John Boal Photography

Maintaining a foot in the photojournalism world has been difficult lately, because often assignments come with very little notice, whereas the corporate and event planning worlds generally schedule jobs weeks in advance.  It's tough to keep the calendar open for occasional photojournalism jobs to get through.  I wanted to be proactive and change that in 2017. I've always enjoyed the unpredictability of photojournalism.  The feeling that you're "in the middle of it".  January 3rd is that date that the new Congress convenes and newly elected representatives are sworn in.  There are lots of opportunities for pictures.  Open houses, lots of back slapping, friends and families are all around.  I circled the date on the calendar and found a couple freshman congressman whom I thought would be interesting and were from parts of the country where I had connections to the newspapers or magazines.  My first idea didn't pan out, so I contacted The (NJ) Rec...

I had the distinct honor of photographing Jessica and Patrick for The Boston Globe in December for a story that ran in late January (see the story here) , who happened to be victims of the Boston Marathon bombing.  Both had lost their left legs as they watched the marathon.  Jessica, at the time of the assignment, had been considering amputating her right foot, due to the pain and continued rehabilitation/recovery.  Ran with story, here .  Initially, the idea was that I would accompany her on a visit to the doctors and therapists at Walter Reed.  When that idea fell through (permissions, especially when it's close to the holidays are especially difficult to come by).  So the best we could do was meet in front of the NIH metro stop and shoot for about 30 mins.  The initial story (a year after the bombings) is here , and you should read this one and the one that ran in January, because Eric did a great job following this story over the...