By Jessica Rinaldi

Every year for the past ten years “The Dalton Gang” has held a primitive biathlon at their shooting club in Dalton, New Hampshire. If you’ve never heard of this before, here’s the rundown.

A primitive biathlon is what happens when you strap snowshoes to your feet and grab a muzzleloaded weapon (rifle or pistol) and race around a track through the woods, in this case 1.75 miles long, to different stations where you load the weapon and shoot at the target. You are scored by how fast you can make it around the track and how accurately you can hit the nine targets spread out across the four different stations scattered throughout the course.

The wildcard in the race is the muzzleloader, a gun in which the ammunition is loaded into the muzzle or the opening at the front of the gun. The contestants carry gun powder, round ball ammunition, and a ramrod to help push the ammunition down into place with them as they race through the course. All of this is difficult enough under normal situations but when you’ve been running up the side of a mountain it becomes even more challenging not only to load the gun but to lower your breathing enough to actually hit the target.

Competitors in the Dalton Gang’s primitive biathlon are encouraged to wear period dress although it is not a requirement. It was hard to stay away from photographing Kenny Gaudette who was dressed in furs from head to toe and quick to tell me that he went to see Elvis with his daughter years ago and they bought the sunglasses there. His daughter’s glasses have since broke but he only wears his pair once a year, for this event.

Imagine a mountain, the type of thing that you might go skiing on in the winter. Now picture yourself running up and down said mountain for nine miles and just for kicks why don’t you throw in some really sadistic obstacles? Things like fire and mud and just to make it more fun why not throw in some live wires? Yeah, live wires. You know just string them over that mud pit there so that you’ll get zapped as you’re trying to get across to the other side. We’ll call it the electric eel. What’s that you say? You’d like a dumpster full of ice cubes to jump into as well? Done. Congratulations you’ve just entered the world of the Tough Mudder, an event so intense that in order to compete you must sign a waiver releasing the planners from liability should you happen to die somewhere along the course.

SLIDESHOW: ONE TOUGH MUDDER

Let me be clear, this event is a sports photographer’s paradise. The mud alone would be enough to combat every extra inning baseball game you’ve ever shot (what’s that you say, 17 innings and not a single good picture?) but then throw in the ice cubes, the fire, the electrified wires, and a bunch of contestants so focused on getting through the thing that they have no idea you’re even there and well… you get the point.

You might assume that a photographer on her way to cover such an event would think to bring some sort of suitable covering for her equipment. I would love to tell you that I busted out the expensive rain covers for my cameras and wrapped them up lovingly, keeping a microfiber cleaning cloth in my pocket to quickly wipe away any debris that got on my lens. But that would be a lie. I carried three cameras with me and threw caution to the muddy, muddy wind.

The first obstacle is the one the Tough Mudder calls the “Arctic Enema” the competitors run straight up the mountain and then come back down to jump into dumpsters filled with ice cubes. Since there were no PR people to stop me from doing so (did I mention that there are no PR people telling you what not to do in photographic paradise?) I climbed up on the edge of the dumpster to shoot the competitors as they jumped in and swam towards me to get out. The reactions ranged from those who screamed to those who laughed and of course those who swore. It goes without saying that I got soaked, but I managed to keep one patch of my t-shirt dry so that I could wipe water off the lens every few minutes.

Since the race went off in three heats it was hard to decide where to go next. When I arrived to get my credentials in the morning I was given a trail map of the mountain marked with each obstacle and told that I could walk anywhere I wanted to on the course. It was obvious that there were some obstacles on the nine mile course that I was going to have to give up on seeing because they were just too far out of the way. I picked out the ones that sounded good and tried to make a rough plan of attack figuring on when the heats might end up at each obstacle.

With this in mind I hiked up to the “Electric Eel” next to get the first competitors as they jumped into the pool of mud making their way under strings of electrified wires. Getting down low and shooting with a 300mm lens I was able to focus on the splash of muddy beads of water that went up around the people as they tried to get through. Each competitor had a different strategy of getting past the live wires. Some would hesitantly pick their way through the wires while others opted to swim hard and fast to get out of there as quickly as possible. The fast people were the ones who I kept an eye out for to make the tight splash photos and the slow and meticulous ones were better for the wide reaction shots from the side again getting low and trying to get as close as possible without getting the camera wet.

The day went on like this, from one photogenic obstacle to the next I shot people in all sorts of precarious and awesome visual situations. As I hiked from one obstacle to another spectators would make comments about how tough it must be to “carry all of that camera gear”, while this is a remark I often hear at sporting events it seemed particularly insane in contrast to the people that they had come to watch. Running up the side of a mountain with wet shoes, pulling themselves by their arms and legs over ropes strung out over the water, and signing death waivers all seems far more impressive than schlepping around a few cameras.

All day I had been trying to illustrate in photographs the toughness that it takes to get through this course and the toll that it takes on the people who participate in it. For some reason the spectators made me realize how much I kind of wanted to partake in this event myself. Although the live wires are a bit of a turn off, there’s something about conquering a mountain that is rather appealing. It is possible that next year I’ll be diving into a vat of ice, but then again maybe that’s just the mud talking.

Every four years we photographers load our suitcases with layers of warm clothes and head to the Granite State to photograph the political frenzy that is the New Hampshire Primary. New Hampshire and Iowa are considered by many to be retail politics at their best, the states where candidates get on the ground to talk with voters, and local residents have the unique chance to see who the candidates are. It’s an opportunity for the candidates to test out their talking points and fine tune their campaign strategy, to see what floats.

While all of that is well and good in the warm summer months at the beginning of their journey, by the time that chilly spotlight turns from Iowa to New Hampshire they tend to have already become well-seasoned politicians. It is with that knowledge that we head to New Hampshire, where we know that we will be composing other photographers in or out of our shots depending on the story and jostling for position in front of the diner booth, factory worker, rotary club member, or veteran that happens to call to us at one of the many campaign events we shoot throughout the day. At least, that’s what I had figured I would do this time around.

Enter U.S. Presidential candidate and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, the only major candidate I’ve ever seen drive to his own campaign events. Huntsman, who skipped out on the Iowa caucus in favor of focusing all of his efforts on New Hampshire has done over 150 campaign events in this state but curiously only seems to have found his stride just now.

Over the past six days I have documented his campaign as it went from events where I was the only still photographer to having to clamor for position among a throng of other media. A few days ago we really did get a glimpse of the grassroots politics that this state is known for. Photographing him at a small rally of supporters outside or walking into a staff cafeteria at a factory and sitting down with workers to discuss his policies, it was easy to find photos that showed him talking with voters and at the same time reflected his standing in the polls.

As the days went on and more voters and media started to turn up to his events the challenge became different. Looking for ways to show this slow shift in his campaign and picking up subtle momentum meant finding different angles to show voters starting to embrace him, as well as his reaction to the increased attention from the press.

He seemed to have hit a high point Sunday after his early morning debate. The crowd was unable to fit inside the Bean Towne coffee shop and Huntsman had to sneak in the back door where he stood on the counter to address supporters. Standing up on the counter with other still photographers and cameramen it felt as though Huntsman’s surge was palpable.

Anu was kind enough to allow me to photograph her class, and generous enough to speak with me about the experiences that led her to start the program in the first place. I knew that without her words I would risk coming away with pictures that didn’t really distinguish this yoga class from that of any other in the city. It’s a problem that visual journalists often face when stories turn towards topics that are largely invisible. How do you tell a story about trauma or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder when everything appears to be normal on the surface?

As photojournalists we constantly look for moments, situations, details that can help to tell our stories but sometimes it is the voice of the subject to really bring things into sharp focus.