Apologies for the size of the image (and commentary); you'll probably need to view it at Original size.

I'd decided on the title for the day's image even before I woke up. It was the day of the NSW state election, and the 16 year old Labor government was about to get kicked so hard by the electorate that it would be wearing its kneecaps for earrings.

As for the intended image; well, I had thoughts of a polling station, low ISO, slightly long shutter speed, the energy of the scene concentrated into blurred a blur of action as people went to and from the polling booths. But none of it turned out that way. The light was a disgusting grey all day. Whatever mood was at the polling booths, it wasn't one of action. With the result a foregone conclusion, people seemed to be just going through the motions. While many were desperate to be rid of the government, few outside of that party's faithful looked forward to the alternative.

It had gone 5pm. The polls closed at 6. The light was no better, there was no action at any of the stations that I visited and I was late to be somewhere for dinner. "Sod it", I thought, and pulled in to the next station I came across. I grabbed the camera, sized up the polling station across the road, realised that I had nothing special in light or action or people, and thought "OK, that's the way things go sometimes when you're PADing". I blasted off a few frames, then went to take some backup shots of some campaign posters in case I'd misread the light, such as it was.

I was then approached by someone from one of the minor parties, demanding to know who I was. Hmm, so much for democracy being the province of the public. I told her that I had no intention of telling her at which point she demanded it again because I had "taken (her) picture".

"I didn't take your picture, I took a picture of a polling station. From that range I wouldn't have been able to pick you from Adam", I replied.

"You would with a lens like that", she replied.

Much as I didn't want to debate the difference between binoculars and a DSLR with the chronically stupid I did something that I know I should never do, which is to get angry. Not, I hasten to add because it isn't worth getting angry about. The "Photographers as Tewwowists" mindset is definitely worth some anger. But rather because doing so makes you less effective and less able to articulate your thoughts. And so it was that I simply told her that I had every right to shoot in a public place, that people in such a place had no expectation of privacy, made a couple of disparaging remarks about her political party and told her to sod off. Much as I don't believe in belittling people for the hell of it, what I should have done was to coldly and clinically dissect her stupid rubbish and hold it up to the ridicule that it so richly deserves and maybe, just perhaps, get her to think first next time.

It was only afterwards when I was reviewing the shots that I saw that she wasn't in the first one, then walked into the second one in the full knowledge that I was shooting the scene (as evidenced by the "papers over the face" schtick) and the confrontation was presumably her way of cementing what a special and important person she is in her own mind.

OK, I'm happy to oblige.

Oh, and the title? Later in the day I found that Mike Carlton had already written the commentary that I might have, so I'll leave that one to him.

Judgment Day. By sunset, Labor will have suffered such a crushing defeat that it can never rise again in its present form. And good riddance. Gone at long last the touts and urgers, the cheats and liars, the knaves and bullies and developers' hustlers, the spongers and careerists, the backstabbers and branch stackers, the underpants dancers and shiraz-pickled lunchers and expense account rorters and porn-sniffing web surfers - all that rabble of fools and incompetents who brought this once great party to its knees in NSW.

Oh, and for the record the predicted final swing against Labor is 13.5%, with an expectation that it'll be reduced to 22 out of 93 seats. The swing in Lakemba, the seat shown here, was 26% against Labor but sitting member Furolo (the yellow posters) had enough of a margin to hang on... just. One of the reasons that I picked this seat (aside from being out of time) was that it used to be held by Morris Iemma, the premier before the one before the one that was just defeated.

Last Year