Smiley Pool

Smiley Pool has photographed his fair share of history. Some of those events will appear in the history books, but he’s always found the family scrapbook variety more rewarding. His favorite assignments are the police officers, cancer survivors, schoolchildren, AIDS patients, street preachers, and countless other people who welcome him into their lives and allow him to help tell their stories

Along the way he’s garnered his fair share of awards — most notably for contributing the aerial photography in The Dallas Morning News’ coverage of Hurricane Katrina that won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography. The Texas Associated Press Managing Editors has named him Star Photojournalist of the Year six times. He’s also won numerous POYi, Best of Photojournalism, and National Press Photographers Association awards.

He’s covered thousands of high school, college, and pro football games; 10 Olympic games; at least a dozen hurricanes; and dozens of presidents, popes, kings, and queens. He even spent a year embedded with the crew of NASA’s final Space Shuttle mission.

He currently works as a staff photographer at The Dallas Morning News, and previously worked for the Houston Chronicle, the Colorado Springs Gazette, Austin American-Statesman, and St. Louis Suburban Journals (as a stringer in high school).

His recently published book Through The White Door is a documentary photography project that spans over two decades following a remarkable group of people who faced the HIV/AIDS crisis head-on and saved a generation of children.

When not on assignment, he volunteers at a summer camp for HIV+ youth with his wife, Jessica Johns Pool, and travels the world, sometimes just to see total eclipses.

And, yes, his name really is Smiley. It’s a long story.