Jeff Cagle
i am a freelance news and editorial photographer living in the chicago suburbs.
my portfolio is at jeffcagle.com. You can also find me at instagram.com/jeffcagle
get in touch: jeffrey [dot] cagle [at] gmail
Ask me anything
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There was a flood this week. Here’s some people walking by sandbags. And here’s a gallery of more flood stuff, starring photos from Brian Powers, who just won 2nd place in the IPPA’s Photographer of the Year competition.
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I spent a good portion of my afternoon yesterday complaining about shooting a bar crawl in Wrigleyville for a friend’s event company, half-jokingly calling it “my personal Hell.” I wasn’t complaining about having the work — I’m extraordinarily lucky and grateful to be able to make pictures for a living — but taking pictures in a crowded bar having my lights nearly knocked over multiple times while watching drunks fall flat on their faces in the middle of the afternoon isn’t my cup of tea.
Fast forward four hours and one of my editors calls and I found myself standing along the edge of an icy retention pond next to the highway as divers searched for the body of a young woman after the car she was riding in crashed and ended up in the water. One family’s actual personal Hell.
Covering death is not something any photojournalist enjoys doing, but if a photograph can make one person stop for just a moment to remember to not complain about the little things and appreciate all that you have, it’s worth it.
Sometimes that person is the one behind the camera.
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Shooting grief never really gets any easier.
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I’m going to try to be better at sharing more work on this blog in 2013. My Instagram tends to get updated more and I don’t often double-post, so follow me there if you please, but I’m going to make an effort to walk away from most assignments with shareable images to put here. It’s probably going to be hard, which is why I won’t make promises and am stopping short of calling it a resolution. Case in point: tonight I’m shooting a pension reform meeting. It may not always be glamorous, but being a photojournalist is one hell of an interesting and awesome job.
Take yesterday: I spent part of my New Year’s Day at hospitals photographing the first babies of 2013 for a couple papers. I got to go into the NICU and witness a father having his new daughter placed into his arms for the very first time.
In my line of work, my pictures are not about me — I’m basically just a ghost with a camera. But it’s always a curious feeling to drop in on complete strangers and share an important moment of their life with them, and maybe that’s what I’m hoping to share more of this year.
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In 2012, I fell in love with northern California
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To Sharain and Brian, my cameras’ presence were an outlet to help get Brian’s story told: that when you’re a male victim of domestic violence there aren’t a whole lot of places out there to take you in when you’ve run out of options.
To the manager of the gas station I met them at, cameras hanging off my shoulders caused enough alarm for him to come outside into the cold and walk across the parking lot to ask what I was doing and if it had any sort of connection to his business.
To the director of the shelter that had agreed to take Brian in and save him from having to sleep in his cousin’s van as he recovers from his injuries after nearly being stabbed to death by his girlfriend — the story the paper was telling, which had been previously explained to the director — one click of a shutter was enough to make him tell me that I was not welcome and I needed to leave the building.
These situations are nothing new to me, but it’s always still interesting how simply carrying a camera can simultaneously make me a potential help to one and harm to another.
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Going live. Aurora, IL
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Spent. Peoria, IL
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Leo at work making spooky sounds at Leo’s House of the Dead
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