After completing his military service, he earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota and became involved in radical politics, joining the Student World Federalists.
After his car broke down while he was on vacation in San Francisco, Ballis decided to live there and took a job writing headlines for article in The Wall Street Journal, where he was called in by his boss about his use of creative phrasing.
[4] While working as an editor of a labor newspaper in the 1950s, Ballis took a photography course taught by Dorothea Lange, a photographer and photojournalist who had documented the Great Depression in her photos.
Labor historian Richard Steven Street called Ballis's work "activist photography with a point of view" and credited him as being one of a small number of freelance photographers who brought Chávez the public attention he needed to succeed in his efforts.
[4] As director of National Land for People, Ballis opposed a June 1980 decision by the United States Supreme Court that ruled that a 1902 law limiting irrigated farms to 160 acres (65 ha) did not apply in the Imperial Valley.