As one of the official photographers for the Mike Lee Senatorial campaign I was asked to cover the celebration party last Tuesday evening.   Mike Lee supporters gathered at Noah’s in South Jordon to watch the votes come in for the primary election.  Everyone was on pins an needles at the beginning of the event, not sure what the outcome would be.  The polls, I was told, varied.  One showed Mike trailing, one showed ahead, and their own internal polls showed the race a tie.  The news media was there – challenging me - as I was not used to shooting with the Paparazzi.  Mike set the tone with a short speech saying that whatever happened he would support the winner in the November election.  Plenty of food was laid out and the conversations were on going through the event.  As the votes began to roll in there were periods of cheering as each new update showed Mike in the lead.  For a while the lead seemed to dwindle as the counts were updated, but that eventually flattened  well into the evening and soon we knew Mike was the winner.  The event broke into celebration as Mike left the war room and wandered back into the main room – hugging everyone.  Telephone calls rolled in – including one from his opponent Tim Bridgewater congratulating Mike on his win.  A victory speech of thank you’s and interviews with the media followed.  The night was electric! 

     Covering a political figure is different than studio portrait photography.  For one thing I have little control over the available light.  Sometimes I’m forced to make my own while other times I have to make use of what it there.  As an example, during Mike’s victory speech there was light falling on the side of his face from one of the news team’s video camera.  I took advantage of that by positioning myself away from the light using it as a key light.  The light would have been flat to the video camera’s view, but from my view it added dimension to Mike’s face giving me a much nicer image.  Another problem with this type of photography is that it is on the fly.  There is no posing – at least not much.  You have to anticipate and be ready to catch the subject at anytime with changing light conditions and little time to react.  It’s  near  impossible to get a full boat of  technically perfect images.  This is not unlike covering a wedding  photo-journalistically.  The important thing to me in this situation is to capture the emotion.  If I can do that I have been successful.  If I can do that and be technically perfect it is icing on the cake.

One of the advantages of being an official photographer for the campaign is that I could go anywhere.  That helped me in using the videographer’s light that I mentioned about, but it was not good for the other photographers.  While I was on the stage I ended up in much of the footage coming from the news photographers.  I turned up in morning news, and in the Tribune.  I just hope their cameras are alright, but I diverge.  It was an emotional night for this Utah photographer and I was glad to be a part of it.  I can’t wait until November when I hope to become the photographer for a brand new United States Senator.