OP Love: Pre-Deployment

I thought there was a big deployment coming up, I had been getting a ton of requests for OP Love shoots. I'm so happy that the word is getting out there! Unfortunately due to their location and my schedule I had to turn some down. More than I would have liked. I did my best to find other photographers for them. (If you're a photographer reading this and interested in helping out, head over to the OP Love website and click on the link for interested photographers to sign up.)

These phone calls and e-mails always leave me with mixed emotions. I get excited knowing that awareness of OP Love is spreading and I get excited that I'll be able to photograph their family and provide the military member stationed away with an album filled with images of their family. But then after the excitement wears off I get sad. I think about what it would be like to be a military family, watching your loved one deploy not really knowing for sure when the next time they will see each other. Yeah, they give you return dates but as any military family will tell you these are not always set in stone. Seeing these wives and children knowing that in a short time their communication will be limited fills me with so much emotion, I often shed a few tears after each session.

A few days before Father's Day I received a call from a man that was about to deploy in just a few days. He was part of a Reserve Unit out of Bay City leaving for Afghanistan the day before Father's Day. He had just heard about OP Love and wanted to get a session before he left and I was grateful to have a free afternoon that week. We met up at Memorial Park last week for a quick session so they could get back to spending time together before leaving. Here's just a few of my favorites...

Click here for a slide show of some more images from our session.

Thank you so much for everything you guys go through to protect the freedom that we all have. It's the people like you guys that really make a difference!