New York Times – Turkeys – Ozark Arkansas

I spent a couple of days in Ozark, Ark., working with a reporter from the New York Times on a story about Turkeys for the Thanksgiving Day paper. We visited the Butterball, LLC., processing plant in Ozark and watched turkeys get sorted, stuffed, bagged and packaged for shipping. Pretty interesting process. On day two we visited a turkey house in Scranton, Ark., then headed back to Ozark to walk around and talk with people in the town.

I was really amazed at how nice the light was inside the processing plant, and also in the turkey house. I cracked up the farmer when I told him he’d probably never heard someone use the word beautiful in the same sentence as turkey house. The light and the massive amount of turkeys made for nice photos.

I really enjoyed the two days of walking around and creating. I really enjoy being a journalist, seems like my work lately has gotten away from it… it was nice to get back, even if it was only for a couple of days.

Overall, I walked away from the shoot feeling confident with the mood in the images. Nothing was really set up, or posed, just shot as is… I feel like those photos sometimes have the most to say.