Living in Oahu means meeting a lot of brilliant, varied, and entrepreneurial people. Recently, I met Vera Stone-Williams, co-owner of Military Stock Photography. Vera lives on Oahu’s famous North Shore. The community is tight-knit and friendly; mixed with business owners, surfers, environmentalists, and much more. The North Shore offers a plethora of interesting businesses, such as Fly Skyland Air and the Polynesian Cultural Center. Vera’s business is certainly niche, but it fills a need that not everyone might know about.
“Many companies want to advertise to the military,” Vera said. “When they use some stock photography businesses, they search for pictures of the military not realizing that it could be Russian pilots or Chinese soldiers that they’re looking at. With Military Stock Photography, they get American military photos, and with everything accurate.”
Being married to a Navy Chief, I can relate all too well with the experience of a service member sitting beside me watching a movie, TV show, or commercial and complaining about every small detail that is out of place. This patch is on the wrong arm, that ribbon rack isn’t organized right, or a hat is wrong for the uniform. He’s always annoyed by small inconsistencies that a civilian would never notice. Vera’s business produces content that my picky husband wouldn’t see any issue with, because great pains are taken to ensure that every uniform is correct, every haircut is in regulation, and every shoe and that matches the outfit it is worn with.
“Incorrect uniforms in ads targeting the military can actually have the opposite effect,” Vera explained. “If a business targets service members with ads where the uniforms are incorrect, it can make service members less likely to do business with them because they feel the company doesn’t care enough about them to get it right.”
Vera grew up in the Monterey Bay Area in California and got a bachelor’s degree in the Philosophy of Ethnic Arts from UCLA. After graduation, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she got into audio/visual work for TV. It was in the bay area that she met Hans Halberstadt, a writer and the founder of Military Stock Photography. He could tell that Vera showed promise, so he asked her to work for him. Vera loved the work, and so she stuck with Hans until her husband’s job took her to Oahu.
“At that point, Hans got me into writing books,” Vera said. “His publisher asked me if I would be interested, and I was. That started me digging into military history, to learn about things that most people don’t know. It was all fascinating.”
That digging led to two books: “WACs; Women’s Army Corps 1942-1978” and “WASPs; Women’s Airforce Service Pilots of WWII.” Many associate Oahu with the military because there are so many military bases on the island. It’s as good a place as any to go hunting for military history. However, it’s also a good place to raise children, which Vera also did.
“I admit, I did not have the easiest time making friends at first when we moved to the North Shore,” Vera said. “When I had my children and joined some parenting groups, that’s when I really started to meet people and become part of the community.”
Her children are grown now, and her son stayed and became a business owner himself, Hawaii Shark Encounters takes tourists on tours to see sharks. Vera continues to work with Hans at Military Stock Photography, and she hopes that the rise in AI images rife with inaccuracies will help highlight how important what she does still is. So many businesses like financial and educational services hope to get the business of active duty and retired service members. Having high-quality images with accurate military grooming, posture, and uniforms might make the difference between a service member choosing to buy their product, or to shun them for getting it wrong.
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