The new Lord Mayor

Sometimes photos just fall into your lap and, when it does, it's fabulous.

The guy sitting on the seat is Campbell Newman, one time Lord Mayor of Brisbane. Running under the slogan 'Can Do Campbell', he was elected Lord Mayor in 2004. This photo was taken the day after he won the election when he was doing a media call in New Farm Park in the inner-Brisbane suburb of New Farm.

The Lord Mayor had gathered with his family in the rotunda at the park and we'd all assembled to take lots of photos and footage for that day's news.

All the family photos had been taken - sitting in the rotunda, walking through the park...you name it, we did it - and we asked Campbell if we could get some photos/footage of him on his own.

We selected a bench seat for him (the one in this photo) and he sat there while we photographed/filmed him.

We were all positioned quite a way away from Campbell getting some 'long' shots. While we were going about our job, this old bloke saw the new Lord Mayor sitting there 'on his own' and, seemingly oblivious to the media pack assembled 20 or so metres away, wandered over to Campbell, introduced himself and started giving him a few pointers as to what he should and shouldn't be doing.

Normally if someone wandered into our photo we'd tell them to sod off. However, we'd all been photographing/filming Campbell long enough and were just about done with him, so the old bloke's intervention was timed to perfection (I doubt he knew that).

Not only that, it was obvious he was really passionate about whatever it was he was talking about and all sorts of hand gestures were being made as he spoke. The Lord Mayor sat there and listened to him. Being his first day on the job he was probably a bit bewildered by what was happening and made sure he looked interested (the media was close by, after all).

The funny thing was, after 30 seconds or so, the old bloke looked up and saw us all photographing/filming him. However, he didn't break stride and made some comment about us being there before turning his attention back to the Lord Mayor and contining his spiel.

Up until 'old bloke' came along we'd all taken some nice photos/footage and were quite happy knowing it would get a run the following day. However, the old bloke had unwittingly, added that special x-factor to the event and guaranteed that the photo was going to move closer to the front of the newspaper as a result. He'd turned a 'run-of-the-mill' photo call into an actual news story.

We all got the old bloke's name (although I can't remember what it was) and he made sure he gave us all an earful of what he'd been sharing with the Lord Mayor before he let us go on our way.

Gear used - Nikon D100 DSLR, Nikkor 80-200mm f2.8 lens, 400ISO, 1/500 sec f5.6