I have been advised that blogging is an integral component of any effort to promote and advance one's self and one's business model by creating a synergistic link between branding, product and clientele.

At least that is what my next door neighbor's 6-year-old grandkid told me the other day.

I will take her word for it, because she is the same 6-year-old that was able to defrag my hard-drive and then add this page to my website, all while kicking my butt at Angry Birds.

She further advised that I should use this blog to inform readers not only of my new work, but of my successes and achievements. "Brag a little", she said.

So here goes.

See the woman in this photo? She is my wife, Mary F. Calvert.

I recently commented on a photo of the two of us posted on Facebook - Have you ever been walking down the street or in a restaurant and seen a beautiful, intriguing, self-assured and mysterious women on the arm of some lucky doofus with a doughy midsection and the facial expression of a late-night tollbooth attendant? Then you say to yourself, "I don't get it. How does THAT happen?" I then realized from that photo that I WAS that lucky doofus.

She is beautiful, intriguing and mysterious, yes. But equally attractive and important, she is a hardworking, dedicated and immensely talented photojournalist. Her name is Mary F. Calvert.

On the twelfth anniversary of the day she made me the luckiest doofus within an enormous population of lucky doofuses, we were preparing to travel to Perpignan, France. Once there, she was to receive the Canon Female Photojournalist Award Presented by the French Association of Female Journalists (AFJ - Association des Femmes Journalistes) in partnership with Le Figaro Magazine The award was given during the final evening show of Visa Pour L'Image 2013 by its director, Jean Francois Leroy, Director of Communication Canon France, Pascal Briard and AFJ's Vice-President, Isabelle Fougere and included a grant to complete her photo reportage project, The War Within, Sexual Violence in the US Military.

Throughout the week, she talked not of her award, but the plight of these brave military women who have given so much to their country only to be abused, attacked and raped by their "comrades in arms" and then dismissed by their supposed superiors.

I am bragging, because she will not.

This woman is carrying on the finest traditions of journalism by giving a voice to the oppressed, while most of the media is busy posting the latest "news" about Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus to get "clicks", all the while, praising the bravery of these military women for allowing her into their lives in order to tell their stories and, hopefully, to shame a powerful people and their government into giving them some semblance of justice.

So yeah, I am bragging about my success. She married me; the doofus. I win.

Put that in your blog and post it.

- J.M. Eddins Jr. Photography • fotoajojo@gmail.com • 202-409-6496 • www.photoajojo.com -