This photo gallery was originally published on the Dallas Observer (Click Here To View)

This isn't a blog about politics so I'm going to keep the focus on the photos in this post, but I'll tell you this: it was pretty surreal to be a minority standing in the epicenter of one of Donald Trump's political rallies as he campaigns for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. I'm posting this a month after the event took place but I still vividly remember how high emotions were on that night for his supporters and detractors alike.

For this gallery of photos, I was on assignment for the Dallas Observer and I was asked to capture the general scene inside the arena and of course capture photos of the Trump. It was my first real political event to shoot but I wasn't too surprised by how choreographed the whole event was. Trump's handlers made sure photographers were in the right place for their candidate before he made his entrance, while he was at the podium and when he left the stage. It was a little odd to be corralled around like that but at least it was better access than I had anticipated. Initially I was worried they would keep us too far from Trump, but instead we were able to shoot right in front of his podium. This was a situation where having a second body would've come in handy. For the podium shots I believe I was using a 50mm and I wasn't sure how long we had there and by the time I thought to change lenses for a variety of shots, we were already being led out of the photo area and wasn't able to capture anything else with other lenses.

One of the things that I've been told lately by my editors is that I've nailed the 'front-page' photo but could use a lot more work in the creativity of my shots and that's something I'm genuinely starting to work on. Being able to change lenses and try something different would've been a good opportunity for that.

For an event like this it's really important to capture as many candid moments as possible and while I caught a few of the crowd I really should've worked hard to capture more. I got caught up letting people pose for photos with their signs and Trump memorabilia. Overall I did a good job of capturing the whole scene but as always there's room for improvement.