Summer camp students get photo tips from U.S. Army pro photojournalist

Tamra Mosby
Southwestern High School

A man, hanging out of a helicopter, flies over the heads of soldiers performing drill routines. Peter Fitzgerald, photojournalist for the U.S. Army, does his duty for another day.

Born in Vietnam in 1968, Fitzgerald has traveled near and far during his life. At age 5, Fitzgerald's parents sent him alone to New York to live with his grandparents. His parents and younger brother would join him a year later, and they would all settle down in Pennsylvania.

Fitzgerald's father wanted him to be a lawyer, so after graduating from Villanova University in Philadelphia, Fitzgerald attended law school at George Mason University in Arlington, Va. But law was not his passion. Writing was.

After graduating from law school, Fitzgerald joined the Peace Corps for two and a half years. Fitzgerald taught English at a high school in Central Europe.

Completion of the Peace Corps led him to join the Army. A plus of joining was that the Army would pay his seven years of college debt.

Fitzgerald began his basic training in March 1999. After basic training, Fitzgerald attended the Fort Meade Journalism School in Maryland. He began working in October 1999 at Fort Leonard Wood's newspaper in central Missouri.

One of his first assignments was to go up in a helicopter and take shots of soldiers drilling.

While the Army does not use all digital cameras at this time, the journalists are trained on the equipment. When Fitzgerald first began working, he was handed a non-digital camera, "and had no idea how to use it," he said. Also, Fitzgerald has never had to develop his own film, although he learned how to do it.

Fitzgerald does not know what his next assignment will be. He just goes wherever the Army sends him, even up in helicopters..