Perceptions at a tea party
UPDATE: I clarified some language here as I accidentally referred to the 2nd photo when I should have been referring to picture #1. It is now correct! -Mike
I spent last Saturday covering a tea party rally in Stafford. I expected that there would be a lot of signs and flag-waving as seen at every other tea party and I was not disappointed in that regard. I wanted to try and get an overall shot that didn’t misrepresent how many or how few people showed up. The reporter and I took an informal count and estimated 200-300 people. In order to get the overall I put a 14mm on the camera and held it above my head with a monopod and came up with these two frames. While it doesn’t show the entire crowd, many of whom were off to the side, at least it didn’t make it look like 10 people showed up.
Initially I preferred the first one; the guy was giving a speech called An Angry American, getting pretty worked up and gesturing a lot with his hands. We ended up running the second one, mostly because nearly every person I showed frame #1 to thought of a nazi salute. I wonder if that is because of their own feelings about this political movement or if it really does look like that? I was concerned that using the first picture would be considered unfair or at least editorializing if readers saw the same thing. The idea of objectivity (and that discussion is worth an entire post on its own!) is drilled into your head in the newspaper world but I wonder if I went too far in the other direction and sanitized what actually was going on there out of some kind of political correctness. Was I unnecessarily concerned about this? Am I overthinking this? Which one would you have published?
Quick pic from the General Assembly
I’m sitting in the basement of the General Assembly building in Richmond, killing time between the opening session this afternoon and tonight’s last State of the Commonwealth speech by Governor Kaine. Below, a nice slice of life amid a morning of procedural matters.
Delegate Bobby Orrock introduces Speaker Bill Howell to his granddaughter Abigail Orrock at the Capitol in Richmond, Va on January 13, 2010. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Politicians
This picture is pretty dated considering Creigh Deeds lost his bid for governor of Virginia a couple weeks ago but I wanted to put it up here anyway. He was shaking hands at a high school football game and I like how he is isolated amid this group of people. He seemed a bit ill-at-ease with the public and he spent more time chatting up local pols and the political reporter than meeting and greeting. I didn’t have a chance to photograph his opponent, Bob McDonnell, as I had the good sense to take vacation over election day. On a national scale, people made a big deal about the GOP winning in Virginia. Personally, I think it had to do with the quality of candidates more than a referendum on the president and his policies.
The other night Rep. Rob Wittman came through town to hold a meeting at a VFW post to discuss veterans’ issues. The upside was that nobody unlocked the post so he held it on the steps. Challenging light, but definitely better than fluorescent tubes and a podium! As expected people spent a lot of time griping about, taxes, healthcare and the evil, left-wing media. And by evil, left-wing media, I mean my employer and by extension, me. It was a little scary when one guy started asking Wittman if he was going to hold congressional hearings investigating the infiltration in government of ‘avowed Marxists and Communists.’ What was scarier was that others agreed with him and nobody, including the congressman, tried to talk any kind of sense to the man. Every time I meet these people, the idea of becoming an ex-pat photog in some steamy tropical land is more and more appealing! It’s like the conversation is poisoned by an irrational anger that makes people unable to speak reasonably and respectfully to one another. As if the world was black & white and not shades of the Zone System! For the record, I’m all about zone V!
Tax Day Tea Party in Fredericksburg
Don Giles of Fredericksburg carries a sign during a Tax Day Tea Party at which people protested what they see as excessive taxation and government spending outside the Fredericksburg Post Office on April 15, 2009. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
I was assigned to cover a tax day tea party in the Burg yesterday. At first I wanted to do portraits of some of the people and record some audio of them explaining why they showed up. When I arrived, I found a lot more people than originally expected. They were packed into a fairly small area so I bagged my original idea and just tried to get the flavor of the scene. Sadly there were no counter-protesters so it was difficult to find much more than sign pictures. Anyway, here’s a little slideshow I put together in Final Cut Pro, which I am quickly warming up to. Now I just need to improve my video skills…
Anyway, I’ve been quiet lately and need to post a backlog of pictures and news so look for that soon.
