Reuters Boston staff photographer Brian Snyder traveled with Republican U.S. presidential nominee John McCain through election day. He and his colleague Jason Reed who traveled with the Obama campaign posted daily blog entries sharing their experiences and favorite pictures of the day from their campaign coverage. Brian’s final blog entry on covering the McCain campaign follows.

I don’t think it can be said that Senator John McCain’s loss of the U.S. presidency to Barack Obama was for lack of trying. Senator McCain campaigned hard in the final two days before the election.  On November 2 and November 3 we went to 11 rallies, in 9 different states, and worked 45 out of 48 hours.  We flew more than 4,000 miles over those two days. At each rally I shot a picture from the same spot in the buffer in front of the stage.  What you see in this combination of pictures are those images, one from each of the 11 rallies.  The covers of our schedules are at the end of the sequence.  While in the end past decisions and this unique moment in history may have stopped Senator McCain from becoming president, he certainly gave it one final, strong push.

 Reuters Washington staff photographer Jason Reed has been traveling with the campaign of Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Barack Obama. He and his colleague Brian Snyder traveling with the McCain campaign have been posting daily photographers blog entries sharing their experiences and favorite pictures of the day from their campaign coverage.

In the past year and a half I have been priviledged to have a front row seat to American political history - on a personal journey as a Reuters photographer on the road to the White House with Barack Obama.
 
In the first 24 hours that we have all had a chance to absorb the historic election of Democratic Senator Barack Obama to become the 44th president of the United States, I have finally had time to catch my breath after an incredible 21-month journey photographing his unlikely rise on the political world stage, alongside my Reuters photographer colleagues. From the very earliest beginnings of his campaign, at his announcement speech on those frozen steps of the State House in Springfield, Illinois to the grand stage in Chicago’s Grant Park where he delivered his victory speech last night, I feel incredibly privileged to have gone along for the ride and witnessed one of the great ascensions to the U.S. presidency in history.
 

 
Of all of those who aspired to the highest office in the land, from the early days when we chased many Republican and Democratic candidates from coffee shop photo-ops to town halls across the state of Iowa, it always seemed to me as a photographer that it was Barack Obama who stood out from the crowd. This was not at all just because of the color of his skin, although the press has made much of his race as the first African-American candidate to go all the way to the White House. When I was taking pictures, it was in observing his quiet grace, the way he engages people from all walks of life and of course his famous ability to crystallize into words the hopes and aspirations of millions through his campaign for ‘change’. The reactions he evokes from his followers and supporters are like no other recent candidate’s I have seen. I have tried to convey this through my pictures on the wire.

On the eve of the election on Monday night, the very day that he had just lost his grandmother to cancer and on the back of his final grueling campaign push through Florida, North Carolina and Virginia in one day, Senator Obama walked to the back of his plane en route to Chicago and personally thanked every one his staff and then the independent traveling press corps for their hard work during the collectively long journey to election day. I thought that showed a lot of character and class. The long, arduous road to Washington appeared to have taken its toll on Obama himself just an hour before our encounter with him on the flight, as he showed a rare display of emotion and broke down in a few tears as he mentioned the death of his grandmother while addressing one of his final campaign rallies. 

 
We have made many classic images of Obama at campaign rallies which, with the help of the campaign prop department and lots of red, white and blue flags, show Obama looking presidential as he speaks at the podium.

But among my favorite pictures are those that show the human side of the story, the faces of the people who waited up to six or seven hours to watch Obama walk onto the stage and chart a path for the country over the next four years. Often, I would come across people from all walks of life who appeared mesmerized by Obama’s words as he addressed rallies, spoke in Union Halls and bumped into people on the street.

 
It has been once-in-a-lifetime experience documenting the presidential campaign of Senator Obama, but while it’s easy to think that the road to the White House has been covered and it’s all over, the focus is now on the coming transition period until he is sworn-in to office on January 20, 2009 and then the critical first 100 days of his new administration. The American people and the world will be waiting to see how or if Obama can start delivering the change that they put him into office to create. He now has to prove that he can live up to the lofty expectations of an American public weary of a floundering economy, a war in two countries and other political strife. Reuters photographers will be there every step of the way to record the key moments as history continues to unfold before our eyes and our cameras.

Reuters Boston staff photographer Brian Snyder is traveling with Republican U.S. presidential nominee John McCain through election day. He and his colleague Jason Reed traveling with the Obama campaign have been posting daily blog entries sharing their experiences and favorite pictures of the day from their campaign coverage.

In my past campaign coverage experience U.S. presidential candidates do not often continue to campaign on election day. Instead they do a long series of satellite interviews with local television and radio stations in battleground states. But, after a seven state, 24-hour day of campaigning, Senator John McCain dropped off his ballot at his local polling place and headed back out on the campaign trail with a flight to Grand Junction, Colorado for a campaign rally, the final rally of what has been a long presidential campaign. Senator and Mrs. McCain climbed the steps to their campaign plane after that final rally, turned, and waved to the crowd gathered below for a final time as the McCain 2008 presidential campaign wound down. Hours later McCain would call Senator Barack Obama to concede defeat and congratulate the new president-elect.

Reuters Boston staff photographer Brian Snyder is traveling with Republican U.S. presidential nominee John McCain through election day November 4. He and his colleague Jason Reed traveling with the Obama campaign are posting daily blog entries on the Reuters photographers blog sharing their experiences and favorite pictures of the day from their campaign coverage.

The custom painted “Straight Talk Express” McCain campaign bus is one of the carry-over themes and props from Senator John McCain’s presidential run in the year 2000. Though reporters and photographers can no longer ride on the bus with McCain to experience first hand the “straight talk” he was famous for dispensing during the 2000 campaign to groups of media huddled inside, the senator does use it periodically now for his arrival at campaign stops. We don’t know (and neither do some of the Senator’s staff members who we asked) exactly how many “Straight Talk Express” buses are now positioned and roaming the country waiting for the senator to drop in by plane and jump aboard. The media traveling with the campaign see them suddenly appear at airports in states from coast to coast. Despite the fact that the bus is no longer the place of continual interaction with reporters that it once was, the symbolism of the bus and its legendary role in the 2000 campaign seem to live on.

Reuters Washington staff photographer Jason Reed is traveling with Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Barack Obama through election day November 4. He and his colleague Brian Snyder traveling with the McCain campaign are posting daily photographers blog entries sharing their experiences and favorite pictures of the day from their campaign coverage.

Pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere! It’s Halloween on the Obama presidential campaign trail.

One of the quirkiest American traditions I know, which, as a child growing up in Australia I didn’t really experience and therefore still find a little hard to understand what it’s all about, is Halloween. A custom brought over to the United States in some version by Irish immigrants in the 1800’s, Halloween had its origins in a Celtic end-of-harvest festival celebrated by pagans, and in its modern form invokes ghoulish-themed activities such as trick-or-treating, ghost tours and the carving of jack-o’-lanterns from giant pumpkins.
 
Every four years the paths of Halloween traditions and the U.S. Presidential election collide and so it played out once again in front of the cameras Thursday, during our travels with Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama in Florida. Following a campaign rally in Sarasota, Florida, we passed by the United Methodist Church’s pumpkin patch and stopped by for Obama to buy a couple of pumpkins.

 
Positioned a few vehicles back in the motorcade behind Obama’s car, gathered in a bus were the ‘embedded’ photographers, journalists and cameramen, plus a smattering of local tv news crews and newspaper writers. The bus door flung open and we all spilled out onto the pavement, rushing like a stampeding herd of elephants over garbage cans and roadside curbs, resembling a Japanese game show where the winner is subjected to a series of punishing and humiliating hurdles in order to win the prize. Our prize today was a prime spot in just the right place to cover the five-minute pumpkin circus.

After a short walk around, trying to lift up what must have been the largest and heaviest pumpkin in the patch and feigning a sore back from the experience, Senator Obama narrowed his choice down to two more modest sized offerings and paid cash for them to the Methodist church volunteer. The proceeds of the pumpkin sale went to help the needy.
 
Once back at the airport, enroute to the next frenzied stop on the campaign tour in Virginia, one of the pumpkins took a flight of its own, thrown up the stairs of the campaign plane by Obama Trip Director Marvin Nicholson to Obama’s Special Assistant Reggie Love.
 
Hours later and hundreds of miles away, rounding out what became the theme of the day, Senator Obama took to the stage during a late night election rally in Columbia, Missouri, where the stage was decked out with carved jack-o’-lanterns with a distinctly political theme, spelling out Obama’s name and encouraging the American people to vote in the November 4 election.