The Fort Hood Family Portrait Project was started in 2010 as a USO project for each military installation in the system. Alan Montgomery was contacted by Nikon USA to spend a day at Ft Hood photographing families as a give back to the military.
After the first trip to Ft. Hood and photographing a dozen families Alan realized that this would be a great project for the HIP Club. It would serve both the families at Fort Hood and the club members that participated by increasing their knowledge of lighting, posing and working with people.
We are now making in excess of 300 family portraits in one weekend, head shoulder portraits for those that need them and all images are retouched, cropped and ready to print. We deliver the final product to the family the same day or the following day with a full copyright release.
The USO has been able to secure free prints from local merchants in the area of Fort Hood for each family. We have been lucky enough to have USB drives to deliver the images to the family donated and another group from the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo donated 5×7 frames for each family.
This project has worked so many miracles for everyone involved. The photographers pour they heart and talent into the photography, the retouchers work to make each image ready to make a wonderful print. The Army families see that we ( America) do care about them and their families. We have had families tell us they have never had a professional portrait made of their family and would never have the funds to ever have it done.
This is a 100% win – win for all involved!