant issues.

Contact Roberta Gedert at rgedert@theblade.com, 419-724-6075, or on Twitter @RoGedert.

First Published January 26, 2018, 9:30 p.m.