Project Bliss

Hey there I'm Aaron Hostutler and I'm a passionate storyteller.

My career with a camera began more than 10 years ago when I served in Okinawa, Japan for 5 years as a Marine Corps photographer. Traveling the Asia-Pacific region and capturing the intense Marine way of life made for a perfect opportunity to develop my own creative style. I served first as a photojournalist and then eventually the bureau chief overseeing 12 other Marine shooters/writers.

From there I was selected for duty at Marine Magazine, the flagship publication for the Marine Corps. I served there first as a correspondent but was eventually promoted to editor. I requested to attend Intermediate Photojournalism Course at the Defense Information School as many of my mentors had convinced me that this was the next step in my career. I graduated valedictorian from that course and upon returning to my unit was given a small team of Marines to utilize and develop in order to create more video content for the Marine Corps.

At that time I was selected to serve as the Personal Photographer to the Secretary of Defense, (at the time Chuck Hagel). This position required that I photographed the secretary every day in the Pentagon or while traveling abroad with him attending international conferences around the world. During this tour I developed the ability to quickly make my subjects comfortable with my presence even in very tense moments. I developed the ability to walk into a room and shoot 5-10 high quality images of the interaction in the room with only 60-90 seconds to make it happen. While the tour is typically only 6 months, I was asked to stay on for 2 additional tours.

Finally, after traveling the world and shooting in some of the most remote and breathtaking places in the world, I decided to leave the Marine Corps to use my passion to help others in the world tell their story.

Since then I've had the honor of developing a wonderful team that is taking on the non-profit realm by storm helping these wonderful organizations gain much needed visibility that ultimately leads to funding and support.

I have the passion that makes me put my heart into every project and the experience to take that passion and put in on the screen.

I look forward to our coming conversation and hope you do as well.

With warm regards,

Aaron Hostutler