I went to Richmond for a few days to cover the Virginia election. To much fanfare, I am back.
I got used to interviewing politicians over the summer. It was a steep learning curve for sure, but after a few assignments, it became less intimidating. Celebrities are just regular people in nicer clothes.
But standing outside Abigail Spanberger’s campaign bus on a stepladder above a gaggle of Virginia Commonwealth University students was very novel. I watched her greet individual supporters like old friends with the rote efficiency of a high school principal passing out diplomas. Greeting, hug, photo, thank-you-next, delivered with an unfailing bolted-on smile that makes my cheeks ache just thinking about it.
Last weekend, I I went down to Richmond this past weekend to cover Virginia’s off-year election. Ducking around rallies and meet-and-greets, I observed how big-name journalists cover elections and pretended that carrying a camera bigger than my head was a normal thing to do.
My trip was courtesy of Battleground Virginia, a class where my classmates and I spent most of the semester studying the election and how to cover debates and polls before we went down to observe the action. Of the 24 students who mostly studied political science or journalism, I was the only photo major. It was thus very important for me to be The Photo Guy. Photography is my entire personality now, so it’s all I have left.
Fortunately for my self-worth, I succeeded. My work impressed my classmates, my professors and the dean of my college, whose Instagram featured it the day after Election Day. Most importantly, I was quite happy with it. I looked at my pictures and thought they were good enough to be on the Getty Images feed, or maybe even the New York Times Instagram (after being purchased off the Getty Images feed).
To check my hypothesis, I checked the Getty Images feed on the evening of November 3. Earlier that day, I photographed Spanberger’s appearance outside her bus and introduced myself to Win McNamee, the Pulitzer-winning chief news photographer at Getty. The feed confirmed that my best images were absolutely strong enough to be on the wire. But the whole truth was quite horrifying. For every strong photo I got, it seemed like McNamee got three. And he had moved around, capturing angles I had never even seen. I was humbled.
In the hotel conference room, I showed my classmates (and the dean of SOC) the Getty feed. Look at this shit, I said. He captured her out of focus in front of the signatures on her tour bus. This pisses me off just looking at it. I should have thought of that. And then my classmates told me to put Getty away so they could look at my pictures.
I had more fun at the one event where my classmates and I were the only photojournalists there. At a GOP meet-and-greet in Prince George, I got inches away from the entire Republican slate plus Governor Glenn Youngkin. I also had some great interviews, including one with a former state representative. Then afterwards, there were no award-winning professionals around to could compare myself to.
The interviews were very rewarding, even if I wasn’t doing as many as my less-photographically-inclined classmates were. I’m not going to air anyone out on my blog, but I can tell you most of the people I spoke to were patient, happy to speak to media and had understandable foundations for their political leanings. Reading my classmates’ filed vignettes, I saw that their interactions were equally as interesting. The human experience is very diverse.
This trip definitely made me a stronger interviewer. Sending us out into the field, our professors tasked us with finding out what voters cared about and why. I asked just that, then I tugged on specific threads. When pushed, some voters revealed personal reasons for their vote. Others just couldn’t articulate why they liked a candidate.
Looking back, the whole experience was surreal. It’s hard to picture me of all people getting dropped off to photograph stories alongside some of the top journalists in the continent then going to stand on the risers behind Abigail Spanberger during her victory speech, all for basically free. Why would I, of all people, get to do that?
I have thoughts on why, but I don’t want to put them all here. It’s already been too long since I hit Publish on one of these things.
Ben Ackman's Photography Website 