I’m happy to report that Collaborations for Cause, Blue Earth’s first annual storytelling retreat for photographers, nonprofits and communications professionals, was a huge success! Over a hundred people from places like Seattle, British Columbia, South Carolina and New Mexico joined us on Whidbey Island for two days of “deep hanging out” (see Scott Macklin’s four Rs of storytelling below).

Benj and I shared six case studies from recent projects. Benj also moderated a fantastic panel on publishing, partnerships and environmental advocacy, featuring Hellen Cherullo from Mountaineers Books, Dan Ritzman from the Sierra Club and Gary Hawkey from ioColor. The group discussed To the Arctic, an inspiring new photography book by our friend Florian Schulz. Florian himself gave a powerful keynote later that evening.

There were too many other amazing speakers and topics to list in this post, but here are five bits of storytelling wisdom that I came home with:

“Engagement first, stories second… Don’t just tell stories, give them something to do.”
— Dan Green, Gates Foundation

“Vision is more than a collection of opinions. It’s what ought to be.”
— Milenko Matanovic, Pomegranate Center

“Don’t dumb it down, break it up.”
— Suzie Katz, PhotoWings

“Hope is not a strategy, but it’s core to our work.”
— Helen Cherullo, Mountaineers Books

And here are the four Rs of storytelling according to Scott Macklin, Associate Director of the Master of Communications in Digital Media program at the UW:

• Relationship: Don’t just create stories about people. Make stories with them.
• Relevance: Ensure your story is relevant through “deep hanging out.”
• Rigor: Practice your craft.
• Result: It’s not all about getting an “A” on the first draft.

Finally, Cathy Britt (@CathyABritt) from the Burke Museum put together a comprehensive summary of key points, tweets and case studies:
storify.com/CathyABritt/collaborations-for-cause

A big thanks to everyone who came out. Get ready for an even bigger and better retreat next year!

All photos © Tim Matsui.

5/15 Update: Blue Earth has posted additional photos from the retreat on their blog.

This May 4th and 5th, Blue Earth is bringing together photographers, NGOs and communications professionals to explore best practices, synergy and the collaborative future of storytelling. Whether you work with an organization that’s trying to reach new audiences, or are a photographer interested in cause-driven projects, you’ll leave the retreat with new ideas, strategies and connections.

We helped put together the program and if you’ve been interested in taking a workshop with us, this will be even better. We’ll present the backstory to a few of our recent projects during an event packed with folks from Braided River, The Gates Foundation, FusionSpark, Pandau,The University of Washington, Blue Earth and more.

The retreat will be hosted by the Langley Center for New Media on Whidbey Island, just an hour north of Seattle. Enjoy an early bird registration discount through April 25.

Full details at blueearth.org.

 
Impossible Bird: Here I Am
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Blue Earth, a nonprofit organization that helps photographers complete documentary projects on environmental and social issues, has announced a new photo contest. They’re looking for images that exemplify their mission to raise awareness about endangered cultures, threatened environments and social concerns through photography. Jurors include Jason Houston, picture editor at Orion, Gary Halpern, president of PhotoMedia, and Eric J Keller of Soulcather Studio. Think Tank has donated three beautiful bags to go along with the cash prize. Enter by March 31, 2012. Full details here.

We made one final trip to Africa this year. In August, we returned to Tanzania’s southern highlands for Conservation International and the TEAM Network to build an image library and exhibit in support of the project’s next chapter.

“Most conservation science today isn’t ambitious enough,” says TEAM’s Sandy Andelman. “We are informing battles, but we are not providing the knowledge needed, at the scale needed, to win the war.” To meet this challenge, Conservation International, the Earth Institute and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation envision a monitoring network that combines ecological, agriculture and socioeconomic data from around the world. The approach is similar to TEAM’s biodiversity monitoring work, but the focus is ecosystem services and the scale is huge: 400 sites within two or three years.

To help bring this vision to life, we visited southern Tanzania to produce an image library and exhibit. We accompanied researchers collecting micro-climate data from farmers’ fields, installed camera traps on the steep slopes of Udzungwa National Park, and tried to show the link between intact ecosystems and the foods, fuelwood and clean water that communities depend on.

Though successful, the trip was not without challenges. Many of the “services” on our shot list were either highly restricted or illegal. A huge thanks to Joseph Martin, Emanuel Martin and Miller Sanga who went above and beyond to help us find what we needed. (Most tourists are looking for lions, not people doing laundry or making charcoal.)

Upon our return, we quickly produced a dozen large-format prints for a donor meeting in New York. (More details on the meeting can be found at nature.com.) The exhibit will continue to travel in 2012.

View a portfolio of favorite images »

Daniel Travatte, the bee-keeping inmate, was recently profiled in the Kitsap Sun. He was released from prison last June and is now raising 70,000 bees professionally. Read the full story at the Kitsap Sun.

The captive-rearing program for the Oregon-spotted frog continues to exceed expectations. Earlier this year, egg nests were found at the release site, indicating that the frogs had survived and were beginning to reproduce in the wild. Last week, 163 new frogs were taken to Joint Base Lewis-McChord and Harry Greer was able release the frogs himself. Harry, an inmate who has worked on the project since its inception, is now on work release. Read more on the SPP Blog.

After the last workshop we added more than 30 new conversations to the website, bringing the grand total up to 99. But that’s not all that’s new. Originally called From Decline to Rebirth, the project has a brand-new name: The Natural Histories Project. And there is now a short video to introduce it.

With all of this new stuff, the Natural History Network decided it was time for a website that would help the organization to maximize the impact of the workshops and this project. So we worked with our good friend and frequent collaborator Darin Reid to build them one.

“It’s an incredibly exciting time to be a naturalist,” says the Network’s vice-president Josh Tewksbury, “perhaps the most exciting time to be a naturalist that has ever existed on this planet.” We hope you will watch our new video to find out why, join the Network and (most importantly) get out to practice your own natural histories!

Believe it or not, the hardest part about being a documentary photography team is not finding important stories and making great photographs, it’s raising the money to do that work. Since 2007, Blue Earth has provided us with vital fundraising support for Facing Climate Change. Last week they held their seventh annual print lottery in downtown Seattle.

As our project’s fiscal sponsor, Blue Earth enables us to apply for grants that require 501(c)3 status, and to offer tax-deductible contributions to individuals. They have also provided us with a network of other photographers working on environmental and social issues. Currently, Blue Earth selectively sponsors over 20 projects.

A year ago, we were invited to join Blue Earth’s Board of Directors as the organization’s first project representatives. As Board members, our goal is to encourage project photographers to get more involved with the organization. And we’re on the right track, almost half of our project photographers attended the print lottery last week!

Our thanks goes out to everyone who helped to make the event a success. It was a fun evening, full of good food, great photography, and old and new friends. If you were unable to make it, you can still support the important work of Blue Earth by becoming a member.

Above: We donated this image from our series “The Tinder People” to the event.

The project came about through a Larson Fellowship that we received from Carleton College. This small grant allowed us to traverse the Peruvian Andes during the fall of 2001. Upon our return, we combined my writing and Benj’s photographs into a hand-bound book and multimedia presentation.

Loving each other. Loving what we do. Every moment of it.

People were giving us chicha beer, cheese, laughing at me trying Quechua words. A man asked why we didn’t bring tv’s and radios from the United States. At least, he said, buy a carrot, two carrots. Women joked, told us to take their smallest children. They gave us bread. They wanted to know about me, about money, about the World Trade Center. They taught me Quechua words for where are you staying and I love you too much. They wanted to know where we were going and when we could come back. They told us our names were beautiful.

Our frequent musical collaborator (and my brother), Nick Drummond, is about to release an impressive new solo album. I spent the weekend designing the disc packaging and other collateral. Listen to the first single from the album or join us at the release party at Seattle’s Triple Door on June 3.

At the end of March, the Natural History Initiative held its second and third workshops, focused on the themes of education and research. We documented the first of these workshops, which explored the topic of natural history and society, back in January – creating a series of broadsides and the interactive website, declinetorebirth.org. Well, we’ve just added more than 40 new conversations about the future of natural history. Here are quotes from a few of my favorites:

SAUL WEISBERG
“When I think of a rebirth of natural history, I’m thinking of a whole bunch more people doing it. You can always have more people doing it. I also think of people recognizing, and making the connection between, all of the branches of science and art and realizing that natural history is the root of that. I’m not trying to say we need to recognize natural history as the big umbrella, but it’s the little root tendrils of all of this, and if we get disconnected from the roots we’re going to lose something really important. If we keep connected to the roots, all those branches can keep growing and grow really strongly. When I’m thinking of a rebirth, that’s where I want to go.”
listen »

GARY MACHLIS
“He told me, rather shyly and certainly without braggadocio at all, how two years before the earthquake he had his high school students build from scratch – a seismograph.  And they learned to maintain their seismograph, and read it properly, and understand earthquake physics, and geology, and history, and learn first responding, how to respond to an earthquake and how to do first aid. He taught them all that, and when the earthquake came…” listen »

STEPHANIE HAMPTON
“Well, I have to admit that I felt a little bit alienated when people were equating natural history so much with the outdoors. . . I would argue that my connection with plankton is just as strong as somebody else’s connection with a forest. And that happened in the lab.” listen »

ROBERT PAINE
“Anemones have odd cellular structures so that they don’t suffer from aging. I’ve watched one anemone out there; it’s sort of become a pet. My first trip to this island in 1968, there it was, the same size in the same place. And last year, there it was, same size, same place. People probably wish they could be anemone-like.” listen »

Visit declinetorebirth.org to hear the rest of these conversations, and many more. We’ll have additional new content after the fourth and final synthesis workshop in June.

ABOVE: Workshop participants sit beneath broadsides that showcase portraits and quotes from the previous day’s conversations.

The practice of natural history – focused attention to the non-human world – is in decline. But it’s definitely not dead, and the profile of modern day naturalists has been a recurrent and important topic for us over the years. Last month we began a six-month assignment to chronicle the future of natural history and we’re excited to launch phase one of the project today at declinetorebirth.org.

The Natural History Network, with support from the National Science Foundation, is producing a series of four workshops in 2011 dedicated to re-imagining natural history. They’re convening groups of thought leaders to explore natural history and society, education and research over four working meetings in Arizona and Washington.

We were asked by the Network to document these meetings so that the discussions could be brought to a larger audience. However, watching conference video is about as exciting as watching bristlecone pines grow. The challenge was to find a way to capture the ideas, people and conversations in a way that was interactive, exciting and could bring new people into the discussion.

Our solution has four parts:

AUDIO BOOTH
We set up a recording booth where participants could sit down in pairs to ask questions, share ideas and tell stories to each other. Modeled after StoryCorps, these “interviews” were largely self-directed, and followed the participants’ interest and topics. Sara only facilitated when necessary to keep things on track.

PORTRAIT STUDIO
After each conversation was complete, we’d make a black and white portrait of each individual as well as the pair. By using a simple background and portable studio lighting, we’ll be able to keep the series cohesive throughout the workshops.

BROADSIDES
At night, we’d parse the audio for short quotes that captured some of the big ideas from each conversation. Thanks to support from Canon USA, we were able to print 13 x 19 broadsides from each conversation and hang them in the common room by the next morning. Though it made for some long days, the instant feedback became a way of charting the discussion as it happened, valuing the contributions of participants, and making our work more transparent. Plans are in the works to exhibit these prints at a number of venues in the coming year (there will be over a hundred of them by June).

INTERACTIVE WEBSITE
Finally, we’ve just launched From Decline to Rebirth, a multimedia website that we designed to present the audio excerpts and portraits from these conversations. Built by our friend and frequent collaborator Darin Reid using a custom PHP framework, the site allows visitors to explore the content using a freeform, non-linear interface. You can browse conversations by theme, person or workshop and even search for specific words in the transcript. We’ve also built in social networking tools to comment on and share specific content. Find it at declinetorebirth.org

The website currently features over 25 portraits and excerpts gathered from the Natural History and Society meeting. In March we’ll be collecting material from the Education and Research workshops, and in June we’ll do the same at the Synthesis meeting. There will be over 120 naturalists included by the end. Stay tuned as we launch new content in the coming months!

For more behind the scenes, see our Fieldnotes from Sasabe post.

The big annual fundraiser for Blue Earth is coming up at the end of September. This unique event, where every ticket holder walks away with a print for their collection, is the main source of operating funds for the organization. The lottery will be held at the UW Center for Urban Horticulture in Seattle and only 55 tickets are available. It’s a perfect opportunity to acquire  a print from a world-class photographer and support a worthy cause. Participating photographers include Subhankar Banerjee, Daniel Beltra, Phil Borges and many more.