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January 07, 2006

Gov. Mark Warner & Shannon Valentine

It was very refreshing tonight to get back into action photo-wise and cover Gov. Mark Warner's visit to Lynchburg in support of Shannon Valentine. Shannon is our local candidate for Delegate to fill the seat recently vacated by Preston Bryant in Lynchburg. The entire campaign process has been a whirlwind between Bryant's announcement and the election this coming Tuesday (January 10th).

Governor Warner came to town this evening to show his support for Shannon and to do some campaigning on her behalf right there on Main Street. After arriving outside of the local Democratic Party headquaters in the Galleria, the two took questions from the media for a few minutes and then headed off for numerous impromptu stops among the various shops and other businesses along Main Street.

There are two things I can tell you with great certainty:

1) Governor Warner has a stride that requires mere mortals of average height (such as myself) to practically jog if you want to keep up. I've photographed the Governor in a number of venues (Lynchburg: 1, 2, Boston: 1, 2, 3, 4, Roanoke) and they usually involved a podium, a crowd and a total free range of about 30 square feet. Tonight was a completely different story. :)

2) The Governor was quite clearly having a great time catching people off guard. It was also quite obvious that the people he caught had an equally good time being the focus of his gregarious attention. It's not every day that you're browsing in a pawn shop and suddenly have the most admired Governor in the nation come striding in, stretch out his arm to shake your hand and say (with that huge Warner smile): "Hi! I'm the Governor of Virginia. How are you?"

Let me also mention that photographing this whole thing was a tremendous amount of fun.

Governor Warner and Shannon dropped in on the patrons of at least one clothing store, the country's oldest operating pawn shop, a pizzeria that has only been open for two days, a jewelry store, two banks, a tax preparer's office, Genworth, and the coolest barber shop I've ever seen.

News & Advance: Warner Tours Main Street

After our jog (and his walk), the Governor and Shannon were whisked off to a fundraiser at the beautiful home of Nancy and Carl Moore. There were easily several hundred supporters from both political parties on hand to greet Gov. Warner and express their support for Shannon. Both gave very passionate speeches in the packed foyer (I always love taking photos when I can't raise my arms... :) ) and spent the next hour shaking hands and having their photos taken with friends and supporters.

This brings me to the last piece of this brief entry:

Gov. Mark Warner & Shannon Valentine - Lynchburg - January 6, 2006
(31 photos - 1 page)

The gallery link above contains a collection of shots from Main Street and the fundraiser including any shots I took for people with the Governor and/or Shannon. People are welcome to keep copies downloaded from the blog and, if you're interested in prints, can drop me an email and I'll send you the high resolution originals suitable for printing (you can send them to most any digital photo outlet for quality prints). I don't recommend trying to print the shots from the web since they are not fully color corrected or high enough resolution for decent print reproduction.

For those that asked tonight, my role with the Democratic Party of Virginia and the local party is purely a voluntary one in support of the candidates. I do not charge for any photographs I take at these events. For those interested, my archive of political photos from events over the last two years is located here.

Tonight was a lot of fun and I was glad to get a chance to see and photograph Governor Warner again in his final eight days in office. I'll be shooting for the Democratic Party of Virginia at Governor-Elect Tim Kaine's inauguration ceremony in Williamsburg next Saturday as well as the Inaugural Ball in Richmond that same night. Look for photos from those events here on the blog next weekend.

Colonial Williamsburg is one of my favorite places on earth. The fact that Tim Kaine will be sworn in there next week on the steps of the beautiful old Capitol building designed by Sir Christopher Wren is especially exciting to me. I'm heading up there a day early to get in some pre-inauguration photos as well as some more personal shots of this beautiful colonial town. I'll place the personal shots on my other blog (halfpress.com) to accompany those from my last visit there in September 2004.

I hope you enjoy the photos and, by all means, if you live in Lynchburg or the two associated precints of Madison Heights: GET OUT THERE TUESDAY AND VOTE FOR SHANNON VALENTINE! :)

Posted by amahler at January 7, 2006 12:26 AM

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