Inside the 'Soldiers Lens'

Well, clearly every veteran has a story, but some of the most powerful ones never made it into the history books. For a second year now, a photography exhibit locally is shining light on those quiet everyday moments behind the front lines. In tonight's What's Hard with Tampa Bay, we take you back inside the soldier's lens. When Adrienne Smith first walked through the soldier's lens exhibit last year, she couldn't stop thinking about her dad. It just moved me to ask my father if we could see the photos. He was actually in charge of fuel supply logistics, but photography was his hobby and he took hundreds of photos. Been packed away for 60 years as negatives and slides. Together they looked at 500 of them. Today, three are hanging on the gallery walls, including one shot she kept coming back to. The C-47s would potentially catch fire when they started, so they had a fire extinguisher and a service person there, and it was just a day in the life photo, and it was just a beautiful photo too. That day-in-the-life feeling is exactly what Coast Guard veteran Dale LaRue was chasing through his own viewfinder. I was focused on the people. I was focused on my shipmates, the people around me doing the job, because I was using that photography then to build our newsletter to send back to our families. Over his career, that came out to more than 25,000 pictures. I think I was in a unique position to capture photography at moments that it wasn't normally captured. Dale and Adrian's images are among nearly 100 pieces now on display at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, selected from hundreds of submissions worldwide. Everything on the walls in the gallery is completely different than last year, and so we're thrilled about that. Organizers say it's not just about combat or formal drills. It's about everything in between. The cliche, every picture tells a story, but it's a lot more than that. It's familial challenge, heartbreak, confidence, success, failure, you know, life and death. This is real life. It's a lot of experiences behind the lines. And sometimes those experiences opened doors that might otherwise have stayed closed. My father passed away two weeks ago, so I am deeply grateful that we did this together. It was one of the best years I ever had with him. It's a full circle moment really because this really gave me the incentive to to talk to my dad. The soldier's lens will be on display at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts until early January.