Meet a war photographer with a real artistic flair.
(EUGENE, Ore.) - The story of a freelance photographer that I traveled to Iraq with recently is now published in the Eugene Register Guard Newspaper. Justin King had never been in the military, nor had he spent time in a war theater, but this Eugene resident known throughout the world for his guitar skills, showed us all that he had exactly what it takes to shoot amazing images under less than ideal conditions.
Justin spent time with a number of units under the Army's 101st Airborne attached to the air base at Balad known as Camp Anaconda. He traveled to Baghdad as well, spending part of a day learning the history of some of the city's sites that many people are familiar with, through television coverage of the war.
Justin's guitar work is world famous, though you could spend days with him and not even know he plays. In the war zone Justin was a photographer, that is unless people recognized him; then he was a guitar virtuoso again.
Justin King on the acoustic guitar
One day we were standing in the Baghdad International Airport, trying to catch a helicopter ride to an LZ near the media credentialing office. As we had handed over our ID, the guy from the Air Force said, "Man, there is a guitarist named Justin King who is really amazing".
I said, "Hey man... meet that Justin King."
This was just one of the moments along those lines that I experienced while hanging around with Justin in Iraq.
On another day we flew back to Balad in a helicopter, and were trying to find our way back across base to our living quarters at 3:00 AM, when a soldier came driving along and offered us a ride. The guy had a guitar, and Justin played a mesmerizing rift that I suspect, very very few guitar players are capable of. The soldier and I were blown away as Justin performed complicated music in a casual way under a starless Iraqi sky.
Please check out Justin's article in the Eugene Register Guard. His experience was very similar to mine and he notes the changes taking place with the Sons of Iraq under the Sunni Awakening Councils.
Here is the article by Justin King: Register Guard: Witness to War
-----------------------------------------------------Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. In addition to his role as a war correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor.Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 in Afghanistan with Oregon troops. Tim recently returned from Iraq where he covered the war there while embedded with an Oregon Guard aviation unit. Serving the community in very real terms, Salem-News.com is the nation's only truly independent high traffic news Website, affiliated with Google News and several other major search engines and news aggregators.You can send Tim an email at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com
Newspaper Publishes Iraq War Photographer's StorySalem-News.com