I Captured The Dow's Worst Drop Since 9/11

Last month I was out shooting the turbulent economy for the Wall Street Journal.

Morning started at 6:30 at the corporate headquarters of Lehman Brothers, the over century-and-a-half old financial services firm that filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. My job was to make pretty/interesting photos of the headquarters.

Afterward, I went down to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to take more pictures, which meant I had to wear a jacket and tie, blah! (I have only a few ties - this one was dark blue with lighter blue polka-dots.) Then I went to the New York Mercantile Exchange, and back to the NYSE floor for the closing bell.

From what I can tell the floor brokers seem busier when there is a lot of fluctuation in the market. Obviously they want to increase the value of their client's portfolios, but there is only so much they can do...their job is to react to the fluctuations and buy or sell based on the best interests of their firm's clients. The more volatile the market, the more they are buying and selling.

In honesty, they're all throwing numbers around and it's all over my head. Being on the floor is like being in a locker room; it's a boy's club - everyone knows everyone, and when you're working in the conditions they're working in (bumping into each other, et cetera), they all joke with each other, especially when cameras are around. Often when I go in for a close up (particularly on less volatile days) they'll rib the person I'm photographing, making jokes like you'd hear members of a team to do one another.

The day I went, it turned out I shot the worst drop in the Dow Industrial since 9/11.