Reflections: Honouring Our World War II Veterans

The Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP) has just completed one of the most ambitious, not-for-profit photographic projects undertaken in Australia to commemorate the unsung heroes of World War II and I was proud to have been part of it. My assistant Alison and I spent yesterday photographing surviving WWII veterans with my portable studio set up in Port Panthers in Port Macquarie and at the Wauchope RSL.

The Reflections: Honouring Our World War II Veterans project aims to collect a photographic record of returned WWII servicemen and women living in Australia for the RSL and Australian War Memorial archives. The photos will eventually end up as a gallery and book which will form part of a national archive at the Australian War Memorial.

All the photographers involved are donating their time and talent to preserve this important part of Australia’s history and what better time to capture our living heroes than now, and commemorate 100 years of the Anzac tradition and the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII.

It was a privilege and delight to be able to photograph these veterans and when you consider that most of them are in their nineties they are all amazingly sprightly and mentally pretty sharp too and some were down right cheeky! The wonderfully dapper looking gentleman in the right of the 3 images will be 100 years old in February for example.

With the project now finished I feel very proud and honoured to have taken part in such an ambitious and worthy cause.

For those that are interested these were shot on my Nikon D810 with a Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 at f5.6. Light was from one Elinchrom Octa and a reflector to fill.