The other night I shot a fun, if a bit wacky, assignment for the Wall Street Journal. I spent the evening at the Phillies game, yes the one with a 21 run margin of victory, with this guy Zack Hample. Zack's a ballhawker. He chases, catches, begs for, finds or otherwise gets his hands on Major League baseballs during and before games. I have to admit I'm not much of a baseball fan, I just don't get it so this I really don't get. But one of the cool things about being a journalist is the chance to get access into all sorts of unexpected places, subcultures and meet a vast array of people and learn just a bit about a passion or their place in the world. The story, which touches on some of the "controversial" aspects of the ballhawking subject, and the pictures are {
here}.
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Update: If you see the print edition please forgive the edit staff at the WSJ, that picture they published is NOT mine. It's not the strangest thing in the world for commissioned pictures not to get published, as it goes the photography department, and myself, were very happy with the slideshow that did get published online)
And here's a couple outtakes that I liked.
Even though my background and skills/passion leave me best suited to photograph the world as it is, I have grown to really enjoy set-up portraits. The other day I shot my third reality TV "star" (Genevieve Gorder from Trading Spaces was the first, Michael from Bravo's Top Design was 2 and I'm not counting Carson Kresley from Queer Eye in a passing moment at a Fashion Week assignment in NYC.) for The Boston Globe. I met Jay McCarroll at a cool boutique in South Philly, Mew Gallery, where he sells some of his bags with his signature circle design. Jay was promoting his well-received documentary, Eleven Minutes, made about his life after Project Runway. He was patient and fun as we tried various ideas. Even though his on-camera persona is pretty high energy he was somewhat ironically serious and composed when it came time to snap away. That's cool, we all have many sides and I don't blame him for wanting to have some control over how he's gonna be portrayed in the media.