I’ll admit this was my first time covering a large political rally. I’ve done election night stuff and covered politicians (including presidents Clinton and W. Bush) but never had the opportunity to do anything campaign related. We don’t do a lot of news at our community weeklies, so it was nice being in this situation.
After waiting in the long line of traffic waiting to park at the football stadium, I met up with our reporter almost three hours before the rally was set to start. Media and VIPs were directed to the parking lot directly outside the stadium. After a quick pat down and dog sniffing of my gear, I made it inside the event. Media spots were ample, but we were cordoned off from the rest of the rally-goers. The crowd was fairly subdued (probably because of the mid 90-degree temps and blazing sun), so wading through the crowd wouldn’t have gotten me too much anyway. Several people actually passed out from the heat while waiting for the rally to start. One even passed out during Obama’s speech, and the presidential hopeful did his best to alert medics and even tossed the woman his own bottle of water.
Amazingly, the rally started promptly at the announced time of 6:45. After a few passionate speeches by local Democrats, Obama and Biden took the stage just after 7 p.m. to a roar of support. Due to the start time, the sun began setting directly behind the main bleachers just as Obama took the stage. I did the best I could to avoid the flare of shooting directly into the sun, but several shots were still unusable. Fortunately, as Biden finished speaking, the sun went down far enough to not be a problem.
I was able to move around freely during the speeches thoughout the large swath of the football field alotted to journalists. From the field level behind the supporters immediately in front of Obama, I was able to get the shot of him framed by the signs. I stood on the steps of the press riser at stage left to get most of my other shots. The riser itself was filled with TV journalists and cameras from ABC News, CNN, etc., but the steps weren’t blocked, so I was able to get more of a unique angle than the majority of the photographers shooting from the second press riser directly in front of the stage.
Once Obama was done speaking, I hung around for awhile while he shook hands and took pictures with supporters. He had a herd of secret service agents shuffling him through the crowd, but from atop the press riser with my 300mm lens and 1.4x teleconverters, I managed to get a few clean shots of him interacting with the crowd.
Fortunately I wasn’t under any deadline pressure to get the photos edited, because I got trapped inside the stadium until the entire motorcade hit the road and then waited again while the police officers figured out how to guide traffic out of the stadium lot. With the long holiday weekend, I knew no one was even going to be in the office for three days, so I took my time with the edit. They ended up using three photos on the cover of the Dublin Villager and another inside. In all, it was a good experience. With Ohio being such a hotly contested state, I imagine I’ll have a few more opportunities to cover the candidates before the November election.
