Preston Keres served in the Navy for twelve years and made his foray into journalism in 1996, spending the last five years writing and photographing for the Navy. "I fell in love with photography," remembers the native Iowan. "I found people would talk more about the photos I took than the stories I wrote." The experience encouraged him to enroll in the Military Photojournalism Course at Syracuse University. After graduation in 2000, he started working for the Navy's flagship publication "All Hands" in D.C. In his first two years, he won the Department of Defense’s Military Photographer of the Year for his coverage of Navy operations in Guatemala, Ground Zero rescues after the September 11th attacks, and the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake for DoD athletes. He joined the Post in 2003.