Now that John has been home with his family for almost a full month, I would love to share the story behind these photographs and how I unexpectedly found myself photographing the homecoming of an Airman with the 134th Air Refueling Wing in Knoxville, Tennessee.

How our paths crossed was what my mom would have called synchronicity.

On Saturday, October 3rd, I was supposed to be a vendor at a market I had been really excited about. We arrived at 7 a.m., but the rain just would not let up. We waited and waited. The market postponed. The rain did not.

By 9 a.m., I decided to call it and head home, but not before stopping at a good-lookin’ yard sale I passed along the way.

I walked up to the house, where I started casually talking with a woman named Erin. We talked about the rainy morning and why I had been out and about in the first place. Somewhere in that conversation, she asked what kind of photographer I was. I told her the market was for my nature photography, but that I still did a little bit of everything on the side.

Then she mentioned that her husband was coming home on Monday.

John had received a call on a Friday, and by the following Monday, he had left for an unexpected eight-month Air Force deployment. Erin told me how difficult his time away had been for their family and said she wished she had someone there to photograph his return home.

I asked one question:

“What time?”

And here we are.

I had talked to Erin for maybe 15 minutes at the very beginning of her 48-hour countdown. Yet when I met her and her family in the parking lot two days later for John’s military homecoming, they hugged me, welcomed me, and talked to me as though I had known them all along. Erin had even gotten permission from the 2nd-in-Command for me to be there to photograph the homecoming.

I was a wedding photographer for 12 years and photographed close to 1,000 weddings. I have witnessed just about every emotion and every kind of tear you can imagine, both happy and sad. But nothing compares to the emotions and anticipation I witnessed that day.

Honestly, I was more nervous leading up to this than I would have been photographing a 200-person wedding alone.

It was a different kind of “big deal.”

A different kind of “most important day.”

Erin, their two sweet kids, John’s mom, dad and brother, and Erin’s dad were all there waiting for him. There was so much anticipation in that hangar as everyone waited for the Airmen to return home to Knoxville. It was the definition of “hurry up and wait.” Every face, every movement, every glance toward the plane seemed to carry eight months of waiting behind it.

And then the plane landed.

One of my favorite photographs from the entire day is of Erin at the exact moment those eight months of waiting turned into relief. It is complete, raw emotion, and it may very well be my favorite photograph of my career.

Another favorite is much quieter: John’s mom standing patiently in the center of the hangar, waiting. There is something about the anticipation in that image that I love.

Then there is the photograph of John finally spotting his family.

At the time, my focus was completely on him. I wasn’t paying attention to anything happening around me. It wasn’t until I was editing the photographs later that I noticed what appears to be another Airman in the background meeting his baby for the first time.

Two homecomings. Two families. Two completely different stories unfolding in the same photograph.

Being able to document an Air Force homecoming in Knoxville gave me an entirely new appreciation for military families, deployments, and those few extraordinary moments when months of waiting finally come to an end.

I learned so much that day, and it was such an honor to be part of it. Without question, this was some of my favorite and most meaningful work I have ever done.

With my dad being a pilot, the love of aviation has always been in my blood. But this day gave me an entirely different appreciation for what it means to watch an aircraft land and know that, for the people standing beside you, it is carrying someone they have spent months waiting to hold again.

All because it rained.

A market was canceled. I stopped at a yard sale. I met a stranger. And two days later, I was standing in a hangar in Knoxville, Tennessee, documenting one of the most emotional experiences of my photography career.

Sometimes disappointment simply means the day is taking you somewhere you weren’t planning to go!

I could tell you the story behind every photograph, but I’d rather you experience them the way I did. As you look through them, I hope you can feel even a little of the anticipation, relief, love and overwhelming emotion that I was fortunate enough to witness from behind my camera.

And most importantly:

Welcome home, John!