Proving your mettle on the campaign trail

The candidates have all left the state now. For someone who likes covering politics - especially the presidential variety -  It was a great week.

I love covering presidential campaigns. This year, for a change, despite having an always late-to-the-party April presidential primary, Pennsylvania's votes will count. Unlike in previous cycles, when each party's nominations get wrapped up long before they hit our state, this year every remaining presidential candidate campaigned here.

There is something aesthetically and intrinsically compelling for me as a photographer about trying to cover an event or place that doesn't change much. Or that I've covered many times over the years. It makes me examine what makes something news, forces me to see old things in new ways, and most important, keeps me from falling asleep while on assignment.

Following a presidential candidate is a prime example of the exercise. During this time every four years photographers from the AP, Getty, Reuters, and sometimes newspapers (like the Inquirer) travel nonstop with the men and women who would be president. If making a big speech, stopping at a diner or coffee shop, attending town hall meetings, forums and debates every day staring well before the New Hampshire Primary and Iowa Caucuses proves the candidates' mettle, then trailing them with cameras and laptops dangling every day certainly demonstrates the grit of these photojournalists.

The wire photographers especially can never let up. They have to provide, every single day: a new headshot, wide front view, side "cutaway' photo, crowd scene, closeup, long lens front shot, and then… one "different" kind of image, for their news clients, who only want to scroll through the latest versions of the daily drill.

I don't know that I would every want to do it full time, but it is always fun when I get to dip my feet into the big pool. I've covered either New Hampshire or Iowa for the Inquirer every cycle since 1984, but we didn't send a photographer to either state this time around, so I was really looking forward to the Pennsylvania Primary mattering for once.

Thinking about that "daily drill," I came up with a couple old campaign photography standards - call them visual campaign clichés - that I could attempt to capture when I would be assigned to shoot the candidates here. I called it a Hat Trick of "Different Images" (the Flyers were still in the Stanley Cup NHL Playoffs or I might have called it a Trifecta or Triptych, Triad or Trinity. Or if it were closer to Kentucky Derby time, a Triple Crown.

Anyway, these are the three "Different Images" I came up with:

Presidential campaign "different photo" cliché #3: "The Speaker's Shadow."

This shadow belongs to Rev. Leslie Callahan, pastor of St. Paul's Baptist Church in Philadelphia, cast as she stands to close a forum on gun violence with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former Attorney General Eric Holder at her church.

Presidential campaign "different photo" cliché #2: "The Silhouette."

Usually a campaign photographer has to create "The Silhouette" by framing the candidate in front of a spotlight, But there was no heavy lifting required this time. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton visited the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Overbrook, speaking to the congregation not from the lighted sanctuary, but from the front row of the much darker nave.

Presidential campaign "different photo" cliché #1: "The Body Part."

This cliché usually manifests itself in closeups of mouths, eyes or hands (and sometimes, hair). Here we see the "slight" right hand - one of the pair that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said, "can hit a golf ball 285 yards," while responding to the "small hands" insult thrown at him by former candidate Marco Rubio back in March. Trump was leaving the stage following a rally at West Chester University.

Now, onto Cleveland and Philadelphia! Oh, yeah. For more Pennsylvania Primary photos by the staff of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News click here, or on any of he photos.