Michael Yon - Scenes from Afghanistan
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
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Michael Yon - Scenes from Afghanistan
Common Scenes & Common Thoughts
The helicopter pilot wearing night vision goggles roared in so fast it looked as though he were crashing. The four green Cylums (Americans call them Chemlights) mark the HLS. While the helicopter is above the dust cloud, it melts into the dark, but as it approaches the HLS, dust swirls high, setting the stage for an amazing light show. The Chinook descends through the dry dust and the rotors glitter brightly, creating an eerie glow as if sparklers are attached to the rotors, which in reality appeared brighter to the eye than in the photo below. If the helicopter were not so loud, the millions of static discharges might be heard crackling and popping.
Slow shutter speed causes moving helicopter to 'disappear' while the trace and sparks off the descending rotors is clear. Heavy dust makes a sharp focus look blurred. (ISO 1600, 50mm at f1.2, 3.2s.)
Walking through the streets, one sees enough fertilizers to flatten a strong and very large building. The local bomb-makers often use pressure cookers as the Maoists did in Nepal. In fact, the Nepalese government began confiscating pressure cookers, leading even more people to sympathize with Maoists who used them for small bombs. Our forces spent considerable effort intercepting fertilizer coming into Iraq—I was on some of those missions—yet here the bomb-making materials are all available within a couple minutes from the base.
The helicopter pilot wearing night vision goggles roared in so fast it looked as though he were crashing. The four green Cylums (Americans call them Chemlights) mark the HLS. While the helicopter is above the dust cloud, it melts into the dark, but as it approaches the HLS, dust swirls high, setting the stage for an amazing light show. The Chinook descends through the dry dust and the rotors glitter brightly, creating an eerie glow as if sparklers are attached to the rotors, which in reality appeared brighter to the eye than in the photo below. If the helicopter were not so loud, the millions of static discharges might be heard crackling and popping.
Slow shutter speed causes moving helicopter to 'disappear' while the trace and sparks off the descending rotors is clear. Heavy dust makes a sharp focus look blurred. (ISO 1600, 50mm at f1.2, 3.2s.)
Walking through the streets, one sees enough fertilizers to flatten a strong and very large building. The local bomb-makers often use pressure cookers as the Maoists did in Nepal. In fact, the Nepalese government began confiscating pressure cookers, leading even more people to sympathize with Maoists who used them for small bombs. Our forces spent considerable effort intercepting fertilizer coming into Iraq—I was on some of those missions—yet here the bomb-making materials are all available within a couple minutes from the base.
