Blog
Facing Climate Change and other news
First update on G4C
NOTE: This is the first of a series of posts for Nau’s Thought Kitchen blog. We’ll be providing updates throughout the year as we complete a new series of stories supported in part by Nau’s Grant for Change.
My partner Benj and I are a documentary team that specializes in multimedia stories about people, nature and climate change. A few months ago Nau awarded us their first annual Grant for Change to support our long-term documentary project, Facing Climate Change. Throughout this year, we’ll post periodic updates about our work in The Thought Kitchen, and we wanted to start off by introducing ourselves and explaining a little bit more about what exactly we’re doing.
Facing Climate Change uses photography and multimedia to personalize the story of global change through local people. We began this work back in 2006 with a series of stories about Sámi reindeer herders in Norway, volunteer glacier monitors from Iceland and fishermen of the North Atlantic. The G4C is going to help us create a new series of stories that explore the impacts of climate change through people who live and work in the Pacific Northwest. From wildfire fighters and apple growers, to coastal tribes, paramedics and snowmakers, people throughout this region must confront and adapt to the consequences of warming. Their unique stories about who they are and what they do, their everyday challenges and long-term ambitions will help to make an abstract issue more accessible to local audiences, while also contributing to a global conversation.
We think that our own backyard is an ideal region for a case study, not only because of its diverse ecological, cultural and economic landscapes, but also because of an unprecedented new assessment that downscales global trends into local projections. At more than 400 pages, the Washington Climate Change Impacts Assessment documents the latest research on how climate change will likely affect eight sectors of our environment and economy by the end of this century: agriculture, coasts, energy, forests, human health, salmon, urban stormwater infrastructure and water resources. While our stories will be firmly rooted in the Pacific Northwest, these focus areas, combined with the region’s geographic diversity, represent impacts and vulnerabilities globally.
(more…)
Parks Climate Challenge: The full three-part series
So far we’ve had a busy winter, finishing up last year’s projects and preparing for new ones. One of the projects we recently completed is a three-part multimedia series for the National Park Foundation. You might remember reading about the first Parks Climate Challenge piece we created last summer. It tells the story of 19 urban high school students who spent a month in North Cascades National Park learning about climate change. For the second piece, we followed the group to Washington DC, where the students engaged with federal agencies and completed a demonstration service project on the National Mall. The final story of the series documents service projects that the students designed and lead for elementary schools in their home communities.
The biggest challenge with this series was how to integrate all three stories, especially because we only had a few days in the field to document parts two and three. We also didn’t have the excellent photo and audio journals that the students kept in the North Cascades. On the other hand, by the time the second and third pieces rolled around, the students were not only comfortable with us and the idea of documentary storytelling, they were also fully committed to addressing the problem of climate change. This meant that what we did get was of exceptional quality.
Working with these young people was one of the highlights of our year. I can’t imagine anything more inspiring than to see the next generation engage with climate change, the natural world and documentary storytelling.
Happy New Year!
Thanks for all of the encouragement and support in 2009. Here’s a list of what you helped us accomplish:
Our work was featured in National Geographic, Photo District News, Nature Conservancy, Mother Jones, Sightline Daily, High Country News and Grist.
We gave presentations at Pacific University, The University of Washington Henry Art Gallery, RE Sources Sustainable Living Center, Stafford Creek and Cedar Creek Corrections Centers, and the Ansel Adams / Mumm Napa Fine Art Gallery.
Our images were exhibited in group shows at the Henry Greg Gallery in NYC, Houston Center for Photography, UW School of Law, The National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, and the Ansel Adams / Mumm Napa Fine Art Gallery.
We taught two great workshops for North Cascades Institute: Capturing the Cascades and Will Write for Change.
Benj attended Eddie Adams Barnstorm XXII and created Thrill Riding. He was also recognized as a 2009 Emerging Photographer in Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward competition.
We launched our new Web site bdsjs.com to compliment facingclimatechange.org with more information about our projects and services.
We completed a new multimedia story called Connecting Prisons to Nature, and a three-part multimedia series about the Parks Climate Challenge program.
And finally, we were awarded Nau’s inaugural $10,000 Grant for Change!!!
It was a big year and 2010 promises to be just as good. Over the next twelve months we will use the Grant for Change to collaborate on a series of eight multimedia stories that explore the impacts of global climate change through people who live and work in the Pacific Northwest. Please consider making a gift to Facing Climate Change. We need additional support to both collect and distribute these new stories. All donations are tax-deductible
Recently published prison project images
Our images of the Sustainable Prisons Project were recently published in two magazines. The Winter 2009 issue of Nature Conservancy leads off their Newsfront section with “Green Rehab: Inmates Fuel a Prairie’s Restoration.”
And Mother Jones’ January/February 2010 issue features an article by Beth Schwartzapfel titled “The Green Mile: Can turning prisons into hothouses of sustainability pay off for everyone?”
Houston Center for Photography Print Auction
The Houston Center for Photography’s 2010 print auction exhibition kicks off on Friday with an opening reception. A panoramic print (above) from our Sámi reindeer series is up for bid and all proceeds support HCP’s exhibitions, educational initiatives and outreach programs. The actual auction is February 25, 2010. View all the available prints.
Ahoy, Reindeer in National Geographic
My photo of reindeer boarding a boat to continue their fall migration is in the November issue of National Geographic. The image is part of a short “Conservation” article in the front of the magazine (next to an ad for the world’s most famous diamond found inside a toaster). You can learn more about the Sámi and their struggles with climate change, development and regulation in our Eálat, Eallu, Eallin multimedia piece.
Eddie Adams Barnstorm XXII
I recently spent four days in New York’s Catskill mountains with an amazing group of photographers and a 14-year-old barrel racer named Josh. Each year the Eddie Adams Workshop brings emerging photographers to an old barn on a hill for an intense weekend with some of the leading photographers and editors in the industry. Started by photojournalist Eddie Adams in 1987, the tuition-free workshop is a perfect mix of lectures, panel discussions, shoots, portfolio reviews and networking. Compared to other workshops, it benefits from its lineage, close proximity to NY, and emphasis on building community rather than just producing a finished project. I was on the Orange Team (below) led by Clay Patrick McBride a versatile and charismatic music and portrait shooter from Manhattan. Joining him as photo editor was Phil Bicker, creative director at the Fader, and photographer Chat Batka as producer.
Our team assignment was “under 21″ and Chad compiled an impressive collection of stories that were assigned to the ten students. I was to follow 14-year-old barrel racer Josh Wilbur. He and his family own Running W Farms with some 22 horses on a beautiful forested high hill. I had about eight hours to shoot the story over two days, and followed him to a farrier job, riding practice and a Sunday barrel race. A big thanks to Skye, Jim and Josh for welcoming me into their lives and making my job easy!
My work with Josh was chosen as the multimedia story for the Orange team. So I worked with multimedia producer Jenn Ackerman to produce the short piece “Thrill Riding.” I shot and recorded most of it the first afternoon, she edited it overnight and we fixed a few holes the next morning. Jenn (who’s currently working on an awesome project called “Trapped ” exploring mental illness in America’s prisons) was part of the Barnstorm multimedia team, led by Brian Storm of MediaStorm, that produced eight multimedia pieces over the weekend.
When we weren’t in the field shooting we were at the barn for an amazing line up of talks. Platon, Howard Schatz, Al Bello, Stacey Pearsall, Tom Kennedy, Brian Storm, Jonathan Torgovnik, Nick Nichols, Tom Kennedy — it was inspiring to say the least. The portfolio reviews began at 11 p.m. and went to about 2 a.m. I got to sit down with great folks from Aurora, Geo, The New York Times, National Geographic, and The Wall Street Journal. Not bad for a weekend.
On the final night, each of the eight teams shared a slideshow of the weekend’s work. I volunteered to record short interviews with each of my fellow Orange Team photographers and build a short video of our work for the final presentation. It’s more of a “chance dance” than multimedia, as the audio is simply sandwiched on top of Phil’s beautifully edited sequences (it was all about speed), but I do think it was nice to bring in the photographers voices. You can view the final presentation on Vimeo.
Overall, it was an honor to be invited to a truly amazing weekend that opened my eyes in a number of directions, particularly to the strength of the NY photo community. I also was honored to receive one of the assignment awards, in my case for Fader magazine. Thanks to everyone who helped bring Barnstorm XXII to life!
VIEW THE WORK
Josh Wilbur photo story
“Thrill Riding” multimedia piece
Orange team final presentation
Nau awards us $10,000 Grant for Change
We’re very excited to announce that we’ve been awarded Nau’s inaugural Grant for Change! Nau, a hip little clothing company based in Portland, Oregon, will support our climate change work over the next year with a $10,000 grant. This year’s award began with an open nomination process that brought in 294 people or projects over six weeks. (It was an inspiring list of independent movers and shakers including our friends photographer Tim Matsui and Derek and Michele Long from Sustainable Connections.) The pool was winnowed down in part by popular vote – thanks to all of you who signed in to give our project the thumbs up! You can view the top 10 finalists and learn more about G4C on Nau’s Web site.
We’ll announce many more details about this new partnership over the coming weeks. If you’re in New York, join us for the kick-off party on November 21, 2009.
A big thank you to all the folks at Nau!
READ MORE:
Grant for Change official site
Good things are happening: the Grant for Change – Nau’s blog announcement
Documentary Team Win Nau’s Inaugural $10,000 Grant 4 Change – Treehugger.com
Filmmakers Win Nau’s Grant for Change, Totally Deserve It – Good Magazine blog
Seattle artists win first Nau award – 4Cutlure Blog
Documentary Team Win Nau’s Inaugural $10,000 Grant 4 Change – Sports One Source
News from Nau – Examiner.com
Documentary Team Win Nau’s Inaugural $10,000 Grant 4 Change – Earth-Stream
Congratulations Benj and Sara – Ranger Mike Designs / Michael Lang
Nau Grant: Benj Drummond and Sara Joy Steele win $10k – The Chronicles / Tim Matsui
Facing Climate Change Wins “Grant For Change” – Blue Earth blog
Nau: Encouraging Change, One Grant At A Time – Green by Design
Benjamin Drummond Awarded Nau’s Grant for Change – Aurora Photos News
The future of storytelling?
Recently, we were lucky enough to spend a long-weekend in the North Cascades. Tucked beneath Sourdough Ridge, lined with its first dusting of snow for the season, Benj and I were co-teaching a workshop for North Cascades Institute called Will Write for Change: Communication Tools and Techniques for Activists. The team of instructors also included Pulitzer Prize winning author William Dietrich; Sam Knox, a guru on e-mail alerts and newsletters from One/Northwest; and senior researcher and blogger extraordinaire for Sightline Institute, Eric de Place. It was humbling to be in their company and also amongst so many inspiring participants, all working to make a difference in their own ways.
The night that everyone arrived, Benj and I were invited to share our work from Facing Climate Change and the next morning we presented more generally on multimedia storytelling. After the workshop, our new friend Eric wrote a blog post about us and the medium on Sightline Daily. Here’s an excerpt from “The Future of Storytelling:”
“It’s not as if Drummond and Steele invented multimedia – in fact, high-quality multimedia is getting cheaper and easier to produce all the time – just that they seem to be mastering an art form as it matures. Most importantly, they’ve got the knack that the best storytellers have for enlivening a scene and fleshing out a character, but not beating you over the head with The Moral Of The Story.”
What an honor! Thanks, Eric.
Facing Climate Change featured in PDN
The September issue of Photo District News is devoted to “photographers making a difference,” not just documenting problems, but actively working to solve them. We were honored (and extremely excited) to have our work featured on the cover, table of contents and in the opening spread. The article discusses our work with Facing Climate Change along with profiles of a diverse and humbling group of photographers including luminaries James Nachtwey and Jonathan Torgovnik. It’s an inspiring read. A big thanks to executive editor Holly Hughes for taking the time to understand what we’re working on and discuss the challenges and rewards of this type of work. My respect and appreciation for what the folks at PDN do for the photo community continues to grow!
For those who missed it in print, our profile is below:
Benjamin Drummond and Sara Joy Steele’s Facing Climate Change
Lots of climate change projects document scientific research. “We were interested in framing this as a people issue,” says photographer Benjamin Drummond who, with partner Sara Joy Steele, tells stories about individuals coping with environmental challenges. They have been invited to show “Facing Climate Change” before a wide range of audiences: They regularly talk to college students, they have made presentations at conferences of scientists and environmental lawyers, and they are preparing to show the work they did documenting prison inmates enrolled in green-job training. Says Drummond, “Presenting personal stories to illustrate a highly complex, highly scientific issue is a way to plug people into thinking about climate change as the major concern for our generation, our kids and our grandchildren.”
The project began when Drummond and Steele funded their own trip to Iceland, Greenland and Norway to document three communities affected by climate shifts: fishermen on the North Atlantic, semi-nomadic reindeer herders, and a group of amateur glacier monitors. When the pair returned home to Seattle in 2007, they made prints that were exhibited in three Patagonia stores and at climate change conferences and teach-ins around the Northwest. Through a combination of word of mouth and their own efforts in reaching out to schools and other institutions, Steele and Drummond were soon receiving more and more invitations to show their work. Needing a more portable format than a traveling print show, they decided to combine Steele’s audio interviews with Drummond’s photos into a multimedia presentation. “We thought this was a fantastic way to give voice to our subjects,” Drummond says. “It’s hard to argue with someone who is sharing their immediate personal challenges, hopes and fears.”
Though they focus on how the changing climate affects individuals, Drummond is quick to note, “That’s not to say we’re not fixated on getting the science right.” They start by researching the latest scientific findings, “Then we look for subjects who illustrate the science.”
They are currently producing stories closer to home. This summer, they will be embedded with wildfire fighters in Western states. Drummond explains, “The significant impact stories are here in the U.S. as much as they are elsewhere.” They have raised funds from several sources. Supported by the Blue Earth Alliance, they solicit tax-deductible contributions. In recent months, environmental groups have hired them to create multimedia projects which will allow them to add new images to their “Facing Climate Change” archive. They just documented high school students enrolled in a training program with the National Parks Foundation and the Northern Cascades Institute, and plan to follow the students after they return to their communities to launch their own sustainability projects. Having photographed a jobs training program for prison inmates learning about sustainability issues, Steele and Drummond plan to return to show them photos of the program alongside images of Nordic reindeer herders.
Whenever he makes his presentation, Drummond says, he most enjoys the question-and-answer sessions. “The viewer is left to fill in the holes, and bring their own experience to the images they’re viewing and the stories they are listening to.”
—Holly Stuart Hughes
No comments