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 ...

I work in Northern Virginia. This means that often I am in contact with the military or retired military. Today was a case that I met 84 year-old retired Marine Corps Sgt. Major John Henry, a veteran of three wars (WWII, Korea & Vietnam). He was certainly a fascinating character. Like many I’ve met over the years, he was very proud of his service and had more stories than you could hear in a single sitting. He was shot twice, although he refused the Purple Heart, because, as he said, “I didn’t feel nothin’, and there were a lot more guys that got it worse than I did…” He delighted in recounting stories which sounded horrifying to me (think death and destruction), and yet, he was as cheerful as any 84 year-old you’d ever met. In fact, if it weren’t for his crew cut, you may not know he was a veteran if you met him on the street. Although, admittedly, I don’t know what veterans are supposed to look like. I guess, maybe many veterans are similar in that way. Walking vaults, filled wit...

About a week ago, the News & Messenger published the final in a series of All-Area athletes of the year. It only took about a month to get 12 pages out. Blame the economy, blame advertising. We just didn't have enough pages to make space for the page on many days. The athlete pages ended up appearing as a disjointed, discontinuous stream of pages sometimes shown consecutively for three days, only to appear again 10 days later. But that's the state of newspapers, and I'll get back to that. What I did want to highlight were my pictures. Hopefully that's why you look at these pages, and not to hear about how bad the paper is doing. Or maybe both. Scheduling these times to shoot the athletes inevitably is the biggest pain in the ass to do. This becomes especially hectic at the end of the school year, when we also have to cover every single graduation ceremony in the county. The first I had the opportunity to shoot was the Female Scholar Athlete of the Year, Meredith Ne...

About a week ago or so, I had the opportunity to photograph some Peregrine Falcon chicks as some conservation biologists checked up on the young at a Dominion Power Plant here in Prince William County. There are only about 20 nesting pairs in Virginia, so it felt pretty neat to first take some pictures of the falcons, and then I had the chance to hold one for a few minutes while reporter Aileen Streng took a couple photos.

You will not be able to stay home, brother. You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out. You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip, Skip out for beer during commercials, Because the revolution will not be televised. - Gil Scott Heron, 1974 Heron wrote his song in the 70’s and it was in reference to the black power movement. But it’s still relevant. It’s about empowerment, transparency, and ultimately, equality. But it's also about rising up from within, and not waiting to be told to protest. To find that fortitude, and courage to stand up when the act of doing so is a risk in and of itself. This revolution will not be televised. It will be a link on facebook. It will be a twitter posting. It will not be classic journalism, and because of that, the Iranian government, notoriously controlling and paranoid, will not be able to suppress the will of the people. Journalists are already shut out, but this hasn't stopped the free flow of information out of Iran. T...