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...

I was sorting through my emails last Thursday, and a friend suggested we get together on Saturday, but this months I’m on a Tue.-Sat. schedule, and I had to decline. “I have to work. I’m shooting a dunk contest and a gay prom”, I typed as a response. I suppose there was a humor in the seemingly disparate assignments. But I was thoroughly psyched to be shooting both. I saw both of them as complete challenges to come up with something different in environments that can rapidly become very cliche. Proms? Please, it's like shooting a wedding reception, right? How many Macarena shots can you get at a prom? Don't think I didn't get my "save-your-ass-shot", though. How about setting up a crude 2-light studio, with gels, in a pitch dark basement, next to the punch table? It's a gay-friendly prom. I wanted to make it as much about the people as possible, and as little as possible about the dancing. Unfortunately, the paper saw it as a dance, and published 2 dance photo...

I received a call last week from a parent of an athlete in the area. I don't regularly get phone calls from parents, but she was very excited. She saw her daughter’s photograph in the paper, and loved it. So we chatted for a few minutes about how the photo was made and I let her know how to go online and purchase prints. I think, for the most part, I work in a bubble. I don’t live in the county in which I work. And there are only two photographers at the paper, so feedback can sometimes be rare, although the people I work with are very complimentary, when we bump into each other. Call it ego. Whatever. I really love when people love my photographs. In this case, it was an all-area athlete who I really went all-out in trying to create something interesting and spectacular. I can’t say necessarily that it’s entirely original, but I think I made the photo my own. Gabrielle Mizerak, getting dumped on at the GMU Freedom Aquatic Center in Manassas. On an email list I belong to, called A ...

One of the great things about photojournalism, and photography in general, is the distinct lack of bullshitting. What you have, is what you have. There isn’t any way to fake what you capture on film, or the sensor. Certainly with photoshop and the crazy array of tools out there to rescue and improve images, there are ways to turn an unusable photo into a usable one. But the really good ones take some planning and execution...and there it is. It really is a magical experience to visualize something and then, have it turn out exactly as you had hoped, and sometimes better. It's not so magical when you suck. But that's another post...hopefully not too soon. What this means from a personal perspective, is that I've been able to witness my own progress quite distinctly. Each month, quarter, or year, many photographers dig into our archives in search of those worthy photographs to enter into competition. Usually it’s there that we can get a sense of what we’ve done over the ...