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PMO IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY
By Jon on March 16, 2008
So I am I Japan and this place is awesome. The people are friendly, the scenery is beautiful, and the land is just full of life waiting for me to photograph it. As of right now, there are two obstacles blocking my path to freedom and my camera’s path to photography heaven.
The first is very simple: we cannot go out in town without a liberty card, which my unit has yet to give us. We have been here for a week cooped up on base and I am starting to go stir crazy. Two nights ago I caught my camera sneaking out of the room to try and get some night shots of Iwakuni. So I figured I would do the next best thing and spend the weekend I have to be on base taking pictures of the base. There is where road block number 2 comes into play.
I am going to lead into this obstacle with an awesome story. As soon as I got into photography, wildlife photography especially, I have fantasized about photographing a bald eagle. That dream became reality earlier this year. My new obsession is now to photograph a bald eagle catching a fish from a lake or a rodent from the grass. Too much to ask for? I think not. Anyways, I was walking on the sea wall on base and happened to turn just in time to see a red shouldered hawk begin a nose dive from high in the clouds. Somehow I managed to get the sequence of Mr. Hawk swooping down into the river and catching a fish! I know its not a bald eagle, but it is SOO awesome.
Needless to say I was as happy as a kid at Christmas. So I decided to head back to the barracks and check out my shots. About 5 minutes from the barracks, I was walking passed the flightline with my camera and my Mistress (my name for my 400mm lens. She is the ONLY thing I would cheat with.), which obviously is going to attract a lot of attention. I get about 200 meters from the barracks when PMO pulls in front of me.
Long story short, 3 people had called them saying I have been sitting for over an hour taking pictures of the flightline. And yes, possibly the first picture of the day had been a photograph of some golfer taking a whack off the 6th tee. And YES a part of the tail of ONE F-18 HAPPENED to be in the background. Can you believe they made me delete the picture?! Unforgivable…
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