Scott Duncan is always taking pictures. For most of his assignments, which take him around the world, Duncan shoots both still and motion picture cameras. He's shot everything from an Emmy Award-winning run at the 2000 Sydney Olympics to a captivating tour of Africa which he embarks on yearly. He got his first break photographing extreme athletes for NBC's Gravity Games. In the summer of 2002, Duncan met a true photography challenge when he was commissioned by the National Football League, NFL Films and the Pentagon to produce 'American Postcards,' a series of television spots and corresponding print ads intended to salute the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces serving in Afghanistan.

Descending into a War Zone
In early August 2002, Duncan and his team flew into Bagram Air Force Base just outside of Kabul, Afghanistan. After the team landed, which presented a challenge itself, they loaded 67 cases of supplies and photography equipment into a small fleet of U.S. Army Humvees-- but the journey was just beginning. Commenting on the exhilaration and anxiety of working in a war zone for the first time, Duncan noted, "I've been on many, many adventures in my time, but being in a war zone, living the day-to-day GI life, interacting and take pictures of anti-Taliban warlords--who were the ones doing the real fighting against the Taliban on the ground--it was intense and very real."

Duncan considered shooting in a war zone to be a once in a lifetime opportunity and obviously his equipment couldn't fail him under these circumstances. He explains the importance of digital film and photography in such extreme conditions: "On a shoot like this, I just don't have a lot of time or assistance. With digital, I can just grab the camera, load the film in literally an instant and I'm ready to go-- I miss nothing. I can adjust so quickly and I don't have to hump 20 different types of film around with me like I used to in the past. The ironic thing is that the one film camera I brought to Afghanistan broke, while every piece of digital equipment I brought held up throughout the whole shoot."

"I was knee deep in the worst dust I've ever seen…"
The severe elements of a desert war zone, both logistical and environmental, presented a tremendous test for Duncan and his team, as temperatures ranged from 120° F during the day to less than 50° F at night. Additionally, the infamous fine dust of the arid Afghani region was far and away their biggest advisory. Said Duncan: "The dust was the worst I've ever seen, anywhere. It was like flour or talcum powder and the worst part is that it just plumes up out of nowhere. In a second, I was knee deep in the worst dust I've ever seen. Just everything is covered in dust. We would spray it and wipe it off and immediately it would be covered again. After two or three days we didn't care about it anymore. We just made sure the lens was clean, loaded the Lexar cards and we just shot. By the end of the time there, every piece of equipment was just coated to death in that fine dust."

Throughout the shoot Duncan used Lexar's 512 CompactFlash digital film. Each day, he filled 6 to 8 cards with more than 100 photos each. In the middle of an active desert war zone, Duncan's CompactFlash cards performed without failure. "I absolutely destroyed the exterior of the cards," noted Duncan. "After a few days I couldn't even read the logo off the cover. It was a fast, rough, rugged shoot. I walked around with a pocketful of cards, I'd fill one up, eject it, load another one and go. I was constantly shifting the cards back and forth from the camera to my pocket to the reader and back again. It was brutal on the cards. I didn't exactly have time to put the cards in their plastic cases, but they performed for the entire trip. I actually used a few of the same cards recently on a project I did for Donald Trump's 'Apprentice' show."

Descending into a War Zone
During the two week engagement, Duncan didn't lose a single image, returning with more than 5,000 pictures which were used in the "American Postcards" series which appeared on NFL broadcasts throughout the 2002 season. "Everything was just so beautiful there, so I really focused on what I was there for-- capturing the life and reality that the service-men and-women were doing, day-to-day. It was an amazing experience."

Scott Duncan Bio