My First Published Photographs

Around 1990 (give or take a year or two), I was working for the San Diego District Attorney's Office as an Investigative Technician in the Technical Services Unit.

One of my jobs was to take photographs of crime scenes and other things that the DA's Office needed for preparing cases to go to court.  But one day, my supervisor asked me to go to Coronado, CA to visit the USS Independence (an aircraft carrier) to take photos for an article that was to be published in Law Enforcement Quarterly - a magazine that was published by the DA's Office.

The article was going to cover the work of the NIS (Naval Investigative Service) and how they deal with investigations, so one of the Lieutenants on the ship showed me around and helped pose in several of my shots.  The NIS is now more commonly known as the NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Services), but back then, they were just the NIS (you can see it on the front of the jackets in the photos above).

My supervisor was scheduled to do this special shoot, but unfortunately could not make it so he assigned me to go instead.  He was really looking forward to touring the aircraft carrier, but he had no choice but to assign me instead since he had another commitment.  It was the first and only time I had been on an aircraft carrier.

After the shoot, the Lieutenant stopped by the ship's store and bought me a cap (which I still have today).  I thanked him and brought it back to the DA's Office to show my supervisor what I got.  Boy... was he jealous!  He asked if I knew what I had in my hands... "Sure, a cap from the ship!"  Well, he went on to tell me that not only was it a USS Independence cap, but it had bars on the visor... it was an Officer's cap!  Apparently the crew member saw the Lieutenant's rank on his uniform and sold him an Officer's cap!

These photos were the images that were published for that article.  The original images were taken with a Nikon FM2 camera (can't recall which Nikon lens) with Kodak Kodachrome color slide transparencies.  I converted the images to 45.7 MP quality and corrected the exposures and colors in Adobe Photoshop.  While the lens was not anywhere close to my best lenses today, I'm still glad to have these images and the rest of the grouping of images I shot that day.

Thanks to my former supervisor and to the Lieutenant for a memorable time!