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International Travel Photo Contest2008 Honorable Mention Christopher King, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base Campus Center, Afghanistan
I’ve been a Park Student since 2002. I’m an active duty Air Force Explosive Ordnance Disposal member stationed in Tucson, AZ. While on my first deployment to Iraq, I was introduced to taking pictures of the area around our incident sites. The pictures that I’m submitting were taken during a deployment to Afghanistan in August 2006. I was in Afghanistan from May thru Nov 2006. I’ve chosen the best pictures that were taken during my trip. The majority of the pictures that were taken, during my trip, were of incident sites and vary in topic. The first picture (DSC31112.jpg) was taken during a post blast investigation where 3 US soldiers were killed and 2 others were injured in an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attack in the Korengal valley. The picture was taken just north of the village of Taliban (that's actually the name of the village). I took the picture just because it was the only serene image in the wake of so much carnage. On both sides of the picture out of the field of view were horrifying images, the burnt out shell of a Humvee to the left and the bombing of Taliban terrorists by Coalition aircraft to the right. The second picture (28 Aug KOP clearance) was taken the following day about 1 mile north of the village of Taliban. It was taken very early in the morning and turned out to be a very good picture in my mind and of those that have seen it. It shows the beauty and serenity that can come out of such an austere and dangerous place. It was a beautiful cool morning and the picture was taken during a brief pause of our convoy. The third picture (Welcome to Afghanistan) that I’m submitting is one that was taken during a mission in southern Afghanistan. It’s of a welcome sign above a checkpoint. To the untrained eye, the red and white painted posts appear to be just that. In all actuality, they’re rocket launchers from Old Russian helicopters. This appears to be a bit of irony to me, as the sign is very friendly in appearance, and the destruction that the posts once represented. --------------------------------- University Resources |