Cory Booker
21 in '26

Every summer, Senator Booker crosses all twenty-one New Jersey counties. In 2026 the tour ran as 21 in '26: the Jersey Summer Road Trip, seven consecutive field days covering twenty-three stops and roughly 700 miles, from Morris and Sussex in the north to Cape May and Cumberland at the shore.

I was brought on to cover it in-house. Not a press pool shooting from a rope line, but a two-person crew embedded in the motorcade with the responsibility to capture every stop, every day, in a form the office and campaign could publish immediately.

Twenty-three stops in seven days. There is no second take on a road trip.

I shot stills and video across the full route, working alongside communications director David Bergstein on the run of show and daily schedule changes, with the crew splitting coverage between two vehicles to make sure no stop went uncovered. The run included four check presentations announcing $33.5 million in funding, church services, factory floors, mine tours, county fairs, and main-street walks, each with its own light, its own crowd, and no room to reset.

The output was 8,651 frames plus video from every stop, turned around against a daily news cycle. Beyond the shooting I built the post pipeline: a curated hundred-frame select, and a motion graphics package covering all twenty-three stops in tour order, with lower thirds, intro covers, and end cards driven by a CSV render script so the full week could be cut into a single landscape montage without hand-building every title card.

• Pace

  Seven consecutive field days, twenty-three stops, roughly 700 miles driven, with same-day usable assets off every stop.

• Range

  Interiors, exteriors, podium moments, candid rope line, and formal check presentations, all matched to one visual standard.

• Trust

  Embedded with the principal and senior staff, moving inside the motorcade, working to the comms director's run of show.

• Systems

  A CSV-driven motion graphics kit covering all twenty-three stops, built so the week could be cut and re-cut without rebuilding titles.