PORTLAND, Maine — Everyone ducked except the news photographers, who rushed to get even closer.
That’s the first thing I noticed while watching video clips of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump over the weekend — and I wasn’t surprised.
That’s what we photojournalists do.
Whether we’re covering a basketball game, house fire, fishing derby or a presidential candidate’s speech, news photographers always want to get closer to the action. It’s baked into our souls and lauded in our lore.
Every photojournalist knows what legendary war photographer Robert Capa once said: “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” Capa covered the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939 and went in with American troops on D-Day in 1944.
“It’s innate, a gut reaction to get closer,” said Russ Dillingham, a Maine photojournalist who has covered Lewiston-Auburn for his hometown paper, the Sun Journal, since 1983. “We’re going to get the picture, one way or another.”
As for me, I’m no war photographer but I’ve gone out onto questionable river ice, been threatened with arrest several times, climbed high into trees and been nailed with every kind of sports ball you can think of, while attempting to get closer to a picture. I imagine every photojournalist in Maine has done the same.
Maine-based photojournalist Michael Seamans, who has covered stories from the Arctic, to Africa and Ukraine, said instinct and well-earned muscle memory sometimes takes over.
“There are times when you forget you’re even present because you’re so immersed in what you’re seeing,” Seamans said.
Getting closer isn’t always the smartest instinct, however. Capa stepped on a land mine and was killed while covering France’s war in Vietnam in 1954.
But despite the major and minor dangers, we photojournalists are always trying to be the eyes for members of the public, to show them what they cannot see, in places they cannot be. I’ve made pictures of many presidential hopefuls speaking in Maine over the past 25 years. It’s not an easy assignment — even without bullets flying.
Handlers usually only give photographers a few minutes of shooting time in the well, beneath the podium, before herding the camera folk back to cordoned-off pens, far away, opposite the candidate.
The pictures from up front are always better. That’s how photography works. When closer, picture makers can use wider-angled, more intimate-feeling lenses that allow viewers to feel like they’re on the scene, right in the action.
Usually at the end of those presidential hopeful speeches, candidates meet supporters down front while posing for selfies. That’s where the best news pictures usually happen. It’s the only unstaged, unscripted part of the event, where real things might happen.
It’s also absolute chaos, with photographers streaming out of the pen, joining the crush, trying — of course — to get closer.
“It’s a kinetic, frenetic experience,” Seamans said.
When the candidate is the current — or former — president, there’s an added layer of Secret Service security making picture gathering even more difficult. All equipment must be placed in the venue hours before the event so bomb-sniffing dogs can do their job, looking for explosives. I’ve even been asked to take a picture, then bring it up on the view screen for a Secret Service agent, to prove my camera was really a camera.
Then there are the rooftop snipers, an increasingly regular sight at any outdoor rally or event in Maine. The folks up there with rifles are always a bit unnerving, as they keep watch through their scopes.
The first time I ever noticed snipers was at an anti-Nazi rally in Lewiston in January 2003. Clad all in white, they crept along a snow-covered roof overlooking the event. Since then, I’ve seen them often, especially at Portland’s recent anti-racism marches, starting in the summer of 2020.
What’s always particularly alarming is that I can rarely make out distinguishable uniforms. From below, it’s impossible to tell if you’re looking at law enforcement officers or terrorists.
But despite the difficulty of the job, it’s clear from the pictures of a bloodied Trump, his fist raised, good photojournalists are ready to get the picture, no matter what.
The only thing harder than getting a picture like that, Seamans reckons, is being there and not getting it.
“That’s the angst of photojournalism,” he said.
