Damien Thomlinson
November 21st, 2010
Last week I met without a doubt the most determine and down to earth person I have ever met. His name is Damien Thomlinson, if you watch 60 minutes ever you might know who he is. If you don’t, he is a commando in the Australian Army in the 2nd Commando Regiment, if you don’t know much about the army these guys are the best of the best, they do some really crazy shit. It also turns out he grew up bodyboarding and is still a keen surfer just waiting to get back out there. Anyway while over in Afghanistan last year Damien was critically injured when he was blown up by a Taliban IED. As a result Damien lost both of his legs aswell as receiving major injuries to other parts of his body, he came pretty much as close as you can come to dieing and some how survived it, not only did he survive it he was back up and walking on prosthetic legs within 8 weeks!, the guys a freak, I mean I saw him dive into a pool and swim around like it was nothing. If you were ever to meet him there is pretty much no way you could tell he is missing his legs, he is the funniest and most positive guy ever and defiantly hasn’t made his injury a negative thing, i really don’t know how he has done it.
Anyway with the help of some very nice people (Kay Danes) I got the opportunity to go down to Sydney and shoot some portraits with Damien for the National Portrait Prize. I have never entered any form of competition and really wanted to try and give this one a dig and shoot something with alot of meaning behind it, I really want to do my best to raise awareness of these guys you hear about getting injured on the TV. I don’t want to win it but I would love to get within the top 24 and get my photo displayed in the Gallery. The three photos below are the photo’s I entered. There’s alot of reasoning behind why I shot and choose these specific photos but i’m really happy with how it turned out. November 30th is D-Day for me to find out if i made it into the top 24, fingers crossed. Would love to hear what you guys think!
Check out the 60 minutes story aswell people. It’s amazing.
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