Atop Fort Jefferson Long Sleeve T-Shirt

After driving to Key West, Florida, in early January 2015, I took a ferry one day for about three hours westward to land at Dry Tortugas National Park. The principal attraction at the Park is Fort Jefferson, a long ago bulwark in our nation's defense. The fort was built as a resupply base and staging area for Navy ships to patrol the Gulf of Mexico and Straits of Florida. While never fully finished as originally designed, construction of the fort ensued from 1846 to 1875. Shown here is Garden Key Light, named for the "key," or island, on which it was constructed. It is also known as Tortuga Harbor Light. (Source: National Park Service)

Don Mercer is an author and freelance fine art photographer. Research for one book took him to the middle of Cambodia in 1999, as he was the first from among his wartime unit to return to that country. During the War in Southeast Asia - known to most as the Vietnam War, he flew over two hundred combat missions as an Air Force pilot in the Cessna O-2A. His combat assignment was as a Forward Air Controller, or FAC. The majority of his combat missions were flown in Cambodia at night. While in Southeast Asia in 1970-71, his interest in photography intensified with the purchase of his first two of numerous Nikon cameras. Black and white, as well as color, 35mm, and Super 8 movie films were used at the time. The transition to digital...