Just because I walk around with a camera most of the time doesn’t mean I am your very own personal event photographer. I will still take pictures of whoever and whatever I want to and submit whichever picture I think is best for the paper. 

I understand that some people love to be in the paper. I get it, it is pretty cool for people to come up and say they saw your picture in the paper. At the end of the day, I am not getting paid by people at certain events or ceremonies to take keepsake pictures for everyone, nor am I required to get certain people in the picture to make them look good in the paper. 

I bring this up to go along with my other statement: I hate election season. This is my first election season at the paper and it is just as much fun as you would expect. Now that we are down to the wire, politicians are participating in events I guarantee they won’t be at next year. 

These politicians, who will remain nameless, want all the good publicity they can and think jumping in pictures they have no business being in is the way to do it. Some politicians and candidates actually do things and contribute to events I cover and will continue coming after the election, but the problem is not all of them do. 

I was at an event the other day taking pictures of people in front of something specific to my story. I wanted a picture with as few people as possible that were directly related to the thing in my story. I ended up with multiple candidates and politicians along with some other random people in the picture blocking the very thing I was trying to showcase. Huge group pictures are almost always ugly for the paper, by the way. 

I ended up getting what I wanted after humoring a few people by snapping some pictures I knew I wasn’t going to use and then kicking them out and getting the people I actually wanted in the picture. I don't understand the politicians who just go to events to get votes and then disappear. How bad do you think it looks when you are constantly in the public during election season, but disappear the rest of the years you are in office? There is someone running for reelection that I have never even seen until recently, and I go to a lot of community events. 

It also makes my job a little harder because we can’t really take pictures of candidates because then it looks like we favor one over another when in reality I couldn’t care less who wins.

We also aren’t really in the business of giving free ads. So to all the politicians and candidates who think the best course of action is to go to a random community event and jump in a picture to prove you were there: don’t. We have a lovely ad department that will be glad to help you take out a proper ad and your integrity can remain intact. 

Standard reporter Bethany Porter can be reached at 473-2191.