John Boal Photography

It’s as I said in yesterday's post, when I was blogging from the event itself. Having only one kid to shoot is an incredibly liberating feeling. They go on stage, you focus on them for a bit, and then your eye wanders. A spelling bee is quite the collection of bookworms and (how do we say delicately?) slightly nerdy kids. All very nice, I presume, although I only had the opportunity to meet one of them. But despite any presumed nerdiness, they are still 11-13 year-olds. And sitting on stage for 2+ hours at a time, one can get bored, tired, or both. And many times they make funny faces, which I love as a photographer... Here are is a continuation of a collection of images I made at the Bee while I was waiting for the News & Messenger's sponsored girl (who would not advance, by the way, despite spelling her two words correctly--there are written tests that supplement the televised version, and these inevitably whittle down the 293 to 41 semifinalists). I find them to b

Greetings from the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington DC. I’ve never been to this event, although I’ve certainly seen my share of highlights on ESPN over the years. Having only one girl to take pictures of for the paper, I was left to spend the rest of the time hunting down the interesting pictures, which may or may not be interesting to those that have covered the event more than a few times. So I focused on what I noticed initially. After going to the stage to spell their word (I heard everything from Schadenfreude to Hydrant), they inevitably return to their seat to wait until their round is over. These preliminary rounds can last two hours or more, so you can imagine what I saw. And a sampling….

Some more track photos....

I've been to a some track meets over the past few weeks and found myself working on a series of images I found interesting in between getting the publishable photos for the paper (as they are usually not one and the same). So here is the first of a few posts...