A week has past now for me on Joe User. A strange week, I admit -- between work, my parnter in the hospital, and finding my dead neighbor -- I'm hoping the last gasps of 2007 are clearing the fog for the new breath of 2008. A year, by the way, I'm planning on starting in Athens: with my partner and a view of the Acropolis.

A few weeks ago, I photographed a group of veterans at a defense forum. It wasn't a partisan event, it was a matter -of -fact examination by the military of veteran health care and follow up after they returned home from Iraq or Afghanistan. My job was pretty straight forward: take photos of the participants speaking, the panel discussion, those asking questions for news and press release. (AHA! you say, I knew he was a journalist. Keep in mind I was hired by the military. What story do you think they want told?)

I was excited. In my own naive and simple mind, I'd accepted the job, thinking young, strapping soldiers would be the face of our military -- especially since the military was sponsoring this event.

Moments into the first speaker, I realized I was dead wrong. Everyone who fought in Iraq had been touched by Iraq. They were missing arms. They were missing legs. Some were missing both arms and legs. Some had been blasted in the face with an IED and were missing parts of their head.

When you photograph in an AP style, it means a talking head waiving a hand at podium to show annimation.

So tell me, when the hand is a hook, do you include it? When the speaker's left side of his face is gone, rebuilt in a close approximation by military doctors, do you emphasize it?

My problem is this: every great photo tells a story. What story is told here? That our military is getting shredded by IEDs? That, as they spoke, they told of impossible waits for basic healthcare once they returned home? That PTSD was given a superficial glance by the armed services and was the 1000 pound elephant in the room? Or, in almost every case, someone who lost both arms and legs was training to return to Iraq to fight for his country?

The story I told that day with my photos was a shaded version of the truth. I let the torn apart face fall into shadow. It was in the photo, but not emphasized. I let the hook of a hand rest on the podium, not waving in your face, "hey, look at me! I'm gone!" Lighting falling off the edges of the photo obscured, but didn't hide, that part of the story.

It was the best I could do. And in the end, I thought, that's the problem. The real tales of Iraq are in the shadow and everyone -- from reporter to photographer to anchor to recipient-- doesn't seem to have the ability to crank up the light. I'm not saying hard news photos from the front lines aren't depictive. I'm saying the story is, in many ways, kept by us -- the average joe -- in the dark parts of our mind.

It's safer there.