shooting in a military base

[a.black]

Hi,

I just wanted to ask, if any of you guys has any experience with making a photo shoot in a military base. A fellow student and I plan to make a story about some people from our college that will be shipped of to Afghanistan at the end of '05. As a part of it we have planned to visit a training exercise the guys will hold during December. We are already looking around to get permission from superior officers in that base to go in, make a story about it and also take photographs.
But since nobody I spoke to (outside the military) has any experience with this issue, I just wanted to ask if any of you has some info, experience or tips you could give me.
thanks.

 

[Jason_K]

The only way to make this happen is to contact the external communications folks at the post/base public affairs office.

What base is it?

 

[Socke]

My experience is with german naval installations mostly and some US and british.
There is a pressofficer at every bigger NATO base who can be contacted via the base commanders office.

Usualy they are happy to give you a permit to shoot some of their installation and they might rig up a demonstration for you to shoot, too.

They might want to see what you shot before you are allowed to publish it, but as long as they know what you do I see no bigger problem.

 

[ddunn]

Since you want to photograph soldiers in a specific unit, your best bet might be to contact the unit's public affairs/public information officer. One of the guys from your college in the unit should be able to tell you who this is. The unit PIO can make arrangements with the base to get you in (if this is possible--it might not be depending on the type of training exercise).

 

[oftheherd]

The only way to make this happen is to contact the external communications folks at the post/base public affairs office.

What base is it?

Unless things have changed, it will indeed be the installation Public Affairs people you need to contact.

 

[rover]

a.Black, welcome to the RFF.

Always good to see another Connecticuter, or whatever we call ourselves. I don't know the answer to your question, but wish you luck. Where are you planning on shooting?

 

[George S.]

You definitely need to get in touch with the PIO as d dunn has stated. BUT- military responses to requests for such things take a looong time, and I'd bet you're not going to get permission until the troops are halfway through their deployment. And military bases that are training troops to go overseas into a combat area get all puckerd up over such requests. I speak from personal experience when I showed up _with prior permission_ to a U.S. base just before the start of the first Gulf War.

 

[Jason_K]

I work for the Army and have sent you a PM regarding specifics.

 

[VinceC]

I spent a good 20 years photographing on and around military installations. The military is less of a monolithic organization than most outsiders realize. Your best chances are going to be to deal directly with the unit to which the troops are assigned. They have more of a vested interest in getting the story told. Military public relations people are called public affairs officers, often PAOs for short. Larger units have them and installations have them. I'd recommend asking the troops you're following to work it through their chain of command. Get them to buy into your project so that their enthused about it and that's 19/20ths of the battle. A cold call to the installation public affairs office may or may not work out well -- you're asking permission for something, and the hard truth about any government bureaucracy is that the majority of people are empowered to say "no" but only a few are empowered to say "yes". Unless these folks are part of a very elite classified unit, it's highly unlikely the request would be turned down. The most likely scenario is that you would be escorted by a public affairs person. So that means you've got to convince him or her that it's worth his or her time.