Southern California Wedding Photographer - John Riedy

Back in March of this year I was contacted by the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties about a project. Their organization, a leading trade association in the commercial/industrial real estate industry, “adopted” Marine Special Operations Company Alpha out of Camp Pendleton. As part of their program, I have been asked to photograph some of the events sponsored by the NAIOP for the Marines. Back in March, I photographed a Pre-deployment Dinner hosted by the NAIOP just before the platoon was scheduled to leave for Afghanistan. The photos were posted online and the Marines were able order prints to take with them overseas at no cost to them. All told we provided the platoon with over $5000 worth of prints.

Well, a few weeks ago the brave men of Alpha Company came home. They did it in style “flying” in on hovercraft (also known as LCAC’s) landing on the shores of Camp Pendleton in Oceanside. There were many tearful reunions as you might expect including one extra special one between the company’s commander, Major Bruce Sotire and his newborn daughter, Payton. Please take a moment to have a look at some of the photos of the men who defend our freedom…

Major Sotire meets his daughter.

If you would like to make a donation to the NAIOP’s adopt a platoon program and support the Marines of Special Operations Company Alpha and their families, please click on this link.

You might have noticed that I’ve been a bit AWOL these past few weeks. Turns out that blogs are a lot of work! The reason I’ve not posted lately is that I’ve been SOOOOOO busy shooting some of the most amazing families and kids over the past few weeks. There were too many to do a whole blog entry for each so I thought I’d show you a few from each in one BIG blog entry. I hope you like them!

Of course, I had to get one of my little guy in there!