38 days to the World Cup

It’s not often I’m envious of the kinds of assignments other photographers receive.

There’s plenty of work to go around, after all.

In this instance, I’m envious mostly because I’m a diehard soccer fan.

I’d be in heaven if I could be in South Africa to photograph the games.

In 1994 when the Beautiful Game came to the US, I took my mum to a game.

She recalled, on her flight over from Malaysia, there were some national soccer players on board.

Ever the chatty person that she is, she mentioned that her son had tickets.

Boy, those national team players were so envious.

Pity that enthusiasm and passion isn’t as universal here in the US.

This is no cakewalk of an assignment–photographing all these soccer stars.

As the photographer for Vanity Fair, Annie Leibovitz probably had to do a lot of homework.

Why do I say that? Remember, these are all superstars in the soccer world. As a someone who doesn’t know the game well, she has to quickly learn who’s who.

Then she has to cajole and entice the best out of them. Takes quite a bit of doing, I assure you.

The actual picture-taking is almost secondary on a shoot like this, is my guess.