Photographers Blog

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.

Reuters Washington staff photographer Jason Reed is traveling with the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama through election day.

Bill Clinton finally stands on the same stage with and endorses Barack Obama in the flesh – just days before election day.

Once a political foe of Barack Obama as the former president actively and energetically embraced the presidential primary campaign of his wife, Hillary Clinton, it was only a matter of time before former President Bill Clinton had to rally in person behind the Democratic party’s presidential nominee, Barack Obama.

Reuters Washington staff photographer Jason Reed is traveling with the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama through election day.

The hardships that fervent supporters of political candidates go through to catch a glimpse of their man in public are sometimes amazing. In blustery rain, bordering on freezing sleet in the Pennsylvania college town of Chester, thousands gathered from the dawn hours to score a prime position in the front row of an outdoor rally with Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama at Widener University. The conditions were so poor that in a gesture of compassion, Obama brought the event forward by about an hour so that the poor soaked and freezing souls could shorten their waiting time to hear his stump speech.

To protect our cameras from the conditions, a couple of plastic hotel laundry bags and some duct tape were employed as makeshift rain covers for our gear. Even though I go into covering all the events as if they were my last, I remember that no picture is worth a drowned camera which no longer functions! Without working equipment,  a photographer is relegated to being just a spectator to history.

Reuters Washington staff photographer Jason Reed is traveling with the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama through election day.

It is on extremely rare occasions that individual wire service photographers get exclusive behind the scenes access with the U.S. presidential candidates for even just a few moments during the 2008 campaign. When we do it represents a fleeting chance to grab a few unguarded moments where the candidates are more relaxed and less wary of scrutiny away from the glare of the lights and the constant presence of dozens of intrusive cameras and microphones. When you cover the same man, day in and day out, with most of the time spent jostling with dozens of other photographers to get essentially the same shots from the same positions, any chance to get a few exclusive unguarded moments with just the candidate and yourself is a huge bonus.

One of those rare opportunities occurred Monday night as I requested and was granted access backstage and behind the scenes with the Democratic Presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama before a campaign rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

My favorite picture from the past 24 hours was a general view of Obama as he arrived at a rally in Denver, Colorado, where the largest crowd ever assembled for one of his rallies had gathered to see him. An independent count from a police chief in Denver had over 100,000 people at the downtown rally. From the moment our bus rolled up we were all impressed by the size of the crowd and the scope of this event, and the photographers all set out to find an angle that would produce a telling moment and image that captured the event. This picture is a simple overall composition that easily shows the scale of the event.

The third and final debate between the 2008 U.S. presidential nominees had just ended. Democratic nominee Senator Barack Obama and Republican nominee Senator John McCain had just shaken hands moments before and turned away from each other, when Senator McCain suddenly lunged forward with his hands out in front of him and stuck out his tongue.

It appeared to me that McCain was reacting to moderator Bob Schieffer informing him that he was headed the wrong way off the stage, that he was not supposed to be following Senator Obama, but was supposed to be heading towards his own wife and family around the other side of the table.

In any case, when I saw McCain lunge and his hands start to come up I hit the shutter and made two frames before it was over. Some other photographers who were there expressed surprise when they saw my picture and said they had never seen it happen at all and asked when it had occurred. When I saw the television tape of it later on the news I too was surprised at how momentary and fast the move by Senator McCain was. Strangely enough Senator McCain again stuck his tongue out in a similar way 3-4 minutes later while standing between his wife Cindy and Senator Obama at the front of the stage, a moment captured by my colleague Shannon Stapleton and other wire service photographers in attendance and once again shown on national and international television.

It didn’t take long this time to find a photograph that leapt off the screen. I had intended to select the one image from the Reuters daily file that knocks your socks off. The problem is I found two!

Of course Barack Obama’s speech at the Victory Column in Tiergarten Park in Berlin has to be a contender, for the subject matter if nothing else. But subject matter is not enough. Jim Young’s picture does the trick. It is not the conventional shot of a politician talking from a dais. The composition is pleasing on the eye; it contains, in a very simple way, all the elements necessary for a news picture and, despite the fact it is almost a silhouette, the figure of the U.S. presidential candidate is unmistakable.

The other photograph is an absolute winner, and much more of a silhouette. Of course animal pictures are always popular, but Radu Sigheti’s picture of a giraffe in Kenya, with birds sitting on it’s neck, is just a very simple and elegant image that speaks for itself.