Ash Ponders in the Wall Street Journal with Election Coverage

Election Day 2020: Economy, Coronavirus and Race Split U.S. Electorate

Election Day! I’ve heard from many veteran photojournalists that Election Day is a grueling fast paced nightmare of a day that starts before dawn and doesn’t end until well past the cows coming home. Election Day 2020 was not like that for me. My editor at the Wall Street Journal didn’t even want me out before 9am. I was wide awake by 4am giddy with anticipation and just had to hit the streets anyway. I got to a nearby polling place at a church and made some beautiful if slightly grainy images of folks lining up to vote before dawn and then headed to Camelback Mountain to get some sunrise photos of Paradise Valley. Of course, none of those photos ran.

In fact none of the photos I made before 9am ran. I’m a goof. The rest of the day my editor had me pegged to staff writer, Eliza Collins, with whom I have a pretty good working relationship. We interviewed and photographed a dozen folks all over the Valley (seriously I logged so many miles) as well as Mark Kelly. 

I expected to be up until the wee hours of the morning still filing images as the results came in, but instead by 4 in the afternoon I was done. I begged my editor to let me at least photographer folks in line at golden hour, which must have bemused them (what kinda contract worker wants to stay on extra long for no extra pay?) but as with my early photos the golden hour stuff didn’t run either. Lesson learned? (NOPE). At around 7pm I told the WSJ security team that I was done for the day.

Then Dom Valente, Caitlin O’Hara and I went cruising to get images of folks reacting to results as the came in. I should have just gone home, but I was feeling too hyped. Probably too much Red Bull. We visited the Maricopa Democrats and LUCHA where Dom and Caitlin both got excellent photos. I tried to file my images from these events but my jetpack was dead. Oops.

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