My now 12 year old daughter always loved to say, "you never know!" when we asked her as a little kid if she'd be coming to our bed that night. Turns out, it's also a handy expression for photo assignments that you accept begrudgingly, mainly to keep a client happy. This assignment was on car salesmen during the economic crash of 2009 - The New York Times asked me to drive 3 hours on a Saturday morning to Wenatchee, WA to photograph Ford salesman Chad Lee. Not exactly a dream assignment, especially at the old NYT day rate, especially on a Saturday.

I walked away with this image below that has stayed in my portfolio ever since. Chad making the hard sale to the Burchett family while their kid sits on the ground behind, bored. I decided to climb into the car at the last minute, desperate to get an interesting image and managed to get a photograph the NYT thought was good enough to run 4 columns, above the fold, in the business section. I've always believed to be a good photographer you don't need an interesting story - you just need to work hard to make an interesting image.