Jeff Cagle
i am a freelance editorial photographer living in the chicago suburbs. my portfolio is at jeffcagle.com.
get in touch: jeffrey [dot] cagle [at] gmail
Ask me anything
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Spent some time shooting at Loaves and Fishes food pantry today. A few minutes after distribution started, the aisles were packed. Assignments like these are always humbling and serve as a great reminder to be thankful for everything you have and not focus so much on the trivial things you don’t.
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I spent some time at East Aurora High School yesterday shadowing students shadowing each other as part of a youth exchange program between East and West Aurora High Schools. Based on that sentence alone, you can probably imagine it was hard to caption these images.
The program was put together dispel misconceptions students have of each other. East students think West is full of rich snobs, and West students think East is full of gang-bangers and you’ll get shot if you enter (something that every parent in Naperville also tells their kid). I only shot at East, but wanted to make sure I got a couple shots of West students looking uneasy, but a bunch more of happy, engaged faces once they realized the rumors weren’t true. It was a good story if you want to read it.
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Yesterday I went to a political press conference that took place at a major intersection where everyone stood a mere feet away from traffic screaming by at 50+ mph. For whatever reason it was decided that the best corner of the four available would be the only one without a sidewalk and space to get more than three feet from the road. Supporters of another candidate came out with signs to (I’m guessing) make it seem to passersby that it was their candidate gathered at this corner. Campaigns are all about posturing and image, but I’m not sure either put a whole lot of thought into how they looked standing out there yesterday.
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I rented a lens for my shoot on Monday and took it out with me over the weekend for a couple of assignments to test it out. I don’t really want to give it back at the end of the week. I also want to sell all my zooms and only shoot primes.
Here’s a gallery for more and the story about what I was shooting.
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Mixed feelings this morning with my first Chicago Sun-Times cover. It’s not easy to point a camera at people who are in pain and grieving, but I hope my images helped illustrate how loved Shaun was and what the community has lost with a senseless act of violence.
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A second grade teacher was stabbed to death late last night in a bar when he tried coming to the aid of his friend and breaking up the fight. Tonight, his friends and family gathered for a memorial service to mourn and remember their friend. I’ve been covering it all day.
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One day on this job you will find yourself standing in an elementary school gym listening to the owner of some obscure world records talk to fifth graders about things like the importance of time, calling your parents and watching Marines die in Afghanistan, and in the back of your head you will hear David After Dentist asking “Is this real life?”
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More often than not, people make the picture when it comes to photojournalism. I have a habit of weighting the subjects in my frames to the left or right and rarely choose subjects that are centered. I made a point to center some of my images when I was out shooting snow scenes around Aurora today for the paper. These are a few of my favorites that I’ve edited and converted, but you can see what went into the paper here.
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Sometimes your editor adds to your list of stops on a day when you already have three assignments lined up and simply says “We need pictures of people shopping downtown.”
OK, you say, imagining a quick one-and-done shot of someone walking into a store carrying shopping bags. But instead of calling it a day after getting that shot in less than five minutes, you decide to walk around in the cold and see if you can’t make anything better.
You find the sun shining through an archway to create a spotlight effect and wait. Click. You stand near a busy intersection and wait until crosswalkers hit it from two directions. Click. You play with some light shining through an alleyway, crouch down near a trash can and let people walk through the frame. Click click click. Nothing earth-shattering or portfolio-worthy or, hell, even your favorite shots of the day.
But it’s nice to see a few days later when that extra effort turns a single-photo inside story into a cover shot with an inside spread.
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Outtakes from a protest. Some of these are a little too abstract for the paper. You can see what made the cut here.
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