I almost always write these blog posts ahead of time and schedule them to appear on a daily basis where possible. Which is why, at the time of writing, I don’t know whether or not the person who cast this ballot in the Dublin European Election, will be happy with the outcome of that election.
On my travels around the count centre in the RDS yesterday, I was an interested observer of the counting processes used, and struck by the transparency of the system used, and the willingness of the counters to facilitate tally men and other party-affiliated people who were trying to track the vote or, indeed, question the validity of ballots.
Photographically, the RDS was a challenging environment – the light levels were low, so I had to use a high ISO when taking almost all the photographs I captured, and because alot of the action was behind barriers, had to use long lenses, struggling to keep shots sharp due to the slow shutter speeds required to properly expose the shots.
The best chance to get up close to actual ballot papers was after they had been sorted in the centre of the count centre, before being distributed to counters sitting around the periphery. This photo was taken while I watched a count of Number 1 votes for Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald, and as I stood and watched/photographed, activists from many of the parties were watching on and keeping their own running count.
It’s not the way I’d like to spend a Sunday morning myself, but I suppose many of them were looking at me taking photographs of pieces of paper and thinking much the same.
Recent Comments