Cran-didates

October is upon us, which around here means cranberry harvest time. Wednesday morning I had the opportunity to spend a little time at one of the McPhail farms shooting pix of guys harvesting berries.
The bogs are flooded and then the bushes are beaten to shake the berries loose. Workers then wade out and corral the berries and send them up a conveyor system into large wooden boxes called totes for transport to the Ocean Spray processing plant.
When I first moved here eight years ago I went out to shoot harvest pretty much every year, but hadn't been knee-deep in berry water for a couple years, so it was fun to get back out there.

Last night I was at Hilltop Auditorium for the final candidates forum before the ballots are sent out. The big draw were the two sheriff candidates, Scott Johnson, to the right, and incumbent sheriff John Didion.
Sheriff Didion gives a stoic appearance, and while he articulates his answers particularly well, he doesn't show much in the way of emotion while doing so. In this case my view switched to Johnson, who I think in two debates with Didion that I've been to has yet to look at him directly, which I thought was kind of unusual.

There were also speakers there to lobby for votes one way or the other on ballot initiatives. I wasn't assigned to shoot these folks, but still found a view I liked from the balcony for a few. I'm going to try and remember to try this again at one of the dozen or so assignments I get in this hall a year.
Here is Lisa Ayers, one of the candidates for county commissioner how spoke last night as well. I wanted to get something like this of each candidate, but didn't work out. These kind of forums can be tough to shoot, as there is little going, with candidates sitting at a table answering questions. To make it tougher the audience stays seated as the moderator asks questions they have written down, so there was no real interplay between the two. Some times shooting politics is fun, other times, it's just tough to get something vaguely interesting.

-DKM