Palin's Private Photographer Has Seen It All

(June 24) -- Shealah Craighead works in pictures, not words, but she's got a lot of good Sarah Palin stories. Here's one from this winter:

It's Valentine's Day, and Palin is spending it at the Daytona 500. As Palin is greeted by the usual crush of fans, Craighead and other members of Palin's retinue are eyeing another celebrity in attendance, a certain dreamy jazz musician-slash-actor.

Afterward, Craighead can't resist the opportunity for some girl talk.

"You just sat next to Harry Connick Jr. for 10 minutes! Isn't he so dreamy?"

"Isn't he!?" replies Palin, laughing.

The stuff of scandal, it's not -- but it does help explain the role Craighead plays in Palinmania. Since shortly after John McCain tapped the then-Alaska governor as his running mate in 2008, Craighead has been Palin's personal photographer, the chief documentarian of both the public and private sides of her emergence as a singular mix of grassroots force and big-ticket celebrity.

Craighead has maintained that perch because Palin, who keeps an unusually tight inner circle, trusts and feels comfortable with her. And Craighead has preserved that dynamic by doing something that almost no one is able to do when it comes to Sarah Palin: Leave politics out of it.

'A Long-Term Documentary Project'

Though she's operated mostly under the radar, Craighead attracted some scrutiny earlier this spring, when Federal Election Commission filings revealed that Palin's SarahPAC had paid her $11,596 for the first quarter of this year -- while giving less to Republican candidates, and no money at all to GOP contenders in the 20 races Palin had infamously targeted on her Facebook page. But it cannot be said Craighead didn't earn her keep. After taking 2,500 pictures a day during Palin's campaign, she snapped twice as many during Palin's "Going Rogue" book tour, and estimates she's taken 500,000 overall. By comparison, in her previous job as Laura Bush's official photographer, Craighead snapped about a third as many.

Readers of Newsweek, InTouch (for which she photographed the first birthday of Bristol Palin's son Tripp) and Palin's memoir (her shots ran inside, but she didn't get the cover) will be familiar with a few of Craighead's images. And everyone who had a copy of "Going Rogue" signed by Palin was able to buy a snapshot by Craighead memorializing the moment. But the vast majority of her photos have been kept from public consumption, retained for some as-yet-undetermined use -- perhaps a Palin 2012 website, or an exhibit in a future Palin Presidential Library?

Craighead, 33, says she looks at photographing Palin as "a long-term documentary project." It's one on which Palin occasionally offers feedback. "She's very encouraging of my work. For me, that's what it means at the end of the day."

One current Palin staffer calls Craighead "a member of the family." But the even-tempered photographer stresses that she and Palin are not confidantes, and that instead the level of trust she enjoys was earned through the work she did during the 2008 campaign.

"[Palin] can kick back and be comfortable and take off her shoes and not be worried about 'Oh, she took her shoes off, let's photograph that,'" Craighead says. "I look for the details, I look for the highlights. I look for the moments in between the podium shots."

She's certainly been privy to a lot of those. Along with their shared Connick Jr.-ogling in Florida, there was the time, while on a book tour swing through Florida, that Palin -- as so many politicians before her have done -- had dinner with Billy Graham. Craighead, there to photograph the meal, was part of the small entourage that stayed the night at the Graham estate. As the two women were driven to their cabins, they chatted about the food (both loved the biscuits). While Craighead was hopping out, Palin offered to order her a wake-up call.

Political principals very rarely do that kind of thing for staffers, and it's not a gesture some might expect from Palin, who has a reputation of chewing through even loyal aides and advisers. But the less-than-a-handful of people in her current inner circle seem to genuinely like Palin as a person and enjoy being around her. This goes for Craighead, too, who talks about Palin much the same way that others who remain in her good graces do. "She's just the same in person as you see on TV. What you see is what you get," she says. "Off and on air, that person is still the same person."

When Craighead says that Palin has set no ground rules for what she can photograph, it's not unreasonable to imagine that Palin knew she didn't have to.

Learning to Be 'Kind of a Chameleon'

Craighead, bespectacled and brunette like her patron, grew up in Deep River, Conn., about 45 minutes east of New Haven. Her parents never married and split up when Craighead was only a baby. After her mother married Craighead's stepfather, the couple ran a photo lab in nearby Old Saybrook. It was there Craighead first learned her craft; later, she shot weddings with her mom. "Those aren't my moments to be seen," Craighead says. "The bride walking down the aisle is not my moment to be in the photos."

Craighead also spent part of her childhood visiting her biological father, a musician in a country band who traveled from gig to gig. "I'd have to travel to wherever he was and I learned to be kind of a chameleon. I just learned the ability to be in the background until I felt comfortable with what was going on," Craighead says. "And then I would kind of come out of hiding, a little bit less in the background."

Craighead honed her craft at the Art Institute of Boston and through freelancing for the Boston Globe. In 2005, a friend in Washington put her in touch with the photo editor at the White House, which led to a job as a photo editor in Dick Cheney's office, and from there to her stint as Mrs. Bush's photographer. Craighead's girlhood training working weddings with her mom and touring with her dad quickly paid off.

Jason Recher, a Bush White House staffer and now a fellow member of Palin's small coterie, says, "Shea is a consummate fly on the wall."

'I Don't Judge My Clients'

On one day in December 2005, Craighead got a photography lesson from an unusual teacher. She was at the Bushes' Crawford, Texas, ranch, shooting President Bush riding along a newly self-cleared trail when he took a tumble from his bike. (This was a less-serious fall than the one he took the previous year.) As his Secret Service detail ran toward the president, she put down her camera and followed after them, shouting, "Oh my God. Are you all right?!"

The president responded with explicit instructions: "Stop worrying about me and start taking photographs, because if you're not taking photographs then nobody else knows this has happened. You're the one documenting this for history." Craighead heeded the command, and says she still keeps it in her head when traveling with Palin.

Craighead was still photographing the first lady when McCain picked Palin for his ticket. She remembers watching Palin's convention speech from the White House and thinking that she would love to shoot "such a dynamic person." Though she kept that to herself, she wound up getting the call 10 days later from the Palin camp, whose staffers included some former Bush White House aides. Mrs. Bush encouraged her to grab the opportunity.

Though her job is to capture her client's endlessly analyzed image, Craighead says she's had no direct role in crafting Palin's public persona. "She does that all on her own," Craighead says. "She's got her own craft. She's got her own style, her own unique sense of self."

In keeping with her preferred approach, Craighead never talks politics or religion with Palin. If other aides broach those topics with Palin while she's present, she tries to excuse herself. Of course, that's not always possible in the rapid-fire world she's working in.

Craighead says she still recalls the infamous prank call on the Palin campaign from a Canadian comedy duo who duped Palin into believing she was speaking to the president of France. As staffers swung into damage-control mode, things got "awkward" for Craighead. "Those are the moments when I'm like, 'I'm out. You shouldn't hear this,'" she says.

The throngs of adoring followers who turned out for Palin's book tour, Craighead says, was an intense thing to witness and photograph. "People would come through the line after waiting for hours. Sometimes the line moved so quickly that they weren't able to get in a conversation, but they would just want to touch her and some people would want to pray with her," Craighead says. "It's just a whole religious aspect around the governor in itself in the way people reacted to her thinking that maybe she has a higher power."

Although Craighead has worked exclusively for Republicans, she insists she takes no ideological sides. "First priority for me is doing the best job I can for my clients. I leave my part of thought and everything out of it," Craighead says. "I specifically registered as an Independent for that. I leave politics out of everything." She adds that she wouldn't want to be considered a "Republican photographer" and that her skills are transferable. "Making photographs is an excellent way to contribute what I can to history. And for me, I don't see party as an obstacle.

"I don't judge my clients on what they've said or didn't say or their beliefs or non-beliefs or their actions or non-actions, because that's not my job," Craighead adds. "If you don't like this person for whatever reason, you might tend to photograph it in a light that's negative. You might publish some unflattering photographs ... or take photos from an angle that might be unflattering to anybody. At the end of the day I don't want that to even be a possibility."

Yet even as Craighead steadfastly keeps herself out of the fray, she's well aware of how she benefits from the headlines her boss so often generates. "Controversial means work," she says, "and work means money."

Shushannah Walshe is the co-author of "Sarah from Alaska: The Sudden Rise and Brutal Education of a New Conservative Superstar."