Hey, good news – I can now add photographer to my list of talents here at the agency.

A few weeks ago I received the latest copy of Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine at work. After thumbing through it I went to the back cover and saw an ad for Rockwell Collins. The ad did its job – it stopped me for sure, not because of the messaging, but rather for the photo of United Nations relief supplies with an Air Force C-130 aircraft in the background.

I think the photo in the ad looks awesome, due to the way the composition and lighting focuses in on the supplies in the foreground and slightly blurs the aircraft behind them…but also because I took it.

While deployed with the Air Force to Kenya in 2006, I snapped that photo, along with a few hundred others about the humanitarian mission the U.S. military was conducting in support of flood victims in Somalia. I posted a handful of photos to the U.S. Air Force website. All photos I take on behalf of the Air Force are property of the Air Force, of course, and photos posted on its website are considered public information and can be distributed and copied.   

It’s flattering to know that the folks at Rockwell Collins liked my photo well enough to use it in a full-page ad, and they certainly got a pretty good deal on it. Maybe they’ll throw me a free t-shirt for the effort.

I was in Haiti this past January covering the earthquake relief efforts – let’s see where my next set photos from that trip end up.