This 22-Year-Old is Shaking Up Political Photography with Creative Commons Images
There’s a 22-year-old college student who’s shaking up the world of political photography. His name is Gage Skidmore, and you’ve likely seen many of his photos without knowing it. He has captured and published tens of thousands of photos of virtually every major presidential candidate over the past few years, and his Creative Commons licensed photos are being used by the media and by politicians themselves.
Skidmore’s photos have been used by thousands of outlets and publications, from the Associated Press to NPR to The Washington Post. There are 30 million views on Skidmore’s Flickr account, and hundreds of thousands of image results on Google Images.
What’s remarkable is that Skidmore isn’t a full time photographer. He’s in college at Arizona State University, working on finishing up an accounting degree.
He’s just doing political photography as a side hobby.
Skidmore tells us he first got started in photography back in March 2009, when he bought his first DSLR, a Canon Rebel XSi (which was later replaced with a Canon 50D, which was later replaced with a Canon 5D Mark II). He bought that first camera to shoot San Diego Comic-Con, which he has attended every year since 2007.
A big supporter of Ron Paul, Skidmore began shooting politics when Paul’s son, Rand Paul, launched a Senate bid in 2009. Skidmore began visiting campaign events in Kentucky as a high school student, and that kicked off his political photos.
In 2010, after graduating high school, Skidmore took a year off and began traveling through various states to photograph Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign. At the same time, he photographed every other Republican candidate at conferences in which Paul was speaking.
Skidmore is now traveling to covering Rand Paul’s new presidential campaign, and that has given him the opportunity to photograph every single presidential candidate in the 2016 election. He has since traveled all over the US to photograph events.
All of his photographs are published under a Creative Commons license that allows anyone to use the images, as long as credit is given.
“Creative Commons in my mind is a vehicle for my photos to be easily disseminated, and at first was a way to simply get my name out there,” Skidmore tells PetaPixel. “The photography industry is rapidly changing. I’d equate it slightly to Uber or Lyft and taxis.”
“AP and Getty will likely always be the one source that established news organizations such as CNN or the Wall Street Journal will utilize, but smaller websites or blogs, sites that are more than likely not going to pay for images to begin with,” he says, “I’d prefer it that they use my photos, and give me attribution instead.”
Here are some other photos of well-known politicians that Skidmore has captured in recent times:
Skidmore says he isn’t planning on doing photography full time after graduating college, but will instead “most likely do something traditional in the business world.”
“I may continue to do freelance photography on the side, but who knows what opportunities will present themselves, whether they are photography related or not.”
To see more of Skidmore’s work, check out his Flickr account, which contains 38,000+ photos of politicians and Hollywood celebrities.
Update on 1/27/2016: Just to be clear, Skidmore has been hired and paid dozens of times by various organizations to cover their events, so only a subset of his work in photography is provided for free via a CC license. Skidmore has done assignments for: the Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry, ASU Center for Political Thought and Leadership, National School Choice Week, Western Journalism, Conservative Review, Reason Magazine, Young Americans for Liberty, Campaign for Liberty Foundation, Mises Institute, and more.
Image credits: All photographs by Gage Skidmore and used with permission
