On my way up to Richmond to hear Alec Soth speak at Virginia Commonwealth University I received a phone call from Soo-Jeong Kang, a photo editor at The New York Times that I hadn’t worked with previously. She had a quick assignment for me the next day in Virginia Beach and considering how rare it is to get a “close to home” assignment, I took her up on it.

The story was a portrait and audio interview with Stephen Michael McCall, who is the chief of the Space Systems Branch at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia Beach, Virginia in addition to being an associate pastor and full time graduate student. He has struggled with Tourette’s for his whole life and has managed to overcome some tremendous obstacles in order to get where he is. Neither the shoot nor the audio gathering went quite as planned but Soo-Jeong was pleased with the results. Sometimes it is difficult to divorce myself from the desire to make every shoot into something that I would consider exceptional. I often have to remind myself that “if the editor is happy, I am happy.” In this case, I really meant it.