09/10/2026
Four Frames From the Door of a Huey
Before video production, before 3D animation, before I became a business growth and technology consultant, I was a crew chief and helicopter repairman on the UH-1H. I served two continuous tours in Germany, with a Desert Storm deployment, numerous training exercises, and a near-top academic placement in PLDC (Primary Leadership Development Course) along the way.
Photography wasn't part of that job. On certain flights I was allowed to bring my own camera, and that's where the rest of my working life started. These four frames were taken during the Desert Storm deployment, around the borders of Turkey and Iraq, from the aircraft I crewed, the one with my name on its side.
1. The landing
Another Huey setting down in its own dust cloud, shot through my aircraft's door frame.
This is the frame I come back to. The helicopter is almost swallowed by what its own rotor is kicking up, and the edge of my door frame is right there in the shot. It's not a clean composition. It's a real one: taken from a working seat, in the middle of the job, by someone who had about a second to decide it was worth taking.
2. Another aircraft, from mine
A Blackhawk, photographed from my Huey in flight.
Photographing one aircraft from another sounds simple until you're doing it. Both are moving, the light is changing, and you're holding a camera in an open doorway. You learn to anticipate where something will be rather than react to where it is. That habit outlasted the Army.
3. From above
A camp seen from the air, camera in hand.
From the ground, a camp is tents, vehicles and noise. From the air, it's a pattern: how it's laid out, where the paths wear in, what sits close to what. Seeing the same place from two heights changes how you understand it, and I've leaned on that ever since, whether the subject was a video, a business system or a website.
4. Before the weather
My Huey, covered up ahead of an approaching sandstorm.
The quietest of the four, and the one that says the most about the actual job. Before any flying or photographing, the aircraft has to be looked after. You cover it before the weather arrives, not after. Most of the work that matters looks like this: unglamorous, done early, and invisible when it's done right.
What the door taught me
I didn't know I was starting a career. I was a crew chief who liked to photograph what he saw. But the door of that Huey taught me three things I still use:
Take the shot while you're doing the job.
The good frames came from working flights, not from waiting for perfect conditions.
Look from more than one height.
Up close and from above tell you different truths about the same thing.
Do the protective work first.
Covering the aircraft before the storm is the part nobody photographs, and it's the part everything else depends on.
These photos nearly spent years on my site at a fraction of their real size, until I finally looked at them properly again. They deserve better than that, so here they are, full size.
The rest of the story
How a crew chief with a camera ended up in video production, business systems and, now, helping owners put AI to work.