One of my favorite shoots of 2022 was documenting the Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles for American University’s American magazine. I spent a few days attending rehearsals at their practice space in the community room of a local church and then attended their year-end performance at the Walt Disney Concert Hall downtown.
The assignment was primarily to profile the orchestra’s founder and director, as well as American University alumni, Charles “Chuck” Dickerson. But seeing as how the orchestra’s main objective is benefiting its young members, I also saw this as an opportunity to do a portrait series depicting some of them along with their instruments. I pitched the idea as an accompanying element to the Dickerson profile and planned to shoot them on the day of the concert. When the piece published it was a rewarding surprise to see an image of the portrait series chosen as the magazine cover! A portrait of Chuck and a spread of additional portraits also ran inside and a set of documentary images showing the rehearsals and performance displayed online.