Photo Blog: Marc Lester at the Convention : Photojournalism in the Deep End of the Political Pool

Photojournalism in the Deep End of the Political Pool

Posted by Marc Lester

Posted: September 4, 2008 - 2:55 pm

Toto, we're not in Alaska anymore.

I think it was like two or three weeks ago that I last covered a press conference at Governor Sarah Palin’s office in Anchorage. I walked in a little early and had time to kill so I sat in her office waiting area and read their newspapers. When the press conference started, I was the only still photographer there.

Flash forward to today. A reporter and I get a call at our hotel telling us that if we’d like to cover a Palin-related event, we’d better get to downtown Minneapolis in twenty minutes. What’s going to happen? Details are few.

Unfamiliar with downtown Minneapolis, we get there with no time to spare. There we wait with a small pool of reporters and photographers. We’re led upstairs to the campaign Secret Service detail. Our bags are inspected, our backgrounds checked. We wait.
Finally we rush to waiting vans parked in a closed-off street outside the swank hotel. Two large vans are marked “Palin Press.” We cram in.

A police-escorted motorcade makes its move. We’re headed to the Minneapolis Museum of Russian Art, a small building in a residential neighborhood. We’re told this is a luncheon of the Republican Governor’s Association.

We’re led down a back alley and herded near a rear entrance. We wait. KTUU’s Jason Moore and Scott Jensen met up with the pack and asked for access.
Finally let inside, we packed into a small, dark gallery room. It had been pre-lit for the event.
A podium. Governor Palin stood with eight other Republican governors. She made a statement rehashing many of the points of her convention speech last night. She took no questions when she was done. In fifteen minutes, maybe, it’s over and we’re rushed out the back door.

We’re ordered back to the vans, not even allowed to watch as she exits the building. From down the street I made a couple frames as Palin exits, paparazzi style.

We’re transported back downtown. Walking into the hotel we asked the Secret Service when we’ll be allowed to go back to our car. He assured us we can go. “I won’t arrest you,” he says.

Awaiting entrance to the press event.I hasten to set an exposure.Comments for the media.Back to the motorcade.Across the street from the museum, a polite protest.Return to Photo Blog homepage

Photo Blog: Marc Lester at the Convention

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Photojournalism in the Deep End of the Political Pool

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