Hometown News Release

While I was on guard duty it wasn't a good idea to leave the base on your off hours so the ISO office decided to have me do Hometown News Releases. I wasn't happy about this but at the end of the project I felt pretty good about doing them.

A Hometown News Release was a special press release that was sent to the Marine's hometown newspaper. Generally the photo was a head and shoulders shot of a Marine staring out at the camera. Similar to this one. You see them even today from Iraq.

For a couple of weeks I went around FLC trying to get Marines to fill out the Hometown News Release form and let me photograph them at work. Lucky for me these guys didn't have their weapons at the ready.

I started getting them to fill out the release after I took the photos and showed them what was going back to their hometown papers.

I did about ten a day. This involved walking around FLC and convincing the Marines to let me photograph them at work. Getting the forms filled out. Going back to the lab to process and print the photos. Then one of the writers would check the forms and create captions for the photos. Once this was done I went back to the Marines and gave them a copy of the photo and the release.

Eventually I had Marines stopping me on the road and showing me clippings from their hometown papers with the photos. Many of these papers gave the photos big play because they rarely - make that never - received photos of these fellows at work.

Near the end of this project the Marines were asking me to photograph them. And they willingly filled out the release forms.

I stopped doing the Hometown News Releases when I got off guard duty.

The fun part

Because the Hometown News Releases required only 5x7 inch prints I decided to use my Olympus Pen FT. I could take 72 photos with this camera and because only 5x7 inch prints were needed the small size of the negatives (They're half the size of a 35mm negative.) wouldn't be a problem.

About a month after we completed the project the ISO office got a letter from Headquarters Marine Corps complaining about the small size of the negatives and not to use the Pen FT for any Marine Corps photographs.

It was sent by Capt Cotterell. He was one of my instructors at the photo-school and later my OIC at the photo-lab at Cherry Point. Since there is no photo credit with Hometown News Releases he didn't know I was the source of his complaint. Though I did get a good laugh from it.

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