A perk to working in publishing is meeting people, some of whom hold notable celebrity. A few of my faves have been pro athletes and over the years I have made the acquaintance of several sports legends. I was recently able to add Jon Daniels to that list. JD is the Texas Ranger’s general manager, who just happens to grace the cover of our April issue of Southlake Style.

My meeting of Jon Daniels occurred back in February when he happened to be speaking at a business breakfast at the Southlake Hilton. Jon was only in town that morning and actually flew out of DFW Airport immediately afterward. Much like the Brittany Tew cover shoot for our February issue, I found myself in a bad weather bind.  It had rained for 3 days straight and the forecast for that morning didn’t look good for art directors or photographers. I scouted the location a few days earlier with my photographer, Mike and created a list of possible areas and scenarios to accommodate my sketched poses with whatever weather we were dealt that morning.  I swung by Academy Sporting Goods the day before and picked up a baseball bat.

Jon Daniels was scheduled to go on stage at 8 AM so we expected him to arrive at the Hilton at least 45 minutes beforehand to meet with us. Knowing we would only have a few precious moments to get what was needed with JD, my photographer and I arrived just after daylight to assess the weather, set up lighting and do a few more test shots.

JD was running late that morning and actually arrived at 7:45, only giving us fifteen minutes to get a cover shot and lead for the main feature in this month’s issue. After a quick but cordial meet and greet with Jon, I went directly to my trusty notes and sketches. We didn’t have much of a sky, but with a little enhancement via Photoshop, I gave myself just enough blue to contrast and anchor the logo.

The Texas Rangers provided me with more great images of Jon along with Nolan Ryan, Josh Hamilton, Yu Darvish and Ron Washington for our feature layout.

The result is one of my favorite feature stories and covers this year. Recently, my cover was fodder on a DFW Sports radio program, The Ticket. Having a cover story that not only gets people to pick up the magazine, but also creates any type of buzz is very satisfying to an art director. Having all your ducks in a row and being organized and prepared for a photo shoot will always enable you to instantaneously react to whatever situations that might arise in a hectic unpredictable world and get the desired outcome or to quote Anchorman, “You’ve got to keep your head on a swivel.”