Photo Op!

 

These guys loved to get their photo taken, it never failed, they saw the camera and would group themselves together as though they thought they would get a copy of the photo right there and then. While I would walk around with my camera out, trying to take pictures of everything, most civilians did not want their photo taken, but the soldiers would without a doubt pose themselves, group themselves and ask for pictures to be taken. I don't know if there was some preconcived notions from other soldiers that inspired this but they ate it up.

 

I would like to add though that as I was working on this compsition, I used a few different photo references to get just the right grouping and mixture of what was going on. I think color would look great on this on and can't wait to block out some time and get busy!

Training the few

I think this is what I planned on doing a lot more of, and this was the mental preparation that I did before going over to Iraq, especially in the 'closing down' period. I can't say we did very much of this, although it did happen. But to cover my bases, it was a very different experience than I would thought it was going to be. Lots of ups and downs, too many expectations and the build up did not match the actual event nearly enough to compensate for the varied experiences that have caused a traumatic return home.