Heroes in Focus is opening nominations now. Here's where we are, and what we need.

We are five months into 2026, and I can count the Heroes in Focus sittings I've done this year on one hand. That has to change — and soon, because the pace the archive needs is not the pace it is currently moving at. I want to be straight about that, because the work matters too much for me to dress it up.

Heroes in Focus was founded on a simple idea: that the people who serve — from the youngest recruit in a guards battalion to the most senior Field Marshal — deserve to be photographed with the same seriousness, the same craft, and the same permanence that we afford prime ministers and presidents. Over the past several years, that idea has produced portraits now held permanently by the National Portrait Gallery and the National Army Museum in London. Field Marshals. Generals. Admirals. And, just as importantly, soldiers most people will never have heard of — riflemen, troopers, gunners — whose faces belong in the national record every bit as much.

But there is no salaried team behind this. There is no endowment. Every sitting carries real costs: studio time, travel between Los Angeles and the United Kingdom, archival printing, framing, and the slow, careful work of placing the prints in institutions where they will outlast all of us. When the funding slows, the sittings slow. That is what 2026 has looked like so far, and with more than half the year still ahead of us, I want to use the remaining months properly.

So I am asking for two things, and I would be grateful for either.

The first is a nomination. If you know a USA/UK veteran, a serving soldier, or a retired officer whose story should be preserved — someone whose courage, service, or quiet decency deserves a portrait that will sit in an archive for the next hundred years — I want to hear about them. Send their name and a few lines about who they are to al@rorylewis.studio. I read every one personally. Nominations are how the next chapter of the archive gets written.

The second is a donation. Heroes in Focus Inc. is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and every contribution goes directly toward putting another soldier in front of the camera. There is no overhead siphoning it off. You can give via PayPal, by bank transfer in the UK through Wise, or by card through our site. All three options, with the details, are at rorylewis.studio/non-profit.

If you cannot do either, share this. Forward it to someone who served, or to someone who loves someone who did. The archive has only ever grown because people kept passing the work along.

I started this project because I believed — and still believe — that a photograph made with care is one of the few things that can carry a person's likeness, and a piece of their character, across generations. The Field Marshals who sat for me knew that. The young soldiers in the Welsh Guards knew it. It is why they gave me their time.

The next seven months of 2026 should not look like the first five. With your help, they won't.

— Rory Lewis Founder, Heroes in Focus Inc. Under the honorary patronage of General (Retd) Sir James Everard KCB CBE