I shot this image of a young Afghan girl in late 2005, while deployed to Afghanistan with Task Force Lightning, US Army. We've participated in a lot of humanitarian aid missions there, and once again we went out to a village about an hour away from Bagram.The girl was standing in a group of other girls watching US Soldiers downloading the truck with school supplies, clothes, shoes and toys. I caught her looking at a US Soldier, who was getting ready to pass out a toy. Her eyes said it all. There was hope. To her, we were bearers of good, these strange people from a land far far away from where she lived, yet she trusted us to do good, and her smile expressed her feelings.
After distributing all the supplies, we went back to our base. I looked at the photo, and was overwhelmed with emotions. I was sad that this girl couldn't have even basic amenities, the ones that we (Americans) are so used to and take for granted. At the same time, I saw that sparkle in her eyes, that indicated to me that there's hope and maybe one day, she'll live a better life.
Note: The the background in the original photo was blurred in Photoshop 7.0. I wanted to get viewers attention on the girl by blurring out elements of the photo that are not important. I could have achieved the same effect by using a longer focal length lens, but at the time, I wanted to capture her emotions; there was no time to change lenses.