Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Zane Craig | U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Jose Rodriguez, the lead visual information specialist with 7th...... read more read more
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JOINT MULTINATIONAL READINESS CENTER, Germany—Have you seen photos and videos of U.S. Soldiers in action on television, online, on advertisement billboards and posters, and in newspapers and magazines and wondered where they come from?
Where do these videos and images come from? Who captures them, edits them and makes sure they reach their intended audience?
The answer to these questions is two Army military occupational specialties, the visual information specialist, formerly called combat camera, and the public affairs specialist.
Many current and former military members have had the experience of being out in the field training or at an official event, when one or several Soldiers wielding cameras descends on the scene and starts clicking away, putting their lenses in the faces of wet, cold, suffering or simply bored subjects. Less experienced Soldiers are often baffled by this, seemingly not sure whether the COMCAM and PAO are real Soldiers or members of the civilian media. They are real Soldiers.
Public affairs and combat camera are part of the 46 series of MOS and acquire their skills at the Defense Information School at Fort Meade, Maryland, during their advanced individual training.
As with anything related to the media, these fields have changed a lot in recent years and continue to evolve along with civilian trends and technologies.
U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Jose Rodriguez, a visual information specialist with 7th Army Training Command here, is at the forefront of this change within the Army’s visual media community. The senior VI specialist for Team Viper, one of 15 observer coach trainer teams here, Rodriguez recently played a key role in developing the updated visual information documentation course curriculum at DINFOS.
“It’s always going to have a special place in my heart because every student that graduates VISDOC has told me it’s the probably best three weeks of the whole nine months they were there,” he said.
The Vipers are the combat camera team supporting JMRC with a staff of 14 highly trained photographers and videographers. The team captures rotational training video, still photo, and multimedia documentation. They also produce external and marketing-oriented products, cover ceremonies, and do command photos, prints, and posters.
U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Dana Clarke, operations sergeant with Viper Team, also has a bachelor’s degree in public relations. She works closely with the team’s only public affairs Soldier to determine which content gets released to the public and which remains internal.
“We all kind of know how to do each other’s jobs,” said Clarke. “For the most part, as COMCAM, we portray the Army as it is.”
That includes positive things like our strength, our partnerships, and our diversity, but also less palatable and less public things like autopsies and crime scenes that cannot be released to the public.
Public Affairs here focuses more on media relations and social media, while combat camera focuses on gathering content. In other places, public affairs Soldiers gather nearly all their own content. A Soldiers’ experience as COMCAM or public affairs will vary greatly depending on where they are stationed and the assignments they receive.
Rodriguez became interested in photography while studying graphic design in Puerto Rico, and said he fell in love with Photoshop, applied for jobs in photography, and landed a job in the fashion industry. He then discovered Steve McCurry, who took the famous “Afghan Girl” National Geographic cover photo, while working as a conflict photographer. He discovered the best way for him to achieve this level of excellence in the field was to join the military.
Around 2010, while stationed at Fort Bragg, he took on frequent temporary duty assignments and two deployments to quickly gain experience and rank.
“You don’t know what’s behind that door before you open it. That’s what deployment is like,” said Rodriguez.
For both of his deployments, Rodriquez was stationed in Qatar and attached to different teams of operators, mostly covering training but also some real missions such as boarding and clearing pirate ships. He said that in this field, you are by yourself a lot.
“It’s not very common for junior Soldiers to be able to go out alone, drive alone in a humvee, use night vision, edit their own photos and videos and be completely self-sufficient,” said Clarke. “The maturity level is so high on this team because we have so much independence.”
This level of relative independence, ability to take initiative, and outlet to express yourself creatively, all while experiencing a wide range of military life, is really unique to visual media occupations in the Army.
“Being COMCAM and PAO, you get access to a lot of stuff in the Army that people don’t get to see,” said Clarke.
The lines are blurring in the field of Army visual media and will blur more and more, said Rodriguez, so it’s important to accept that fact and acknowledge we’re all part of the 46 series family.
| Date Taken: | 06.01.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 06.03.2024 03:37 |
| Story ID: | 472803 |
| Location: | HOHENFELS, BAYERN, DE |
| Web Views: | 315 |
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This work, Behind the lens: Army combat camera and public affairs, by SFC Zane Craig, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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