The call came the month after as the first assignment from the New York Daily News - in Dec. 2012 - at about 5:30 P.M.; the photo desk at the NYDN needed photos of the latest New York Giants rookie standout’s parents and fast. Specifically, they needed the photos by the next morning - and already had told the parents that I’d be there at 8:00 P.M. or so at their home in Danville, Virginia, just across the state line; that barely left time to get there.
The photo desk told me to get photos of the parents with football trophies or other football-related things - and that they’d told the parents that.
The photo desk emailed the address and agreement to the fee. Then my work began; I printed out Google’s street directions door-to-door - and a map of the destination area.
This assignment obviously called for the 24-70mm f/2.8 lens - and that, along with a flash, went.
I arrived to find something useful - a father who understood photography, being that he’d gotten into his own dSLR after his son got further into football! He and I discussed lenses. The parents and another son tacked up a background for me in the hallway - torn from a large roll of white paper.
The parents, surprisingly, didn’t have much in the way of football trophies downstairs, despite the NYDN’s phone discussion with them - but I got Mom to pose with their son’s take-home ball from the 2012 NFL draft (below). I shot a variety of horizontal-format and vertical-format photos of the parents - one of Mom with the football. Flash - when used - was bounce with a diffuser.
I got back to edit the photos, prepare captions - and had it all sent by FTP to the NYDN by around midnight, hours before deadline. One of the photos ran in a story on the player, David Wilson.

Shelia WIlson, mother of David Wilson of the New York Giants, with her son’s take-home ball from the NFL draft.