We discovered this location as it was getting dark. I had the idea of substituting a soccer ball for pebbles, and I realized we needed flowers to tell the story. So I started knocking on doors to borrow some. In the end we found a bodega and bought them just in time to get the dark blue sky before it changed to black.
Ethan Zohn was a professional soccer player, but he's best known for winning Survivor and beating cancer. I photographed him years ago for a celebrity charity. I told him about my work on Dancers Among Us. He said, "If you ever do Athletes Among Us, I'm in." And so the idea was born, although it took me years to begin…
This is the first shot I took for Athletes Among Us. I'm lucky it turned out so well, otherwise I may have stopped before I started. I had the idea for this shot but no permission to use the location, so we practiced the shot in the parking lot. Once we were ready we walked in the store, but before we could get the…
I wanted pedestrians waiting to cross the street, so that it made sense to have Jackie hanging above—"How does a gymnast wait for the green light?" But needing them to be waiting made it very difficult to coordinate Jackie's climb up the pole (she scaled that thing in about five seconds). And nobody's looking at her.…
When I took this shot, Jackie's arms were shaking. She was about to let go, and seconds later she scurried to safety. Yet look at how cool she seems. She never let on how difficult it was. She made only two attempts to get the shot before she was too exhausted to continue. Each time she held on for about ten seconds,…
This isn't the first pole Jackie climbed that day. We tried this shot at a different location, and we were immediately stopped by a police officer. He told me that if we tried it again, we'd be taking a ride in his car. But by then I was desperate to get the shot, so we walked for awhile and tried it again. This time…