On my first tour, there were moments of downtime. I was already obsessed with photography, so I started asking my battle buddies if I could take their portraits. Most of the time it happened between loading trucks or yelling down from my gunner’s turret. I had my camera on me nearly all the time probably 90 percent of it.
It wasn’t about making anything dramatic. I just wanted to remember faces, expressions, the way people carried themselves when no one was watching. Those quiet minutes felt important, even then. Looking back now, the photographs are less about the war itself and more about the people inside it caught in between movement, waiting, and whatever came next.
As I’m shooting, I’m learning about my equipment, about light, and about the person standing in front of me. Every interaction teaches me something different. Some people are guarded, some loosen up immediately, some never quite do. Each photo, or group of photos, starts to take on its own personality.
I didn’t think of it as a project at the time. It was just practice, curiosity, and a way to stay present. But looking back, those portraits became a quiet record of who we were in those in-between moments before moving out again, before the next task, before the next unknown.
