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Marine Cpl. Kyle Thompson lost an eye and was awarded a Bronze Star for his military service, but in the year since he’s been home, has had lots of trouble getting medical treatment. He lost vision in his remaining eye, and finally had surgery last month, and remains hopeful he will regain his sight. Walden and Wyden’s folks have become involved.

Kyle, 25 and living with his grandfather south of Sunriver, seems like a very nice and well spoken young man. I did a portrait of his grandfather, Thomas, about a year ago for a story on how he and his father had both served in the USMC in WWI and WWII. Thomas earned a Purple Heart while fighting the Japanese in the south Pacific. Now his grandson has earned a Purple Heart fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.

He was a Recon Marine with the best of the best in the USMC. The guy in front of him lost both legs and half an arm after stepping on an underground explosive device. Kyle said it was the first time the Taliban used an explosion to start a firefight with western forces. He told me some other stuff, too. Like how when we went into Marja, his group was used to block the reinforcements coming into the town and kill anyone trying to run their blockade. He said they spent a month sleeping in an irrigation ditch watching and waiting for the Taliban to appear. He also said they’ll never try to do battle at night because of our superiority with night vision technology.

We spent about a half an hour talking before doing any pictures. This is my favorite technique to get the best shots possible. The subject becomes very comfortable with the photographer and lets him (me) figure out the best way to do a picture. Just rushing in and getting a quick photo and then leaving results in a snapshot.

The last time doing pictures here I noticed the nice bend in the Deschutes River where it runs behind the house and wanted to get his grandfather in there but couldn’t because of the weather. Even though it was just as windy, this time I had his grandfather hold the Profoto light head against the wind. He’s lit with the two foot octabox just outside of the view of the lens on camera right. I don’t own the Singh-Ray variable graduated neutral density filter and so was stuck with the lens at around f11. The black and white photo was done with a new favorite portrait lens: the Nikon 100mm f2.8 E lens from the late 70′s. It’s super sharp and weighs almost nothing, especially when compared to the SUV sized 80 – 200 f2.8 zoom.  The color photo was done with another late 70′s lens: the Nikon 28mm f2 E lens. Both are manual lenses, weigh nothing and work like charms.

My next backpacking trip, in June, will include the 100mm lens and my 24mm f2.8 D lens. The 24mm desperately needs replacing because of it’s age, how lose it is now and the nice scratch on the back element from so much use during the past 17 years. The fixed lenses last forever, while the zooms only last a few years before becoming unusable.

The sky in both these photos was partly cloudy and gave a nice soft box from behind look.

I thanked Kyle for his service to the country and certainly hope he has a great future. It’s always an honor and a learning experience meeting people like him. It would be great if people like him weren’t risking their lives doing battle with thugs in Afghanistan in the first place. I’m a huge fan of the eight part plan put forward by former Navy SEAL and Rhodes Scholar Eric Greitens here.

Today’s shameless keyword link: Bend Oregon Wedding Photographers.

A woman from the mental health care home new Pilot Butte Middle School goes out for a smoke Thursday afternoon, 4/27/12.

We’re learning how to use empathy to communicate with our kids in the parenting class. It works really well with my kid and made me start wondering if it might work with someone in public. Having the unique combination of science and art in my background I love experimenting with ideas to see if an hypothesis can hold up after being tested.

I’m also one of the very rare photographers who has absolutely no mercy, compassion or empathy while working. When my editor tells me to get a picture of someone I get the shot. In the very beginning I did have these things on the inside while working and quickly discovered what a hinderance they are for a person doing photography. Since those early days I’ve metamorphosed into a kind of non-violent Mafia hit man or Terminator. Give me a job and it gets done.

This combination of lack of feeling mixed with very high degree of what I call ‘The Mission’ has led to quite a few run-ins with police, government workers, and people in trouble. Someday I’ll write a post about the fool who tried rafting in blowup rafts down Big Eddy and got himself, his girlfriend and his non-year-old daughter stuck on the far side of the river. He spent more time flipping me off from across the river than trying to get to safety.

So yesterday, when this was done, was my once-a-month mandatory day off from work. They’ve had me do a story the last couple weeks on people with mental disabilities (the photo from last week’s My New York Times Picture of the Week) and wanted one of someone smoking in the neighborhood outside one of the homes. The people in the neighborhoods are complaining about the smoke. I went Wednesday in the rain and cold only to come up empty handed. My editor called me yesterday and begged me to go out on my unpaid day to see if it would be possible to get a photo of someone. I drove to the first house and no one was out smoking. When pulling up to the corner where the second house is located in a neighborhood near Pilot Butte Middle School I saw this lady, dressed in bright orange, firing up a smoke.

I quickly stopped and grabbed my personal camera, the Nikon D3 with a 17-35mm f2.8 lens, and ran over to her. While running I said loudly I was a photographer for the newspaper. Now, with slightly more empathy than yesterday, I can imagine what might have been going through her mentally challenged brain at that moment. Here she was, just walking down the street puffing on a cigarette and all of a sudden  someone 6’5″ jumps out of a truck and runs at her with a giant black camera and taking pictures while saying he works for the newspaper.

Must’ve been a shock.

The only thing she could say was, “Why are you taking my picture? Please stop.”

My response was, “I work for the newspaper and they want a picture of you smoking in the street.”

I let her walk around the corner and made a quick call to my editor telling him I had the shot. Then she started walking back and I decided to test my hypothesis of: “Will an adult, even a mentally challenged adult, respond to a show of empathy?”

As she approached, I said, “I know this is hard for you and understand completely how you must be feeling right now, but I really have to get some pictures of a person smoking out here.”

She appeared to lose all hostility and took a couple more puffs on the thing before putting it out. The shot came during the couple more puffs part of what happened.

I used the clean street as her head background and put the houses in the top to show the story of a person smoking in the neighborhood. She put out the cigarette and carried the butt back into the residence house.

Just to be completely sure she was a resident of the home I followed behind. She said, “I’m going to be in the newspaper!” as she walked into the house.

Today’s shameless keyword link: Bend Oregon Photographer.

Mental health patient John Rukaveno and his cat "Tabica" in their apartment in Bend Thursday, 4/19/12.

The billion or so regular readers of this blog will know I like to challenge myself to make at least one photograph a week along the lines of what appears in the New York Times Magazine. Living in Bend I’ll most likely never get a chance to shoot for them but won’t let this stop me from doing pictures like what you see in the magazine. I think some of the best photographers in America and the world shoot for them and it’s fun to think something I could do would show up there.

I had an assignment this week to do a bunch of photos of mostly places where people with mental health issues don’t have to live in a facility. Most of the pictures were just of buildings. Then my editor wanted me to get some of the people the reporter interviewed and I seized on the opportunity to make my weekly New York Times Photo of the Week. This was my best assignment of the week and I didn’t want to let it pass by without something extra.

Right now I’m burning disks of a freelance job from last Saturday and so have a couple minutes to write about this picture.

John was the third person I photographed for the story yesterday afternoon. He lives alone in an apartment on the east side of Bend and seems like a fairly pleasant fellow. I suspect he might be manic. He was full of energy and loved to talk. Living on the first floor I did pictures of him from outside the apartment looking in with him on the back porch. Then did some of him sitting on a plastic chair on the porch with cigarette packs and an empty Folgers coffee can for the butts. Some were loose, others were tight, but I wasn’t satisfied with the pictures.

His cat, Tabica, was wandering around and I was afraid it would pee on my camera gear and kept an eye on where it was at all times. I’m not a huge fan of cats, but hey, if they work in a picture then I’m all for them. The cat was sent out of the living area and ran to John’s bed in the back. John, always talking and wanting to show me stuff, took me into his room to show me a couple family photos hanging on the walls. He doesn’t have much stuff and I was wondering where he was before living in the apartment.

He grabbed a Bible for some reason to show me and his cat was sitting there watching. All of a sudden the ‘Little Voice in the Head’ piped up with something like “Get this shot.” The little voice doesn’t talk in English, it talks in emotion and “feels.” A “feel” is what a picture might feel like when looking at it afterwards.

John sat down with his Bible and cat and looked out the window. There was the shot, my last shot of the work week, and the New York Times Magazine Photo of the Week.

Today’s shameless keyword link: Bend Oregon Wedding Photographers.