Scene on the Road

This week Philadelphia elects a new mayor. Or rather a handful of us will. People who guess about those things for a living are saying that only about twenty percent of the city will turn out on Tuesday.

The big election is still a year away, but we got a taste of national politics last week when Drexel University hosted a two-hour debate. Seven of the eight Democratic candidates were in Philadelphia, on stage in the auditorium of the school's Main Building.

Usually called "hopefuls," they were, from left: Sen. Christopher Dodd, Sen. Joseph Biden, former Sen. John Edwards, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Not invited, former Sen. Mike Gravel came to town anyway, and pod-casted from World Cafe Live, a block away on Walnut Street.

At a debate, only a handful of the hundreds of reporters who cover the candidates actually get to see them live. It's the same for us. There are a few "pool" photographers in the room, but most of us have to wait outside in the hall, above, to get in for a few minutes before the live broadcast begins, for what is called a "photo spray." I don't know when that term was first used, but it used to be called a "photo op." I first noticed it when Vice President Dick Cheney was quoted refusing to take questions from reporters in Baghdad this past summer. "This is just a photo spray" he said, as he posed for photos with Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki. At first I thought it was some sort of derogatory war-zone military jargon.

The "photo spray" is a bunch of photographers, escorted in a pack down to the front of the stage, crouching in the aisle before the "hopefuls" walk out. Then we get to shoot for about five minutes before the televised debate begins. The candidates mostly just stand still, trying to do something with their hands, talking to each other, and awkwardly posing for the photos.

It's a lot like shooting celebrities on the red carpet in Hollywood, except out there photographers have to shout out names to get the stars to look animated. Politicians just sort of do it on their own. Sen. Clinton seemed to be the most experienced at "handling" the spray, doing more gesturing, laughing and waving than the others. Apparently she recognized people out in the dark audience, with really bright television studio lights shining right into her eyes.

Presidential debates are usually late at night, right on newspaper deadlines, so when I've covered them in the past, I end up missing the actual debate because I am sending those "spray" photos back to the Inquirer. On this night though, I wasn't the only Inquirer photographer there. Michael Perez was shooting inside the auditorium and Clem Murray was editing right outside the door. So after grabbing Mike's cards and giving them to Clem on my way out, I was able to both shoot Drexel students and see it on the big screens around campus.

I also got to see the “spin room.” This is an area near where the hundreds of news media who didn't get into the debate hall watched it on television. The candidates themselves are always invited - but hardly ever show up.

The name came about because the room is where staffers and campaign spokespeople compete to "interpret" their candidates’ performance, trying to put their own spin on what everyone has just seen. I've always missed that spectacle in the past as well, because it always happens way past my deadline.

Drexel had some 300 student volunteers - almost one for every credentialed media representative - and things were very organized on campus. In the "spin room," students held up signs for easy-access to each of the candidate's people.

That's Sen. Clinton’s chief strategist Mark Penn in the middle, above. He provided one of the quotes/sound bites that showed up everywhere: Obama and Edwards had “swung and missed” with their punches.

I waited in the room to get the very last reporter talking to the last spinmeister with the last Drexel student holding a sign in the empty room. But it never happened. Instead I was the last photographer to leave, shooting "one more" photo as I walked to the parking lot.

Please check back here later this week to see my mayoral election photos, and click here for a slide show of photos I made following Michael Nutter around during the primary election last May.

Kindergarten students at St. Malachy's School in North Philadelphia wait in church for their turn to rehearse for the Christmas Pageant.

The scene in Iowa's Poweshiek County. I was just there covering the presidential candidates on the campaign trail, and will be heading back for the Caucuses. Then onto New Hampshire. Stay tuned for an audio slide show. (Link added later)

January 1, 2008: Ames, Iowa

As I usually shoot at least one photograph every single day of the year, and I am on my computer every single day, I am resolving this year to post at least one single photo here - every single day - for the entire year of 2008. This is the first one, from Iowa, where I am covering the caucuses for the newspaper. Click here for an audio slide show I made on a previous trip two weeks ago. A new slide show will be posted on caucus day, Jan. 3rd.

Notice the entry date time stamp on this post. The file server is on Eastern Standard time, but I'm on Central. So it's actually 11:59 P.M. - January 1st. So I made it, as usual, on deadline, and at the last minute.

So far, so good. Happy New Year, TomG

January 2, 2008: Urbandale, Iowa

January 3, 2008: Madison County, Iowa

January 5, 2008: Manchester, New Hampshire

January 6, 2008: Manchester, New Hampshire

January 7, 2008: Concord, New Hampshire

January 8, 2008: Deerfield, New Hampshire

January 9, 2008: Somewhere over Connecticut

January 23, 2008: Mayor's Reception Room

January 30, 2008: Exactly three months ago in Philadelphia

I'm at home this week, using up accumulated vacation time, which is why so many of my daily blog photos are from New Jersey lately. But watching the presidential campaign today as Democrat John Edwards bowed out of the race (and Republican Rudy Giuliani expected to quit later today as well) I recalled it was exactly three months ago that there were eight Democratic candidates all here in Philadelphia. Now there are just three (former Alaska senator Mike Gravel is still in). So today's daily photo, is from that MSNBC Democrat debate on October 30, 2007. Edwards was on stage at Drexel University along with Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Dennis Kucinich, and Bill Richardson. Gravel, who wasn't invited, was a block away at the World Cafe Live.

February 4, 2008: Hamilton, New Jersey

February 5, 2008: Haddonfield, New Jersey

March 5, 2008: After The Election Night Results Watch Party

March 7, 2008: Philadelphia Democratic Party Headquarters

After Mississippi votes in their primary tomorrow, we officially become the new Iowa - or is it the new old-New Hampshire - with no other voters competing for the candidate's attention.

We have been hearing the predictions for weeks now, about how Pennsylvania would be the site of the "decisive battle in the Democratic campaign." But it wasn't until Hillary Clinton emerged last week with victories in Texas and Ohio - that we do indeed get at least six more weeks of campaigning (is that kind of like Punxsutawney Phil seeing his shadow?)

I figure I shot the first photos of the very beginning of this historic election, the first time in a generation that Pennsylvania has played a significant role in a presidential primary. I went out late Tuesday night to a Clinton results watch party at Finnegan's Wake where I photographed supporters listening to her Ohio victory speech.

After years of seeing Pennsylvanians barely turn out to vote in a presidential primary that doesn't matter, the next month or so promises to be exciting. It has always amazed me to see how seriously the voters of Iowa and New Hampshire take their role in our election process. When you talk to people at campaign events, in diners, pizza shops and bowling alleys across those states and see how informed they are - months before they even cast their ballot or caucus - you can't help but feel good about the process.

That's one of the best thing about covering politics. Seeing good citizenship in action. Meeting voters who make the effort. I received an email from a reader who saw my Iowa caucus photos and said, "I have no way of knowing if this caucus is typical of others around the state, but I had a good feeling after watching your slide show of these people helping to pick the president. They seemed like solid citizens to me."

Voters often complain that "the media" only covers the horse race aspect of the election.

Newspapers do offer an abundance of information, background, and comparisons of platforms and positions. I have always considered it the job of photojournalists in a political campaign to draw reader's attention to those stories. We could just simply supply serial speaking photos and maybe no one would care. But - and this is why I enjoy politics so much - by making pictures that really catch the readers eye - whether on the newsprint or on the web - we can force them to pause long enough to take a second glance and maybe even read a story they might otherwise overlook.

I just parachute into a campaign every once in a while, but I'm always impressed at how wire service photographers - from AP, Reuters, AFP and Getty generate an amazing variety of images every single day - for months.

Also fun to look at, in the year leading up to the Iowa Caucuses, a group of free-lance photographers based there set up a daily campaign photo website - The Stumping Grounds - "A Daily Photo Blog of Political Proportions." Click on the Joshua Lott photo at left, to see what they did when the spotlight was on their state.

One of my favorite political photographers, New York Times staffer Stephen Crowley, who works out of the paper's Washington bureau, has been covering presidential election campaigns for years. That means a lot of time spent on a bus. So as just one way to express some of his visual creativity, he has turned all those hours "staring out the window, grasping for a morsel of humanity" into a collection of photos.

First, four years ago traveling with Senator John Kerry, Crowley photographed "some of the faces and places that (Kerry) saw over the last two months if he happened to look out the window as his campaign motorcade rolled by."

Most recently, this time on the bus with Senator John McCain, he produced a slide show of diptychs - "Images of the country's character and culture as hinted by billboards, shifting light patterns and happenstance." Click here for that project, titled "Out the Window, Three Days Across America," and on his photo above of the mannequins (and Kerry's bus) in a Wheeling, W.Va. store window for the 2004 version.

The weekly news magazine photographers must try even harder to make images that will not seem stale when viewed days after readers have already seen pictures of most of the previous week's events.

David Burnett, a world class photojournalist who started freelancing for the original Life magazine before it folded - and has the cover of THIS week's Time magazine - is still finding fresh ways to share his views from the campaign trail.

Besides the digital SLR's photojournalists all carry, he also uses all kinds of other cameras, including a 1950's Speed Graphic - that's a 4x5 FILM camera - with a WWII-era Kodak aerial reconnaissance lens, to make selective focus images like this one of McCain shot last week. He also writes about photography, and politics, in the blog (We're Just Sayin) he shares with his wife Iris, a writer and author who has worked for eight presidential campaigns and served as an adviser to two presidents.

I am heading up to Scranton now, where Hillary Clinton will campaign this evening, so for pictures during this primary, and on through the conventions and November, keep coming back here. And don't forget, Pennsylvanians can't vote in the April 22nd primary if you're not registered - the deadline is March 24th.

When I found out over the weekend that I would be covering the very first candidate stump speech of the PA Primary - in Scranton - I asked Hillary Clinton's Pennsylvania media person if I could join the local pool there. I was hoping for an opportunity to shoot with the same access as the national traveling press corps. He said he'd be working on today's campaign stop at Temple University instead of Scranton, but would have the advance press person up there call me. When she didn't, I wasn't worried. We've got six more weeks, I told myself, and I'll get another chance.

So I ended up leaving an hour later than I'd originally planned, and used the time to finish some blogging. Then, while still on the Schuylkill Expressway, I get a phone call from my editor, who has the national editor standing at his desk. It turns out they've learned that one of those things the local pool/national traveling press corps will be shooting in Scranton is a stop Hillary is making after her plane lands at the airport. A Pizza shop in a town called Old Forge.

Well, I always get lost when I go to Scranton-Wilkes Barre. Something about the way the NE Extension doesn't have interchanges where I expect it should, or how it runs west of Scranton, but east of Wilkes Barre. So after I pulled over to Google the directions on my laptop, and got slowed by construction backups at Lansdale and Quakertown, I was getting worried as I did the highway math...100 miles at 65 mph is ninety-two minutes...at 70 mph it's eighty-six minutes...

I got off the turnpike, and found downtown Old Forge (only had to stop and ask for directions once) where nearing the pizza cafe, I saw the flashing police lights and big media big bus and crowd, and pulled into a video store parking lot. I made it, running up the street almost out of breath, just as Hillary was finishing up her greetings with the crowd outside. Then she stayed inside longer than I expected (with local pool/national traveling press corps photographing her in a booth with a tray of red pizza) and I waited to see if she'd greet them again on her way out as well before I sent my just so-so photos back to the paper. She didn't.

So by now, it's an hour past the time I should have been inside the gym for her rally - still halfway across town, and I still have to send my photos. Of course, leaving on the small town street - in the wake of a presidential motorcade, I hit lots of traffic, my cell phone signal drops in middle of uploading my photos, and by the time I parked, again in a shopping center lot, and walked a mile the school, it was almost time for the rally to start. But there was nobody staffing the press entrance anymore, so the local cops operating the metal detectors wouldn't screen and sniff me (with bomb-detecting dogs) without someone from the Clinton campaign to sign off on me. I was right in the middle of being kicked out, and calling my editor, when I spotted a passing Clinton staffer, got her attention, and she came over to help.

Inside, there was lots of energy in the crowd - most of whom had arrived to wait in line outside long before I even got the pizza phone call - and as I found a position to shoot from, the room filled with huge applause as someone reached up on stage to top off Hillary's glass of water. Then - and this was really something different - without any warm up speeches by local politicians or long introductions of people running for the school board, the candidate herself came right out, climbing up on stage ahead of even Governor Rendell.

The rally ended up early enough for me to make my deadlines without any pressure, and I was still in the gym on my laptop tweaking some of the photos and links on my blog an hour later as workers were disassembling the stage, camera platforms and pulling down the signs. The few other journalists around had already left when the high school turned off their wi-fi signal, but I had a cell phone with a decent connection, so I was also sending a bunch of extra photos back to the Inquirer. I knew they would only use one photo from this event, but I figured what with six weeks worth of stories on the horizon, the paper would continue to use file photos of the candidates, so I was captioning and sending Hillary in different expressions - laughing, smiling, looking serious - when I noticed them beginning to take down the huge American flag that was hanging behind where the candidate spoke.

I picked up my camera when I saw some Clinton staffers moving in to help the workers hold up the bottom of the flag. I saw young pant-suited and suit-and-tied future political leaders of our great country cradling the symbol of same.

They saw - I can only presume - a photographer on a motor-scooter chasing Princess Di into the tunnel.

"You are NOT going to get a picture of us dropping the flag on the ground," one of them shouted as she sprinted toward me, about to, I feared, knock me down and throw my camera into the bleachers. Instead, she just yelled back to her comrades, "Careful everyone, there's a photographer in here," whereupon a more experienced staffer stepped forward to order me out of the gym, "You can't be in here any longer."

That first most protective staffer it turned out, was the very same one who got me into the gym earlier in the evening. She had also vouched for me (along with Getty photographer Jeff Fusco) toward the middle of Hillary's speech when a secret service agent wanted to kick me out because I didn't have a paper media credential (the advance team had run out, and I was late, remember). It would have been mean for me to try to argue with her. I promised that my intentions were pure, that I didn't drive three hours to Scranton just to ruin their big day, and I went back to my laptop.

But I kept an eye on them, ready to pounce, cameras in full paparazzi-flashing mode should that big flag touch the floor (or Brittany Spears or Paris Hilton happen by).

I can tell you that the earnest young Democrats proved their mettle indeed. They did fold up the flag with the utmost respect, and did not permit the colors to so much as even briefly brush the surface of the Scranton Knights basketball court.

That concludes my report. Except for a chance to show some other flag-folding-up photos from previous campaigning:

Philadelphia City Hall

Ames, Iowa

Ames, Iowa

Yesterday, as Mississippi voters were casting their primary ballots, Barack Obama made his first campaign appearance in Pennsylvania, opening his primary campaign with a factory visit in Bucks County. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton was on the second day of her first in-state swing that concluded last night with a rally at Temple University. My colleagues Eric Mencher (above and at left) and Barbara Johnston (below) covered them.

It's all Pennsylvania, all the time now, with nothing else on the national primary calendar until voters here make their choice on April 22.

March 13, 2008: Voter Registration, Drexel University

March 18, 2008: Outside the National Constitution Center

April 16, 2008: Campaigning in South Philadelphia

April 18, 2008: Waiting for Hillary

April 22, 2008: Pennsylvania Presidential Primary

April 23, 2008: Post-Primary Posters

I have been watching the Olympics all week, getting home after working a night shift just in time to see the big events replayed on television. And every night I end up sitting with my laptop, simultaneously looking at all the photos some of the 1,200 or so accredited photographers from around the world who have already shot that day. I don’t think I watched that much of the games four years ago - I know didn’t I have a wireless Internet connection in my living room then. I can’t really compare, but I doubt there were so many photos available for viewing from so many sources almost live during the Athens games.

The Chalfonte Hotel, Cape May, New Jersey

What I have found though, after a week of looking at so many incredibly great images, is that I started to get bored clicking on all those slide shows and picture-of-the-day sites. Too many perfect jubilant reactions, clean backgrounds, peak moments, weird but effective angles or remote camera shooting positions. And everything is so tight – and perfect.

Before I knew it, I was doing things like trying to find the very best photo among of the dozens of versions of Michael Phelps hugging his mother after the 4x100-meter medley gold - smack dab in the middle of the photographers’ corral.

By then I was bookmarking and reading all there blogs. What a great Vicarious experience for me. I almost felt like I was there. So as long as I had all the links, here they are, all in one place as a resource.

Click on the photographer's names, and let me know if I've missed any (just blogs, not "Picture of the Day" sites or those that require registration). The photos are from different blogs showing the camera equipment each photographer packed. And then, keep scrolling. Below this really long strip of packing photos are two video -showing BOTH packing up here and unpacking in China.

Zach Honig, PopPhoto.com
Vincent Laforet, Freelance
Rod Mar, Seattle Times
Kevin German, Freelance
Dan Powers, Appleton Post-Crescent
Chris Faytok, Newark Star-Ledger
Nhat V. Meyer, San Jose Mercury News
Chris Detrick, Salt Lake Tribune
Jens Dresling, Politiken, Copenhagen (English translation)
Mark J. Rebilas, Freelance
David Burnett, Freelance
Mike Powell, Freelance
George Bridges, McClatchy/Tribune
Kenneth Jarecke, Freelance
Jerry T. Lai, Freelance
Richard Lautens, Lucas Oleniuk & Steve Russell, Toronto Star
Scott Strazzante, Chicago Tribune
Donald Miralle, Freelance
Sol Neelman, Freelance
Larry Steagall, Kitsap Sun
Matt Detrich, Indianapolis Star
Michael Martina, Freelance
Eric Seals, Detroit Free Press
Kari Kuukka, Freelance, Finland (English translation)
Getty Images, Agency
Reuters, Agency
Jeff Swinger, Cincinnati Enquirer
Marc Aspland, Times of London


Click on the images below for two bonus video tracks:

Robert Hanashiro, USA Today photographer offered packing tips as he prepared to leave for his sixth summer Olympics…

…and Contact Press Images photographer David Burnett unpacked in Beijing for his eighth Olympics:

Back to the Olympic photographer’s blogs. They also reminded me of when I discovered Time photographer Bill Pierce’s Nuts & Bolts column in Popular Photography back in high school in the 1970’s. He actually offered real practical advice, like putting sodium sulfite in your Rodinal developer (It was sort of like “unsharp mask” in Photoshop) or gluing two rear caps back-to-back (prevent juggling the caps or lenses when changing). Pierce is STILL doing his column on digitaljournalist.org.

Even when I worked for United Press International back in the late 70’s and early 80’s and covered Super Bowls, World Series, Final Fours and such, the closest I ever got to the Olympics was a World Gymnastics Championship in an off-year. It was the year Bart Conner and Kurt Thomas were the stars, not a single American woman medaled, and Romania’s Nadia Comaneci – after her perfect 10’s in Montreal - was hospitalized in the middle of the team competition with blood poisoning caused by a cut. She and Conner later married and now run a gymnastics academy in Oklahoma (Yeah, I was just wondering myself how to I know that. Don’t ask.)

It also inspired me to blog more myself. Instead of just posting my Daily Photo, and blogging off my weekly newspaper Scene Through the Lens photo, I hope to talk more about the issues confronting daily newspaper photographers. While my assignments aren’t as glamorous as the Olympics, I know there are a lot of photographers who don’t shoot for a living and might wonder what it’s really like.

Finally, besides all the vicarious photo thrills, reading all the blogs was helping me get psyched up for the home stretch of that OTHER once-every-four-years event - the gold medal race to the White House.

I covered the campaign and a single caucus in Iowa and New Hampshire's condensed campaign and First in the Nation Primary, but other than voters during the New Jersey and during Pennsylvania Primaries, I haven’t photographed very much campaigning since. So I was looking forward to traveling to Denver, where fellow staff photographer Larry Kesterson and I would be covering the Democratic National Convention.

Yeah, past tense. Yesterday, three days before we were to fly to Denver, the Inquirer told me and photographer Larry Kesterson that we weren’t going. They also pulled the plug on Eric Mencher and David Swanson going to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in two weeks.

So I’m bummed. The news probably won’t make Romenesko, where stories are showing up about cutbacks at the conventions, but even within the bigger picture of troubles within the newspaper industry, it doesn’t bode well for the future of photography here. Throughout my newspaper career I have seen the path cutbacks usually take: the “service” departments – the library, copy desks, news assistants, photographers - are always early targets.

So this is MY camera equipment, still sitting in my trunk, going nowhere. Because some of you have asked, I use Nikon. A D200 is my primary body, and I shoot ninety percent of my photos with the 24-70mm f/2.8 zoom. My other primary lenses are an 18mm f/2.8 and 180mm f/2.8. You can also see a 300mm f/4, a macro lens and my secondary body, a D100, along with flash units and a 1.4 converter. I have an old D2H and even more ancient 35-70mm f/2.8 lens I keep as backups. The newspaper has a faster 300mm f/2.8 and other long glass I can use, and they gave me an old 500mm f/4 manual focus lens just to keep in my trunk as a “better than nothing” long telephoto lens for breaking news.

September 26, 2008: Waiting for VP Candidate

October 2, 2008: Philadelphia Orchestra Inside...Phillies, Then VP Debate, Outside

October 6, 2008: Germantown Avenue, Mt. Airy

October 12, 2008: Scarecrow Contest, Medford, NJ

October 14, 2008: John McCain Town Meeting, Blue Bell

October 16, 2008: Cellphone Cameras, John McCain Rally

I covered both visits by Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain to Montgomery and Chester Counties this week.

I've also been one of those tv viewers switching between the debates and Phillies playoffs the past couple weeks. Unlike the Phils' trip to the post season, presidential campaigning is a scene that is played out every single day, and has been for well over a year now. So while even two visits in the same week are not big news, I photographed them as though they where. I'm also sharing them with my fellow political junkies even though we're not as numerous as those Phillies fans, again like me, who've been clicking all over the excellent slide shows on philly.com's new photo gallery site. (Yeah, that's a plug. The photos there by my sports shooting co-workers are great, and the new and improved web format is wonderful for viewing images).

Plus...it might encourage my assigning editor - in the interest of fairness - to let me cover the Democratic presidential nominee when he comes to town. Stay tuned, hopefully, for a similar post in the next two weeks when Barack Obama returns to our Battleground State.

I joined the traveling press pool on both visits, Tuesday and Thursday. These photos are all interspersed from the two days, which were very similar both in the events McCain attended and the campaign's travel procedure.

The candidate and his staff, the secret service and media all travel in the same chartered airplane. They usually land at the general aviation areas of airports where they all board cars, vans and buses. In Philadelphia, that is Atlantic Aviation - the same place the Phillies charter from Los Angeles landed yesterday morning! That's were I hooked up with them after going through security checks, along with the motorcade drivers.

Waiting on the tarmac for the plane to land was a campaign staffer with coffee for the staff already on board. This was Thursday morning as they were flying in from Wednesday night's debate in New York, and that's Steve Duprey, a close friend and frequent traveling companion of McCain on the right. He is a former New Hampshire GOP chairman and served as a Deputy Permanent Co-Chair at the 2008 Republican National Convention. But he's most known as the campaign's jokester. Newsweek called him "McCain's Court Jester," and he has said he hopes to become secretary of a new federal agency: the Department of Fun.

The candidate's plane, a Boeing 737-400, is an airborne version of his Straight Talk Express bus. McCain sits in first class, the Secret Service agents ride in the middle cabin...

...and the traveling national press corps rides, and disembarks, from the rear. That's Associated Press staff photographer Carolyn Kaster, who is based in Harrisburg, but has been traveling and covering McCain (so she'll miss covering tomorrow's Penn State-Michigan game!). She shot him during the primaries and has rotated coverage with other AP staffers. She will be traveling with him now through the November election. The photographers, reporters, network television and radio correspondents and camera crews who travel with the candidate everywhere he goes reimburse the campaign for their share of costs, including the expenses for hotels, meals, and even the wireless internet connection installed at many events.

Historically, presidential campaigns have used airport arrivals as an opportunity - as in photo op - but also to reward local supporters and politicians with a chance to share the spotlight. Not as good as being on stage with a presidential candidate, but being there to extend a "welcome to our town," still has some cache. On Thursday, the campaign rewarded four Montgomery County volunteers who work out of the McCain/Southeast PA Victory HQ in Blue Bell. They had also attended Tuesday's Town Meeting at MCCC.

A motorcade escort of Pennsylvania State Troopers, in cars and motorcycles, made for the quickest trip up the Schuylkill I'd ever experienced. Not even the Conshohocken Curve or the stretch from City Avenue to Belmont could slow us down.

On Tuesday, McCain stopped at WCAU-TV, channel 10's studios, to do a series of one-on-one satellite interviews with television stations around the country. He was also interviewed by NBC10's Kristen Welker.

Most of the traveling press corps continued onto Blue Bell, but a tighter pool, including me, WCAU photographer Dave Palmer, and shooters from AP, Reuters, AFP, Getty Images, along with reporters from the same wire services, plus Bloomberg, Newsweek, NPR, and the Wall Street Journal waited in a holding room at the station, and watched the senator on a couple video monitors.

Obama supporters came outside as McCain's motorcade traveled along Walton Road past the Plymouth Metting offices of United Food and Commercial Workers International union, Local 1776.

Thirteen year-old Jeff McGee of Hatford came to MCCC with three generations of McGee women; his sister, mother and grandmother.

At both day's events, McCain was accompanied by his wife Cindy...

...and in Downingtown, they were joined by Sen. Joe Lieberman. That's U.S. News & World Report photographer Jeff MacMillan.

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.

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.”

As always, whenever history is being made, and I am at home watching it unfold on television, I end up looking wherever I can - the web, newsstand, supermarket checkout line - to see what pictures other photographers have shot, and wonder which one is the image I'll always associate with the event.

I think I just saw the one for Election Night 2008.

This wonderful image of Americans listening to President-elect Obama's victory speech was shot by Matt Mendelsohn on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial - the site of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream Speech."

There's nothing like seeing a powerful photo, especially one so simple and real.

As Matt said on his blog, "I've witnessed a lot of big news events in the last twenty-three years but this may have been the most honest little moment I've ever been part of."

He was watching the election returns, but then got tired of looking at it on TV, so before Obama took the stage, he drove into Washington. But instead of joining the crowds at the White House, Matt decided to go to the Lincoln Memorial instead. There he found less than two dozen people just listening to a transistor radio.

It's the kind of photo any photographer could have shot. On this historic night, only one photographer even thought about making it.

You can buy a print at Matt's website, in either B&W or color.

On the eve of the inauguration of a new president, the January 2009 issue of National Geographic is out with photos Christopher Morris shot of the day-to-day operations of caring for the President of the United States.

A gallery of his "Life Inside the Presidency" photos can be seen on the Geographic's website.

Elisabeth Bumiller wrote the story about how even with a new man in the White House, "many other things in the private world of the President of the United States will stay remarkably the same."

Also new in behind the scenes presidential photography his month is
"Yes We Can: Barack Obama's History-Making Presidential Campaign," the book by Brooklyn photographer Scout Tufankjian who spent almost two full years on the campaign.

Immediately after covering the candidate for the very first time, she says she called her agent and told her "that I was going to cover the Obama presidential campaign. I did not offer her a choice. The fact that he wasn’t technically running yet didn’t really seem that important to me."

She says she ended up "on assignment (i.e. all expenses paid) only about 15–20% of the total campaign. The rest of the time I paid for it myself and just hoped to make enough sales to make it worth it."

(January 2009 UPDATE: The source photographer is MANNIE GARCIA, a Washington D.C. based freelancer on assignment for the Associated Press in 2006. Click here for more.)

Yeah, it was shot it here in Philadelphia when candidate Barack Obama delivered his speech on race back in March at the National Constitution Center. And now it’s been turned into a drawing!

***** JUST KIDDING ***** ***** JUST KIDDING *****

No, my photo was NOT used to create the cover of Time magazine’s Person of the Year issue (the artist used a photo by Time photographer Brooks Kraft). But see how easy that was? So why hasn't the real photographer who shot the photo that inspired the original Obama poster stepped forward to make that claim?

The illustration of the president-elect by Shepard Fairey is a variation of the artist’s instantly recognizable Progress/Hope/Change Obama poster. Fairey readily admits the poster started with a news photo he found in a Google Images search. I have been wondering since then what the photographer who made the photo had to say about the appropriation. But after countless searches on the web and an unanswered email to the artist, I have yet to find out anything about the photographic source of the poster.

It really is a memorable image, and I recall vividly my first encounter with the now-iconic poster in West Philadelphia last winter (below). I was so impressed, I actually crossed the street to get a closer look.

Seeing the Time cover on the newsstand last week, I was still amazed that nobody has come forward. Or if anyone has, I wonder why they haven’t received any noticeable media attention for it. Any readers see or hear anything? Any idea who the photographer is who shot it?

When fifteen nurses and twice that many sailors can claim to be the subjects of Alfred Eisenstaedt’s V-J Day hug in Times Square photo, you’d think a whole bunch of photographers would step forward - like I just jokingly did – claiming to have shot the Obama photo. There must be a dozen shooters who have similar images.

Fairey was the Rhode Island School of Design student responsible for those "Obey Andre" stickers of the graphic face of pro-wrestler Andre the Giant that were plastered on walls and signs all over America. Time included him in a photo essay a few years ago on street artists. He sees no problem with using work created by other artists and photographers and “repurposing” it as his own. He is often accused of plagiarism, but art critics often point out that Andy Warhol did the same thing.

Writing in the September issue of the Los Angeles arts magazine Bedlam, Kaelan Smith quotes Fairey saying, “I just basically went on the internet and looked for a good photo of Obama to work from…”So, I found an image that I felt had the right gesture, and then, of course, did my thing to it – re-illustrated and simplified it to this really iconic, three-color image.”

Included in the online version of the Time cover story is a video of Fairey talking about the illustration. Last summer, the Washington Post created an interesting graphic about the thinking that went into the original poster. Fairey’s Obey Giant website still has a downloadable B&W pdf version available.

Lastly, if you want to create a Progress/Hope/Change poster of your own, check out these two sites for help Fairey-izing your own photos:

David Wolbrecht, a graphic designer at the University of Washington wrote a How To guide for Adobe Illustrator-armed artists who want to emulate the poster. That's his Martin Luther King on the left. And Dubi Kaufmann, a programmer in Chicago created a Photo Booth plugin "as an exercise in pop culture." The software is a free download but he asks that you acknowledge him if you build on it (it only works on macs running OS X 10.5 Leopard). That's him Obamafied on the right.

It's official. Photojournalist and college professor, Pete Souza who served as the official photographer during President Ronald Reagan's second term and covered Barack Obama’s first year in the U.S. Senate for the Chicago Tribune, has been named Obama’s Chief White House Photographer.

The National Press Photographer's Association website broke the news this morning, ending the speculation in photo circles that comes up every time we get a new president. Souza took the job on Sunday after discussions with Obama's transition staff.

The president-elect's staff distributed behind-the-scenes photos from his historic Election Night on flickr, and with all the emphasis on the immediacy of Web some photographers worried what images future generations might see. (The Presidential Transition Project just posted three Callie Shell photos of the Obama daughters getting ready for school today on flickr.

Pete says he took the job after he was assured, "The primary function of the photo office will be to visually document the presidency for history," and added, "I believe I've established a good working relationship with the President-elect, and believe that he trusts me enough to give me the necessary access."

In the introduction to his best-selling book "The Rise of Barack Obama," Pete wrote, “Early into that first year, I began to believe that I was photographing a future president of the United States, and that my pictures might become an historic look at the rise of Sen. Obama’s political career. That may sound like an easy statement to make now, but that’s really how I felt at the time.”

He shot the photo above for the Tribune, as Michelle Obama brushed off her husband's coat inside the Old State Capitol just before he went outside to announce his candidacy for President of the United States in Springfield, Ill. on Feb. 10, 2007.

The book also says Pete, who was based in Washington, DC as the national photographer for the Chicago Tribune and even worked years earlier for the Chicago Sun Times, hadn't met Obama until he came to Washington as the junior senator from Illinois. It sounded to me like one of those biographical details made up by a publicist, but Pete says, "yes, met him for the first time on the morning that he was to be sworn in."

Above is Pete's photo of Obama during a staff meeting in his temporary Senate office, made exactly four years ago to the day today, on January 5, 2005, the day after he took the oath of office.

In an interview just before the November election, Souza told Photo District News' Holly Stuart Hughes he was "concerned both candidates [McCain & Obama] now have photographers and their main mission is to provide a public relations service. It's fine if the White House press office wants to use photographs taken by the White House photographer for their own purposes, as long as the photographer is documenting for history. If those pictures don't get seen for 20 years, so be it. The president doesn't have to be friends with the photographer, but they certainly have to trust and know him or her well enough to give that person essentially unfettered access to the oval office."

In another PDN interview, before Pete's appointment, current White House photographer Eric Draper advised his successor to prepare for the “ride of their life.”

I mentioned in yesterday's post that the Presidential Transition Team released photographs of the president-elect and his wife in their hotel room before sending their daughters off to their new school. The pictures, on the Obama-Biden change.gov website and flickr, were shot by Time Magazine photographer Callie Shell.

I just got a call from a reader who said she heard Shell on NPR's All Things Considered yesterday. You can hear the clip here.

This is one of the three pictures: