If you haven’t noticed by all of the television coverage, extra fliers in your mailbox, yard signs, and Facebook posts, it’s election season.
That alters life for everyone, some in bigger ways than others, but for me it means picking up a camera and following candidates. Politics are not my specialty by any means, so I don’t get a lot of these assignments, but during an election year, even I get to chip in.
Recently I did political campaign assignments for the Austin American Statesman and the Houston Chronicle.
For the Statesman I met democrat candidate for state representative of district 136, Matt Stillwell, at his office in north Austin. Reporter Benjamin Wermund and I were assigned to follow Stillwell as he campaigned in the Avery Ranch neighborhood.
There’s a funny thing that happens sometimes when media follows a candidate while block walking. It seems when there’s a camera around, no one’s at home. They weren’t hiding in their houses and just not answering the door. Most of the houses Stillwell approached didn’t have cars in the drive way, the lights were off and nobody was home. That makes for a tough photo situation, so I just tried to capture Stillwell with houses in the background, walking around with campaign fliers.
The democratic party has an iPhone app that tracks which addresses have residents with strong republican, strong democrat, and undecided viewpoints. Stillwell was able to use that app to skip over homes with strong republican residents, making his job a little easier and not bothering people who couldn’t be swayed.
He did find a few people at home, well, he found two while I was there. And here they are! (Thank goodness they were both okay with having their photo taken!)
Click here to read Benjamin Wermund’s story.
As you can tell, this whole political campaign coverage thing is super glamorous! ….moving on…
Last week the Houston Chronicle needed me to follow U.S. Senate candidate Paul Sadler, also a democrat, during a fish fry event in Austin.
I had about 45 minutes for this assignment before I had to run to a football game. That would have been plenty of time to get as many photos as they needed, except that on the way there I got a call from the Chronicle’s photo editor. Sadler had been in a car accident. He was fine, but he would be about 45 min. late.
I was glad to hear he was okay (that could have been a very different assignment otherwise), but 45 min. late left me with almost no time to shoot.
I took my time getting to the event location, and found someone who could give me an update. She said Sadler had to change his shirt and then he’d be on his way.
When he arrived, I had about 10-15 min. before I absolutely had to leave, so I clicked away. Sadler worked the crowd with his wife, Sherri and their dog, Murphy, then he took the podium for a short speech.
I got what I could and ran to the car, still making it to the game just before kick-off. Whew!
Click here to read Joe Holley’s story.
So there you go, that’s my political coverage contribution thus far. I’d rather be on the sidelines, shooting some kind of sport, but as for you guys who do this all the time – good luck out there on the campaign trail!