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