John Boal Photography

Since I left the paper in March, my life has definitely taken an interesting turn.  A busy turn.  I stay at home and take care of my daughter, who is now approaching 7 months...and in the mean time I do a lot of assisting.  What's been difficult is finding jobs where I actually shoot.  This is a collection, with comments, naturally, on what I've been shooting  in the past month. I revisited Ricky Chang ( see my project and blog post here ) to see what he was up to, as well as photograph the launch of his friends' bike across america fundraiser ( see their blog and info here ).  It was great to see young people taking such an active role in helping someone out.  These are some pictures from that morning.  In addition, I've received some work from The Fairfax Times, as well as some freelance work with my old paper, The News & Messenger.  The funny thing is that when I shot these assignments, I couldn't help but reflect on the difference my attitude

I recently attended the LOOK3 photo festival in Charlottesville, VA for the first time.  This is definitely a festival I'd been wanting to attend since I first heard of it several years ago.  Here are some pictures and thoughts on some of the stuff I saw in the past week. -I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't really know Alex Webb's work.  His was the first gallery I walked into.  Alone.  I was there a day early to see the TREES talk with David Doubilet , so I got some exploring out of the way early, without a thousand people around me, which was great.  I was blown away.  In fact, my first response to seeing all this work was, "damn, I should just quit.  there's no way I'll ever be this good".  I'm not quitting, but damn, was I inspired. -I loved being able to meet random people, hang out with them, and then meet the people they know, collect business cards so you can look at their work later.  It really is an inspiring week to meet a ton o