Ash Ponders in the Wall Street Journal for Thanksgiving Travel during Covid

With Covid-19 Pandemic Surging, Millions Travel for Thanksgiving

This was a fun one, I believe most photojournalists find this sort of assignment rather tricky. Stop folks going about their lives, ask them some nosy questions on record, then try to make a decent photo of them. It’s got a lot of moving parts, many of which can go wrong. I base my whole approach on how I saw Trip Gabriel do it once while working together for a story in the Times. It’s impromptu, but all while tacking towards a goal. I am such a planner that I am usually a bit nervous, but for me, they usually end up being a blast—even if the portraits aren’t my best.

I knew that getting out to photograph early was key, I’m not sure the assigning editor realized that all the rest stops in Arizona are like, a good bit away from Phoenix. I stopped at a truck stop first just before sunrise, to get visual signifiers of travel. I used some 1-3” exposures to get a sense of the folks zipping down the highway. Even though the sun hadn’t come up yet, the sky was really getting pretty bright and I wished I had had a GND, but I don’t own a set up yet. (SOON!) 

After getting a bunch of those, I got to the rest stop proper just after sun rise and spoke with like a hundred people, only 6 total people were willing to go on record and even those were kinda cagey about it. Oh well. It happens. I still had a great time and the sun rise was gorgeous. 

I tried to make more traffic photos closer to sun down, but they look goofy or boring. A painter I once knew, David Pettibone, told me that there comes a time when every effort you make will make your painting worse, the trick to art is knowing when to stop. Shoulda heeded his advice this day. Anyway there are more photos from this assignment up on my instagram.

Phoenix based; available for work in Latin America and the US Southwest.
+14808334800
ashponders@gmail.com
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