Ohio Veterans

With Veterans Day this Wednesday, November 11 I assembled some of the photos from the 2009 Ohio Veterans Memorial Hall of Fame induction ceremony I photographed this past Friday. The hall of fame is notoriously hard to get into. The inductees are chosen for their unique qualities and only twenty people from all of Ohio were inducted this year.

I was at the event to photograph 1 of the new members, Thomas Moe, who is well known in Bexley, Ohio. Or atleast that is how I understood it from the assignment sheet. Sometimes all you have is a name, place and time of the assignment and you have to figure out the rest as you go.

It was an honor to be in the presence of the hundreds of veterans who were at the ceremony. Some of them were hall of fame members themselves.

I got lucky twice that day. Once for being privledged to go to the event and the second when Thomas Moe gave a thumbs up to the audience while being recognized for his accomplishments. It made the photo special.

That wasn't the only moment either. The photograph of John Twohig's wife holding his plaque was also moving. While photographing her I could see tears forming at the edges of her eyes as the speaker read her late husbands accomplishments. It was a touching moment but tearful emotions usually don't come across in a photograph unless the reaction is very strong or you can zoom in close enough to show the face in more detail.

I hadn't truely seen the photographs I was taking until I noticed her hands while editing. As the accomplishments of her late husband were read, you could see the progression of how it affecteed her as her hands moved from holding the plaque from behind to almost hugging the plaque at the end.

It is quiet, un-assuming moments like that that twinge memories of the thrills I had when I starteed my career in photography and watched photographs come to life in the developing tray in the darkroom. And now with technology we can add much more to our presentations for the audience and sometimes diluting the power of the still picture. Still photographers can now add sound or moving video to their repetoire but the still image is still very poignant and powerful. It captures a slice of time and allows us to see deeper into the moments we captured.

I'm getting too philosophical, so I'll just take one more moment to remind everyone to take time to thank a veteran and to remember the millions of veterans who gave the ultimate sacrifice so that we may have the freedoms we enjoy.

On a technical side note the sound in the slide show is actually recorded from the on board mic on the Canaon 1D. It is only meant for voice notes and barely passes for usable audio even for that at times. Besidse the poor quality of the recordings from the camera mic, the biggest issue in trying to record audio with the camera is that you can only record 30 second chunks of sound. So how did I get a minute 22 seconds of audio of the choir singing? Careful editing and getting lucky that the song lyrics are repetative.