Being a campaign photographer can be incredibly boring. You get stuck taking photos of talking heads on podiums wearing the same colored suits and ties over and over. You get tasked with photographing the variations of the same campaign posters and speeches again and again.
And then, if you’re AFP photographer Gerard Julien, you spot the reflection of the leading opposition candidate in a drop of water—and you make that picture work.
The caption, courtesy of Getty Images, is: “A picture taken on May 4, 2012 in Marseille, southern France, shows a drop of water that reflected the campaign poster of France’s Socialist Party (PS) candidate for the 2012 French presidential election Francois Hollande , two days ahead of the second round of the election.”
Julien also snapped a similar one of Holland’s rival, the incumbent president Nicolas Sarkozy.
Julien’s pictures are a remarkably creative handling of a rather boring subject. It may not be cutting edge photojournalism, but it does show how an enterprising photographer can make something interesting out of even the most mundane material.
