Scene on the Road

November 2, 2008: Orthodox Street

That's what Mayor Nutter told Phillies fans before Friday’s World Series victory parade. And everyone was, joyous that is. The other half of his quote was, "You cannot be a jackass." Nobody was.

The almost two million fans of all ages, colors, political affiliation - and even varying degrees of interest in baseball - really was a sight to behold. It is amazing how something as simple as a ballgame can bring together so many people seeing the glass as half full for a change.

As a photographer, I wanted to capture that feeling somehow, and as a newspaper photojournalist I wanted to be able to convey what I was seeing, and feeling to our readers. I started my day’s coverage with the tailgaters and early arrivers at Citizens Bank Park. The very first frame I made after parking illegally (I pulled in behind the Fox29 live truck) was one above, of Charles Clearwater, who left Pottstown in Phillies-slash-Halloween makeup with his friends at 5:30 a.m. to get a curbside spot to watch the parade (he and the others lining Pattison Avenue then didn’t yet know they were in the wrong place). Thankfully it was a perfect example of the genre – fan screaming into the camera – that I was able to vow I wouldn’t take anymore like it for the rest of the day.

Nick Lanzetta (with and without the "P" on his chest) and his friends from Delaware County commandeered a prime corner spot in the parking lot.

I made these early photos for our website, and then got back to my car (it wasn’t towed or ticketed). The traffic was already backing up for blocks coming into the stadium complex, so I was headed toward South Broad Street where I could park again, send in a couple photos, and then start to shoot fans arriving on SEPTA. Inquirer staff photographer Michael Bryant, planning ahead and arriving already so he could cover the ceremonies inside the ballpark in another six hours, saw me and called on his cell phone as he waited in line to park.

He and I were part of a team of thirteen Inquirer photographers covering the event. Two other Michaels would join him in the ballpark, Mike Perez and Michael Levin. We also had Clem Murray and Sarah Glover on the media trolley in front of the player’s floats, Peter Tobia with a window seat at City Hall, Karl Stolleis and Charles Fox in other windows of buildings farther south on Broad, Michael Wirtz, Ron Tarver and David Swanson walking along the route, and Lawrence Kesterson was in a helicopter. I was shooting farther south, and in the Broad Street subway.

On 13th Street, in front of Justin McNally’s house, I found him and his friends getting ready to walk over to Broad & Oregon for the parade.
In a scene that will be repeated in two months for that other South Broad Street Parade, they were using the windows of parked cars as mirrors for their makeup.

After they took off, Justin’s mom Denise was kind enough to let me plug my laptop in inside her house, and even offered me the use a desk later in the morning to send more photos of the crowds gathering and waiting for the parade to start (I absolutely hate trying to edit photos from the front seat of my car). On Broad Street, the police were stringing up rope to keep back the crowd, already completely filling the sidewalks. But there was none of the hostility you might expect from people being asked to move back from spots they'd secured early.

The cops, like officer Rozier here, were in the same great mood.

This was about when I noticed I was the only person NOT wearing anything red! It reminded me of grade school when I’d forget to wear green on St.Patrick’s Day. At least nobody noticed and started pinching me. Nobody bothered Peter Romero, Jr. either as he walked, not with any Phillies garb but with a celebratory bottle. "This is the greatest day of my life," he said. "When else can you walk down the street with a 40 ouncer with the people, and nobody bother you. " His friend John Kadilliac added, "You can't buy a day like this."

November 3, 2008: "Promote the Vote Block Party," North Broad Street

Today we elect the 44th president.

For a slide show of images from this past year - the most expensive and one of the longest election campaigns in US history - please click on the scarecrows image.

November 4, 2008: Obama Bling-bling

I was assigned to wander the city shooting in a variety of polling places in as many differing neighborhoods as I could.
But because the polls opened in New Jersey an hour before they do in Pennsylvania, I started my day there shooting in the dark outside the Haddonfield Borough Hall. I went there instead of a busier location because I've always liked the way the building looks, and I figured I and our other photographers would be shooting long lines all day. I just wanted a quieter predawn image. There were only about a half dozen voters, lined up inside the building when the voting began. Public Works employee Mark Kokoszka arrived a few minutes later to place the American flag outside.

My first stop in Philadelphia was in the Kingsessing neighborhood in the southwest.
There was a line outside the Free Library branch on 51st Street, where Mildred Stilies waited in the chair her son Samuel brought for her.

Around the corner, at the polling place at the Kingsessing Rec Center, Willie and Revon Porter were walking away just as I approached.
They voted together as they have for the 42 years they've been married. They both recalled casting ballots for John F. Kennedy the very first time they each voted. Right after photographing them, I had an encounter with an Obama volunteer poll watcher outside the rec center. The post got a little long, so I created a separate entry for it here. That was the only problem I had all day.

Obama volunteer C'Anne Anderson used chalk to write in the street on 10th Street in Chinatown, outside the polling place at the Chinese Christian Church & Center, which also served her Callowhill neighborhood.

Volunteer Michael Mo from Hong Kong also worked outside. He is a political science major at City University of Hong Kong on a semester abroad at the College of Staten Island. He had been in Philadelphia for four days.

Alex Hing lives in New York's Chinatown. Like many other volunteers I met throughout the day, he said he was in Philadelphia because the Obama campaign was more concerned about Pennsylvania than New York. He showed off his watch, which he said was a gift from a fellow supporter. He and some other volunteers were eating lunch last week in the Italian Market when a passing vendor gave one to him and another worker. Hing called it his "Obama Bling-bling."

The lines in Chinatown were the most diverse I'd see all day.

Members of Peter Nero's Philly Pops Festival Brass entertained voters just before lunch.

In the Northeast's 58th Ward, in the polling place inside the Congregations of Share Shamayim synagogue, I met election minority inspector Brittany DeEmilio, who is 18 years old and voted this day for the first time. She held the curtain open for Jean Finnen who also recorded a voting first. This was her first vote since moving to Philadelphia. Finnen, who is almost ninety, is from New York City, where she was a lifelong member of the Eugene McManus Democratic Club - the McManus Midtown Democratic Association - since she turned 21 and voted for the Incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt who was running for his third term. She tried unsuccessfully to locate a similar Democratic club here.

Nicole Cute was joined by her three sons, aged 4, 5, and 6 years. The youngest, at right, pushed the vote button before she'd finished casting her ballot. "At least I got the top of the ticket in," she said.

Up on Byberry Road, it was a real Greater Northeast Family Affair outside the polling place at the Comly School. The big race there was for the 170th Legislative District seat being vacated by retiring state Rep. George Kenney. His daughter, seventeen year old Devon Kenney was working the polls for Republican candidate Matt Taubenberger, right next to Jack Murphy who is the father of U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy. He was handing out literature for the Democratic candidate, Brendan Boyle.

Heading back toward Center City, I drove past Republican committeeman Charles Peter Boyle sitting by himself on Germantown Avenue outside the polling place at the Al-Aqsa Islamic Society in Kensington. Boyle, who has lived in the neighborhood for 60 years says he's "used to being lonely at the top." He explained that comment saying he worked as a security guard at the Vet in 1992 up on the 700 level. Once, during that losing Phillies season he appeared on the stadium Jumbotron, all alone, without one single spectator in his section. "You know what happened the next year," he reminded me (that was a year the Phillies won the pennant).

By mid afternoon, the pizza boxes had piled up outside the polling place in the Dendy Recreation Center at 10th and Oxford Streets.

Obama volunteer and Temple University architecture student Adam Cubbler worked outside the polls there, where a lot of fellow students also voted.

Gregory Mitchell, who lives right across the street, spent the day selling hot dogs from his charcoal grill - after he voted inside.

This was a portion of an earlier post about an encounter I had with an Obama volunteer poll watcher in Kingsessing, early on in my day of covering the Presidential Election. Afterward, I called Inquirer reporter Sandy Bauers who took down my quotes and posted the anecdote on the philly.com Election Blog. As I thought about the incident, and answered questions from other photographers and reporters, and even my neighbors, I added more detail about it to my own blog post of election photos. It got a little long, so I created this separate entry the day after the election.

After stopping at some polling places in Southwest Philadelphia, and photographing an older couple holding hands as they left their polling place, I was feeling all warm and fuzzy about this historic day. That's when I ran up against the out-of-town Obama volunteer poll watcher. It happened as I tried to walk into the polling place to introduce myself to the officials inside, just as I had in my three previous stops this morning, and as I had done in covering elections for the past thirty years.

"Who are you? Where are you going?" She shouted from behind me after I had identified myself and given a general greeting to the voters and poll watchers at the front of the line.

I introduced myself, and she demanded identification. No problem I said, showing her my Philadelphia Police Department-issued Press ID. It's bright orange, with my photo, the word PRESS in big letters, and above the name of the commissioner, in really tiny letters the words: "Philadelphia Police Department."

"Why does it say 'Police'?" she continued. I showed her my Inquirer employee card as well, but she still wasn't satisfied. I asked who she was, and for her identification. She showed me the campaign volunteer tag hanging around her neck, and said, "You can't come here with cameras." Then she called someone on her cell phone, “he’s got a police id,” and in seconds the Judge of Elections and three or four others had stepped outside asking me if there was a problem.

I told the judge I was on my way inside to introduce myself, and didn’t intend to take any photos inside without talking to him first. He asked if I didn’t have enough photos from outside. I replied that I hadn’t even taken a single picture (the photo with the screen grab above was taken at a different place).

There are hundreds of polling places in Philadelphia and I still wanted to visit some of them, so I didn’t want to spend my time here debating. I did remind the election official, and the Obama volunteer who was still right there, that I, or any one of the voters standing in line right next to us could take a camera inside with them.

She said she was worried that a white man with a camera might scare voters. "I'm a lawyer. I'm protecting these people. Protecting their rights," she said. "Tell you what. Why don't you go to a white polling place? These people are intimidated by cameras. There's a history."

There were both whites and blacks in the line. She was white, and so am I.

I replied that this is a historic day, and I didn’t think any of us would want all the newspapers and television news to only show white voters.

Then, as I walked away, I thought I should have at taken a photo of her - but I really wasn't trying to be confrontational. I did realize her attitude said something real – and newsworthy - about the fears of campaign organizers so I went back to ask her name, and interview her about it.

“No comment,” was all she would say, repeating it loudly for the audience of fellow poll watchers.

The Constitution allows anyone – not just the press – to take photographs of whatever they want when they are in a public space. Baring a specific statute or ordinance – and here in Pennsylvania the law does NOT expressly prohibit photography inside the polling place – we are entitled to take pictures.

I also walked away without reminding her how photography – yes, like the work of brave attorneys - has a long history of helping Americans with everything from securing their civil rights to stopping child labor practices.

In recent years, amateur and professional photographers alike have been under attack because of the supposed dangers that photography presents to society. Neither the Patriot Act nor the Homeland Security Act restricts photography. That's no doubt because even the Bush Administration realized photography hasn’t adversely affected public safety or the vitality of our country. Any limits on photography would certainly not have prevented any of the terrorist acts – international or domestic – we’ve seen in recent years. Still professional and amateur photographers alike have been harassed and detained for taking pictures of factories, bridges, tall buildings, trains, bus stations and post offices. None of that is against the law.

Late yesterday, Inquirer editor Lance Parry sent me the link to a story that a county judge just ruled news photographers can take pictures around polling places after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sued for the right to do so.

Bert Krages is an attorney who concentrates on intellectual property and environmental law. He is a nationally recognized advocate of the right to take photographs in public places. He wrote a book, Legal Handbook for Photographers: The Rights and Liabilities of Making Images and his website offers a downloadable pdf, a version of the “Bust Card” that used to be available from the ACLU which spells out the rights of photographers.

Speaking of lawyers, remember, I’m not one, so anything I’ve said here is not intended as legal advice. If you have specific problems you should to a competent attorney.

Of course I wasn’t the only photographer out there documenting the election, and that was the only problem I had all day. All across American citizens were carrying cameras. Here are some links to websites:

The Center for Citizen Media is an initiative to enable and encourage citizen journalism. They also have a Law Project providing an overview of the legal issues involved in documenting Election 2008.

The Polling Place Photo Project is a nationwide experiment in citizen journalism hosted by the New York Times.

Video Your Vote is a non-partisan partnership between YouTube, PBS and NewsHour encouraging voters to document their voting experiences on video.

It’s not hard today to find video and still images, on this day after the election, showing all kinds of Americans voting. They are, as President-elect Obama said in the opening lines of his victory speech last night, “…young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled.”

November 5, 2008: Post Election Sidewalk

I read yesterday that Cecil Stoughton died Monday at the age of 88.

He was the White House photographer who shot the iconic image of Lyndon B. Johnson taking the oath of office in the cramped cabin of Air Force One with Jacqueline Kennedy at his side.
The AP story quoted his son Jamie Stoughton saying, "He was under tremendous pressure, If his camera had failed, who knows what would have happened. It was the only proof that Johnson had been sworn in."

Photographer Peter Tobia just told me the story about how that almost actually happened. Margalit Fox says in the New York Times obit today that after barely making it to the airport, almost getting shot by the police as he rushed the tarmac, switching from color to black & white film (newspapers weren't using color then) as the swearing-in began, and standing on a couch at the back of the plane - nothing happened when he first pressed the shutter on his Hasselblad. But then he "jiggled" the camera.

I hadn't heard that story before.

November 6, 2008: Academy of Natural Sciences

November 7, 2008: Adventure Aquarium

November 8, 2008: Flying Dragon (Poncirus trifoliata)