photogrammatical

It has been a rough deployment for my old unit.  Hard on my boys, and hard on their families at home.  Both sides have held up their ends, and now it’s almost over.  Right now houses are being cleaned, banners are being made, and parties are being planned.  I’m headed down south to be waiting for them when they arrive.

My Marine Families photo project, My Heart is Across the Ocean, will shortly be coming to a close.  I’ve also been writing while the boys have been gone.  Writing about their families, and what it’s been like for me to watch them go through these last seven months.  I’ve been on the other side of this before, the side where everyone is in it together, day and night.  Being stateside for this one has given me a new appreciation for circumstances that I may have been dismissive about in the past.

Now, my hope is to put everything together into a book.  After the homecoming it’ll just be a matter of tightening edits and paring down text.  As much as I’ve enjoyed working on this project, I’ll be happier when it’s something I can put away on a shelf.  I’ve been toying with a few different cover images for the past couple of months, but on my most recent shoot I finally found one that felt just right.

In case you were wondering, no I don’t have a publisher, I haven’t started showing it around yet.  But if you wanted to mention the project offhand to your cousin in publishing, then yes, that’d be just great.

I met Levi in a photo class years ago and we became fast friends.  We come from very different worlds, but find common ground in photography and our mutual love of beards.

These quick snaps were behind the scenes after one of his shoots, just after our conversation on why I prefer that people not smile in photographs.