John Boal Photography

When I first came back from my internship in York PA, I struggled with being a freelancer in DC.    I tried getting work from the wire services.    The nation was in the grip of a compelling presidential primary season.    And I couldn’t find anything to latch onto as a photojournalist.   I wanted to trek out to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, but I came to the conclusion (via some helpful advice from other veteran photogs) that working close to home would be better.    Force myself to work harder for good pictures.    Nevermind I didn’t have the financial wherewithal to actually travel all over the place, there were plenty of pictures within 2 hours of DC.   I traveled to York, PA for the weekend prior to the PA democratic primaries.    Hillary and Obama were campaigning hard in the blue-collar areas of the state.    Having worked as an intern in York, I had some connections and knew I’d be able to make it to several events before the night of the primary.   Sen. Kennedy would...

I’ve mentioned this many times before, probably, but one of the great things about being a photojournalist, is the interesting people you meet. The other day, guitarist and music recording icon, Les Paul, passed away. He was 94. It turned out that there were a couple of men in the area who had personal relationships with the man. Larry Muller, a dentist in the area, and an avid guitarist, has a custom-made Gibson Les Paul guitar signed by Les, “Larry, keep pickin’, Les Paul”, it says. That he had a guitar signed by the legend. But Paul Wolff, his friend, a recording console designer, and founder of Tonelux, had some stories to share about the music recording industry, along with Les himself. What turned out not to be less interesting was the caption on the cover of our next day’s paper: their names ran incorrectly. Doh! I promise that wasn’t my doing. I wrote in my caption that Paul was looking at Larry’s signed guitar, and somehow that evolved into getting the names reversed. So spe...

I received an assignment the other day to meet and photograph the original founders of VA's largest county fair, the Prince William County Fair. All five were WWII veterans in 1949 when they decided that they wanted to create a competitive event for local farming families to get together and socialize. 59 years later, they are all still going strong. Each one has worked every year at the fair in one capacity or another. The unfortunate part of the assignment was that before we took pictures (I was collecting audio as well), the fifth founder up and left. I asked the woman who was organizing this, "is he coming back?". Nope. He just left. Well, it is nice that people take your job seriously. And I don't blame the guy who left. They had been there for a few hours talking about the fair, and signing books. He was probably tired, and if people don't tell you that you have to stay for pictures, then I can't exactly blame you for wanting to go home. I couldn't ...