Tonight is the award ceremony for the 2012 Cafritz Awards for Distinguished DC Government Employees, administered by the George Washington University Center for Excellence in Public Leadership. I’ve spent the better part of the last month filming and editing interviews with the award winners and their colleagues at a variety of venues including a high school, public library, office building, public recreation center, and fire house.
The experience was incredibly rewarding, with the countless hours filming and editing resulting in five short films focused on the amazing work of these DC public servants. Their stories are an inspiration and illustrate the amazing things that are done in the municipal government every day.
For me, one of the coolest aspects of the project was photographing their portraits for the award ceremony materials and website. With their work places differing so much, it gave me a (sometimes challenging) opportunity to do something interesting with them in their workplace. Below is a small sample of the shots that I took. They really range depending on the environment. Mixing off-camera flash with ambient light led to some dramatic shots (José at the bottom is a good example of this).
I’ll post the videos of interviews once they play at the ceremony tonight, but for now enjoy the portraits.
