A case for People

Though its changed more recently, I've always been a photographer who shot for a wide range of clients, all of which ranged widely in style, content, and expectations. And accordingly, I approached my work for each client with a slightly different style or sense of purpose (as I touched on a bit in my last post). In addition to the nuts and bolts part of dealing and shooting for my clients, there is also the more ephemeral but vital category of what drives me to work for each magazine. For instance, ESPN the Magazine jobs are often really fun to work on and I love their editing staff, or Phil at The Fader is extremely open and excited for his photographers to take risks, and back it up by actually publishing the successful outcomes, etc.

Yesterday while doing some grocery shopping I flipped open the new issue of People Magazine, one of my biggest clients in 2006, and saw that they had published another of my recent shoots from Atlanta that I worked on just before the holidays. And in the same spirit I was really struck by how often I'm privileged through People to work on some extremely big-hearted stories about normal people making a difference in their communities. If one of the giant perks of being a freelance photographer is meeting interesting individuals, then the magazine has again and again brought that to a new and inspiring level in putting me in contact with some very cool people. Of course, in full disclosure, I think I've also shot 3 different American Idol features for them, so...

Above is the new clip from this week's issue (Jan. 22) with a story about Kate Atwood, the founder of Kate's Club, which is an organization in Atlanta that works with kids who have suffered the loss of a parent. And below are a couple of other images: the first is an out take that I also liked from the Kate's Club story and the annual retreat I documented of theirs (where the kids learned how to make cookies from scratch and then went ice skating); and secondly, this is Anna Hanger and her mom Lisa have way too much fun shopping together at Target for Anna's Angel Fund, another Atlanta based charity, which responds to the needs of families of very sick kids who are in financial trouble. It was really wonderful and inspiring to meet and photograph both Kate and Anna.

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