PANAMA - Deck Force (personnel assigned for work above decks) aboard CGC CAMPBELL (WMEC 909) taking a break and await orders from their BDC (Boat Deck Captain) while preparing to begin the nine hour transit through the Panama Canal. Once entering the canal zone, it can take up to two days to get clearance and wait for the ship's place in line for the transit from either the Pacific or Atlantic side. Views like this in the canal zone are common during the golden hours, especially during winter months when the ambient temperature hovers in the mid-80's and the air is thick with humidity. Add a sky full of passing storm clouds and you have a wonderful recipe for some great images.
The HH-65 Dolphin (Eurocopter) being hot-fueled aboard the deck of a 270' Medium Endurance Coast Guard Cutter.
[Bering Sea, Alaska, 2012] I spend months out to sea. I am afforded opportunities that many don't get, especially in regards to getting working portraits of my shipmates. I remember this day as if it were yesterday. We had been underway for only a couple hours, just off the coast of Dutch Harbor, when we got the call for SAR (Search and Rescue) off the Pribilof Islands - a group of fisherman in need of a medevac for a crew-member having chest pains. The mood was serious. After all, this is what we are called to do; that's why we're there. When I was in the first years of my Coast Guard career, I didn't have someone to follow me around with a camera - I wish I had. To this day, I'm not sure my family has any clue what it is I do out there. These images are for my shipmates, those whom I trust my life with when we're away, those who do the good work, the king's business. It is aboard ships that my love for working portraiture was born.
Taken on the bridge-wing aboard USCGC Campbell (WMEC-909)
Finding a human in the water from 500 feet in the sky... Something an old boss of mine used to say was, "There ain't nothin' that comes out of the sky but birdshit and fools!" I completely disagree. I've seen what these guys can do in the sky and after years of witnessing their handwork, I can honestly say that they're not just fools, they're a special kind of crazy. Each and every aviator I've ever met has been married to their work - in love with the sky as much as I am with the sea. As humans, we depend on the air we breathe as much as the water in each of us. Consequently, it's no mistake that our bodies contain roughly the same salt content as the oceans of our earth. Without Coast Guard aviation, the vast expanse of ocean would be largely unexplored. Most people don't realize how incredibly vast it's waters are... Imagine filling ten conference sized tables with a handful of salt on each. Remove one grain of salt from any of those 10 tables and ask a Coast Guard aviator to find the table from which you removed the salt grain. He or she will find it every time. What they can do from the sky is amazing, considering our oceans are simply and unapologetically, massive. These brave men and women are sometimes the only link between survival and certain death beneath the waves. In the photograph attached, you can almost see the whites of their eyes. Amazing something so small can do so much...
Brave souls beneath the down-draft of an HH-60, somewhere in the Caribbean Sea.
The crew of Coast Guard Cutter Legare out on the bridgewings conducting conning drills and training with Coast Guard Cutter Campbell.
