This blog is a regular update regarding the intersection between the United States' armed forces and photography, provided by acclaimed military author and photographer, Hans Halberstadt.

The Department of Defense (DoD) and the law
6/20/2008 2:55:18 PM

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Customers occasionally ask about legal issues relating to military photos used in advertising. That's a good question with several answers.

Unlike any other kind of advertising, promotion of products or services that involves the US armed forces in any way is subject to some obscure regulations of the US Department of Defense. Because DoD hasn't actively enforced these regulations, many advertisers violate them, accidentally or with intent.

Basically, DoD doesn't want any advertiser to imply that the government endorses or approves any commercial product or service. They don't want to see an illustration in an ad that includes anything that clearly shows a recognizable US government unit or piece of gear. That means that you can show a F-15 fighter (many nations own them) in an ad, but DoD does not want to see a US insignia on the aircraft. You can show a soldier in battle gear (many nations use uniforms similar to ours and issue M16 rifles) but they don't want to see a "US Army" tape on the soldier's shirt or rank insignia unique to American armed forces.

These regulations are easy to comply with by simply using PhotoShop or similar image editing software to remove the insignia.

A different issue involves the use of active-duty military personnel in photos. DoD prohibits the practice, especially for recognizable personnel, once again because of the implication of approval of a product or service. Ah, but how can anybody tell who is in the photo? If you ask us, we will give you whatever information we have on a specific image. And the embedded IPTC data will generally indicate if the people in the photo are actors or active-duty military.

This regulation has been very widely violated recently by advertisers using the free images provided on Defense Link and by the various services. When the people in the photos are clearly members of the US armed forces, DoD regulations are violated. Besides that problem, many advertisers have assumed that military personnel give up their right of privacy and that no "model release" is required for use in promotion -- another error and a dangerous one, as will be discussed in another blog.

Military Stock Photography - TACTICAL OPS
6/20/2008 2:53:49 PM

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One thing we know about a lot of our customers -- you work seven days a week, late at night and early in the morning. Some of you are in Europe, others in Japan, Singapore, and China. You are given impossible deadlines and are expected to deliver. Stock photography agencies are in the business of supporting you designers, and if you're going to be working at 11pm on a Sunday night, maybe we should be available then, too.

So we're changing our tactics a bit: our TOC (tactical operations center) now has a 24-hour hot line. Can't find the right photograph on the site and need help at 4am? Give us a call! Although we are too small a shop to have somebody sitting by the phone every minute, one of us will always be monitoring that line and will try to pick up calls no matter when they come in. If your call gets picked up by voice mail, we will call back as soon as possible.

We like to hear from graphic arts professionals any time at all, not just when you have an emergency deadline and a difficult assignment, so call anytime -- we are here to help when we can. CALL ANYTIME 1+ 408 512-2219

Military Posters and Fine Art Prints
6/20/2008 2:53:03 PM

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A lot of people visit our site just to look at the photographs, not because they are photo buyers or researchers working on a project. They sometimes ask us if it is possible to purchase prints to put up on the wall. Until recently, the answer was no. Now, it is yes.

We're starting to offer two kinds of photographic prints for display, posters and fine art prints.

We have two poster series available - motivational posters as well as others which are designed to promote elite units and missions -- the SEALs, Marine Recon, tactical aviation, armor, and other subjects. Both poster series combine photographs with other graphic elements. They are intended to be inexpensive and affordable.

The fine art prints are designed to be displayed in corporate offices or homes, and are intended for discriminating collectors of military art. These are my best photographs and will be carefully selected by me for release in limited portfolios. The fine art prints will be printed on archival paper, matted and, if requested, supplied framed. These prints will be signed and numbered. They will be priced accordingly, at $300 and up, depending on size.

Any photograph in the library is available as a fine art print.

Comments? Suggestions? Our Tactical Operations Center (TOC) is manned and ready for support 24-hours a day.

SEAT QUALS AND CHAMBER RIDES
6/20/2008 2:09:07 PM

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So how do those great stock photos of fighter aircraft get made? Well, when George Hall or Rick Llinares or I or any other aviation photographer think we need new photos of these aircraft in flight, we are required to make a request to the Air Force, Marine Corps, or Navy public affairs officers, asking for permission and support.

The PAO calls the squadron, the squadron thinks about the request, then says yes or no -- usually no. If they say yes, then the fun begins. You don't just show up with your camera and a smile, you have to be qualified and trained. Flying in fighter aircraft is dangerous, stressful, and expensive for the unit. When I was approved for a F/A-18 Hornet ride, the Marine Corps insisted that I pass a flight physical, a water survival test, and that I be trained and certified for high-altitude flight. The flight physical was done locally, at my expense.

Then I showed up at a nearby Marine Corps squadron in a flight suit and boots -- they put a helmet on me, a survival vest, and "speed jeans," the pneumatic pants that help aircrew keep from blacking out during high-G maneuvers. With all this gear on, I jumped in a swimming pool and swam 100 meters. After that, and without rest, I had to tread water for ten minutes. Then, without getting out or resting, I was required to get my tired carcass into a survival raft. That was Phase One of the process and I got the first signature on my qualification form.

Next came an hour of instruction on various types of survival equipment and emergency situations. After a test, I got another signature on the form.

Now I was required to go to Edwards Air Force Base and be trained to deal with the effects of oxygen-depravation and hypoxia. This training was done in a high-altitude pressure chamber. The other trainees and I attended classroom training for a few hours, then climbed into the chamber. The door was closed and the air gradually pumped out until we were at a level equivalent to 19,000 feet or so. Each of us was asked to perform simple acts and say simple things -- but we all discovered that our minds didn't work very well at those altitudes. One of the trainees became argumentative and all of us had difficulty functioning at tasks that would have been easy at surface altitudes. After six hours or so, we all climbed out of the chamber and were issued a small orange "chamber card," complete with the third required signature.

At last I was qualified for my ride. I made a date with the Marine Hornet squadron and showed up a couple of hours before scheduled takeoff. The pilots handed me off to the folks in the unit who maintain flight gear and they set me up with a helmet, flight suit, speed jeans, survival vest, and my own custom-made name plate for my flight suit.

Finally, months after the process began, I was walking out to a Hornet with my pilot and four other Marine officers. I was poured into the back seat, connected to the ejection seat with several lanyards and harnesses, and carefully instructed on the function of the ejection seat controls and handle. The pilot climbed in, ran his checklist, fired up the engines, lowered the canopy, and taxied out for takeoff.

The Marines have a reputation for putting on a good show for media pukes (as we are sometimes called) and this squadron kept up the tradition. They gave me two aircraft to photograph and a third for the camera platform. We took off from MCAS El Toro and in a few minutes were high over the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. The flight lasted about an hour and I was shooting almost constantly. Then it was back to El Toro, out of the flight gear, and off to the photo lab. Those photos are an important part of our library, available to anybody who needs images of the F/A-18 Hornet.

So you can see why it's so hard to get photos of things like the Hornet in flight -- it is a complicated process, it costs everybody a lot of time, effort, and, for the squadron, actual budgeted dollars. They do it because there is a payoff -- I help the Marine Corps tell the story of its people, aircraft, and missions. And that's how we are able to bring you some of the stock photography on our site.

About the photographer, Hans Halberstadt
6/17/2008 7:35:49 AM

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When people ask me how I became one of the very few photographers and authors allowed to work with Navy SEALs and all the other elite units of the armed forces, I have a simple answer: "It was an accident."

Although my father was a leading advertising photographer during the 1950s and '60s, and through him I spent many hours with Ansel Adams and other important artists of that time, I never planned to be a professional writer or photographer.

I started skydiving at seventeen, right after high school, and joined the Army at eighteen. I was trained as a helicopter crewman and went to Viet Nam early, serving as a door gunner with the 8th Transportation Company (later part of the 145th Combat Aviation Brigade) during missions throughout the central part of Viet Nam. It was during that time that I had my first big adventures and that I began to record them on film. I carried a Rolliflex camera on most missions, and, when not shooting my machinegun, I did a little shooting with the camera. That experience with a camera on the battlefield was the first accident.

After the Army, I got a degree in film production and spent years making television commercials, public relations films, and classroom films used by educators. While making a PR film for Exxon and quite by accident, I met a Coast Guard officer, Capt. Jim Shanower. Capt. Shanower invited me aboard his ship, the Morgenthau, for a patrol in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska. It turned out to be a lot more than just three weeks on a ship -- Jim and his crew gave me the chance to see the many missions of the Coast Guard -- I went along on boardings, learned to run the radar, and got to know just about every member of the crew. At the end of the patrol, I had a lot of stories and a lot of photographs, but no idea of who might want them.

Again by accident, I discovered that Presidio Press, a small publisher of military books in Novato, California, wanted them. I produced my first solo book for them in 1984, USCG -- ALWAYS READY. Presidio hired me to do five books for them over the next few years. They were, essentially, very much like documentary films, but on paper instead of the silver screen. They were a great deal of fun to produce and, because of my film production training, fairly straightforward projects. For a while, I was doing four and five books per year. Since every book project generated hundreds or thousands of photographs, it didn't take long to develop a big library of photographs.

Until 1999, I depended on other stock agencies to manage my photography. That changed when I discovered that my primary agency owed me over $15,000 and was unable to pay. I pulled my images and started Military Stock Photography.

Today MSP is one of the few surviving specialist stock agencies that hasn't been sucked up by Corbis or Getty. My son John and daughter-in-law Suzy and I operate the business together, another son (Mike) is a contributor; we're a small, family-operated, business.

The Late, Great George Hall
6/16/2008 11:19:01 AM

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Tactical aviation photographer George Hall died in 2006, lamented by a multitude. George was a pioneer of the military aviation stock photo business, one of those precious few men who are excellent photographers, excellent writers, and modest gentlemen as well. He founded two stock agencies, Check-Six for aviation subjects, and Code Red for fire and emergency services.

George mentored me in both the writing and tactical photo businesses beginning in 1985. Both his photography and his writing were inspirational -- sleek, sassy, full of fizz and sizzle. Although known primarily for his military photography, I was really impressed with his wonderful writing style in books like CV, WORKING FIRE and TOP GUN.

Somebody once asked a famous National Geographic photographer the secret of his success, and he answered, "F8 and being there." The "being there" for guys like George and me is the hard part, and for George it meant being allowed to fly in the back seat of a F/A-18 Hornet or a F-15 Eagle in flight, or on the open ramp of a KC-130 during refueling operations. Before you can make great air-to-air photos of combat aircraft, you have to get permission from all sorts of people, one of whom is probably wearing a general's stars. George's work was so good that many units wanted him to fly with them, and that helped. But getting a ride is just the beginning of making good military aviation photos. George managed to make superb images under extremely difficult conditions, and he made a career of it.

Flying in a fighter aircraft looks like fun, but it isn't. The cockpit is tight, you can hardly move, there is no place to stow lenses, and the g-forces are brutal. It is dangerous. Unless you fly in these aircraft often, you will almost certainly be airsick during combat maneuvers. George once told me that he did not enjoy these flights at all, and I was glad to hear him say so -- I always felt that I had been beaten up myself afterwards.

George represented some of my photography for a while before I opened my own agency. Then, I had to ask for the images back and very reluctantly went into a mild competition with him and Check-Six. But instead of being adversarial, we stayed friends and continued to support each other's business. George often referred customers to me when they needed something he didn't have, and I did the same for him. We were cooperative competitors, and I still miss him.

Our first blog: Why MSP is a unique resource...
6/16/2008 11:15:14 AM

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One of the most common things we hear from customers at Military Stock Photography is that we seem to be the only agency providing tactical images from all the armed forces and that can be used for advertising. Why?

Part of it has to do with access. Lots of photographers would love to photograph tanks, Green Berets, Navy SEALs, and all the other exciting subjects within the US armed forces, but doing so requires permission from the units themselves as well as the PAOs (public affairs offices) that do public relations for military units. The PAOs will only support photographers who are working on approved magazine articles, books, and newspaper articles, and there are very few of those. Are you an ad agency that wants to get photos for a new advertising campaign for some weapon or product used by the military? The PAOs are prohibited from helping you.

So why do we have so many tactical photos? Because I have written dozens of books, all heavily illustrated, about Green Berets, SEALs, tanks, artillery, the Army, the Marine Corps, fighter aircraft, helicopters, and many other topics. I have been doing this since 1983 and have probably made over a million exposures of subjects that most photographers will never be allowed to see. I spent eighteen months working with a Green Beret battalion, two months covering SEALs, many months with a mechanized infantry battalion, and spent similar periods with Marines in the desert and the Coast Guard on patrol in the Bering Sea.

George Hall, the legendary aviation photographer, talked me into recycling my photos as stock. George and I were both writing books for Presidio Press at the time (1985) and until then I hadn't considered the photos for anything besides the books they were intended to illustrate. More about George in another blog.

Anyway, the reason there are so few sources for military stock photography is that so few photographers are permitted to make military photographs in the first place. We seem to be the only full-time specialist commercial agency for such images in the US, but there are also lots of free images available directly from the Department of Defense. I'll tell you all about those free images -- how to find them, what they can be used for -- in future blogs.

Comments? Questions? Suggestions for blog topics? Contact us anytime! 408-293-8131 or hans@militaryphoto.com.