Through the Lens

By Kristopher Radder, Project HOPE Public Affairs Officer

This is my second time volunteering as a photographer on a grey-hull mission for Project HOPE, and on these missions, I’ve had the ability to see a wide range of human experience through the lens of my camera.

My first mission was with Continuing Promise last year, and now I have the chance to do Pacific Partnership.

It isn’t easy to understand the complexity of a moment until you get a chance to look at the photos after the shoot. That’s when you have the time to catch things you might have thought you captured but didn’t, or find out you captured something powerful when you took a random chance on a photo. Anything might make a photograph stand out. It could be the twinkle in a child’s eye, or the creases in the face of an elderly person.

My first real shoot for Pacific Partnership was on a remote island in Tonga, at a medical civic action project, or MEDCAP, site. The staff was excited to start working and interacting with the Tongans. One of the patients was a mother of twins, and everyone wanted to hold them. Hospital Corpsman Senior Chief Anna Woods got to hold one, and the child just fell asleep on her shoulder. I got the photo and didn’t think about it until I got back to the ship.

When I went through my photos from the day, I saw the photo and it hit me. The colors were off a bit, but the look on her face said something to me. There was genuine feeling there. In that moment, she wasn’t a corpsman at a MEDCAP helping the Tongans on a Navy mission. Now, she was a mother who was thousands of miles away from her children who had the rare opportunity to feel the joy of holding a baby.

Like Ferris Bueller said: “life moves pretty fast.” At the slowest, I usually capture life as it’s happening in 1/60th of a second. In that amount of time a photographer tries to capture more than action, lighting, or composition. A photojournalist has to look for a moment and a message. Those moments and messages have the ability to move people to offer a little charity, learn about a new cause, or even volunteer to do something to help their communities, their countries, or maybe even the world.

I’m overwhelmed by the feelings people show on the Pacific Partnership Facebook page, where people show a complete range of emotions, including everything from happiness about seeing a photo of a loved one to sadness about missing those loved ones.

I have been honored to accompany Project HOPE on two humanitarian missions which have taken me to parts of South America on Continuing Promise and to Oceania with Pacific Partnership. I have been able to work with some of the best people I’ve ever met who are just trying to make a small difference.

One of the countries that will always stick with me is Papua New Guinea. The people were friendly and warm, and they were excited to see all of the people from Pacific Partnership who were there to help them. The Papua New Guineans kept bringing us anything they could to express their gratitude, bags, fruit, or anything else they could think to offer.

When he was leaving the Tent City MEDCAP, Cpl. Daniel Mayfield was surrounded by the locals. I grabbed my camera, and everyone just gathered around him, cheering and smiling with joy for the help that we were bringing. That was an example of an easy day.

On the other hand, some days are a real challenge. There was a shoot in Papua New Guinea at the Bubia Primary School engineering civil action project site, or ENCAP. The Seabee battalion there was working on this project 20 days before the ship had arrived.

I was inspired by their work ethic, and I wanted to bring justice to the work they were doing. When it came time to submit the images, nothing was panning out. I argued with everyone involved with the editorial process, and I tried to get them to push the shots on the merits of the Seabees’ efforts, even if mine weren’t up to their standards. After listening to the editors’ reasons, I felt that I’d let the Seabees down in some fashion, by not getting the right image. The time wasn’t on my side either for a re-shoot. Of course I was disappointed, but I took the lessons I needed from that experience and had a successful shoot in Timor-Leste.

We have almost completed our final mission port for Pacific Partnership, but the moments I have been able to witness, and the bonds that I have made will last me a lifetime, and I can only hope that it will continue.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. Our next blog will be posted in a couple of days.

Sincerely,
Kris Radder

Kris Radder is the public affairs officer for the Pacific Partnership 2011 Project HOPE contingent. He is working closely with the military public affairs team, shooting photographs, writing blogs, and telling the world what Project HOPE is doing aboard a U.S. Navy ship with an international military team.

www.cpf.navy.mil/pp11
www.facebook.com/pacificpartnership/

http://twitter.com/pacificpartner

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