Hitting Florida Like A Hurricane...

In early 2006 I was hired by Nike Soccer North America to travel along side a film crew to capture behind the scenes photos while they produced short documentaries on four star Nike athletes. This was my first project for Nike after my initial gig, so I was a bit nervous and not really sure how things were going to roll. Our first trip was to Los Angeles to film Landon Donovan. (video below)


then to the Netherlands for Demarcus Beasley, (video below)


and finally over to Belgium to pick up some clips from Oguchi Onyewu, (video below)


but we weren't done with the project yet. We still had to get some interview material from Eddie Johnson, so we flew over to Bunnell, Florida to meet up with Eddie as he was coming home to see his family for a couple of days before going back to his then MLS club. Eddie's hometown of Bunnell is a small town of roughly 3,200 residents and is a stones throw away from Flaggler Beach, just north of Daytona Beach. Eddie's mother, Lewanna Johnson, no longer lives in the house he grew up in, which was a one bedroom box of a house in the middle of the Bunnell projects. Thanks to Eddie's acheivments, she now lives in a newer, three bedroom home in a much nicer part of town. Eddie's childhood started on some of the roughest drug filled streets in Florida. With no father figure to look up to, running the streets with his friends was only a foot step away for Eddie. But Eddie didn't take the easy road like those same friends he grew up with. Selling drugs and robbing liquor stores was not in his game. Eddie's game was all on the field!

Visiting the projects where Eddie lived was by far one of the craziest experiences of my life. If we were there at night, we'd be sorry, and if we were there with out Eddie, we'd be DEAD! The field where Eddie grew up playing soccer as a young boy was dedicated to him not to long ago and it was pretty cool to see how proud that made him feel. His passion for his community and his dream that a kid from the same projects he grew up in would follow in his foot steps to things bigger than the gang banging on the streets.

Check out the video we produced and catch the whole story of Eddie Johnson's rise to one of America's best soccer players


This is a gallery of my favorite photos taken during our shoot with Eddie Johnson. Enjoy!