Saying goodbye during the deployment ceremony of Battery "A", 2nd Battalion, 138th Field Artillery.  Carroll County.  October 14, 2006.

     I don't know the names of the young couple in this picture, but I know the situation.  He and other members of his Carrollton-based National Guard unit were being deployed that day to Afghanistan.  They'll spend several weeks of training at an Army base in New Jersey, then they're off to war.
     The woman at left in the picture is, I believe, the young woman's mother.  The couple may be married, maybe boyfriend and girlfriend.  I don't know.  It doesn't matter.

     Some of you may wonder why I chose to use this photo on my website, which is mostly scenes of rural Kentucky.  Well, this is a rural Kentucky scene.  I shot this while on assignment for state government.  It was the second National Guard deployment from a small Kentucky town that I had photographed in two weeks, the other being a unit from Bardstown on October 5.
     I have my own political views, of course, but I have no intention of discussing them here.  My point in using this picture is simply a reminder that when we send our people off to war, we're doing just that.  We're separating them from their homes and loved ones, and sending them to the other side of the world where they may be killed or injured for life.  This picture is, I suppose, my version of those little magnetic ribbons that people put on their cars.
     If we're all lucky, I'll have the chance to photograph this couple again in a year or so, when his unit comes home, intact.