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Facing Climate Change and other news
A toolbox with a paint brush
The first multimedia story that Benj and I created for Facing Climate Change was about Sámi reindeer herdsmen in northern Norway. Initially, we intended to tell the story through photography and writing, but once we were with the Sámi, we found ourselves in an audio rich world and started recording.
We didn’t have a plan for how we were going to use that audio until after we got back and started to think about the best way to tell our story. We considered all of the traditional venues for documentary work — fine art galleries, coffee table books, glossy magazines — but the print industry was struggling and reindeer herders don’t regularly flip through coffee table books and go to galleries. How could we share our work with them and our neighbors in Seattle? This is especially important with climate change. How can we engage diverse audiences with a complex, scientific issue?
Benj and I soon started to experiment with character-driven narratives that combine radio-quality audio storytelling with the power of still photography. This form of multimedia opened up a toolbox we now use to build stories across a wide range of platforms including the Web, live presentations, exhibitions and print applications. For example, assets from our recent story about the Sustainable Prisons Project were used on the project’s Web site, presented live in prisons and at a TED Talk, and published in Mother Jones magazine. Another advantage to multimedia is that it gives voice to the people we work with. Hearing a prisoner’s perspective makes for a more personal and engaging story.
But if you’re combining photography and audio, why not just use a video camera and make a movie or something for TV? Here’s an excerpt from a conversation, or “smackdown,” between Ira Glass from This American Life and Robert Krulwich from Radio Lab. Robert talks about why listening to radio is a more active experience, like painting. We think this applies to multimedia too.
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NOTE: This is the second 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.
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.
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
Connecting Prisons with Nature
Our stories for Facing Climate Change usually explore impacts and adaptation, but this summer we had the opportunity to work on two stories that address solutions to our climate crisis. The first, Parks Climate Challenge, is about nineteen urban youth who spent a month in the North Cascades. Get ready for part two of that story; we just spent a week with the group in Washington DC. But the story below is even more unusual than high-school students taking on climate change. It’s about an initiative that brings scientific research, sustainable operations and green jobs training into prisons.
The Sustainable Prisons Project is a partnership of the Washington State Department of Corrections and The Evergreen State College. Their mission is to reduce the environmental, economic and human costs of prisons by training offenders and correctional staff in sustainable practices. They also bring science into prisons by helping scientists conduct ecological research and conserve biodiversity through projects with offenders, college students and community partners.
We were hired to create a multimedia story and photo galleries for this initiative, and Benj also worked with Darin Reid to build an exciting new Web site. We are doing more and more of this sort of work. In fact, we’ve just launched a new Web site of our own, and it includes more information about the services we offer.
One of the highlights of my summer was going back into the prisons to share this finished piece and present our other work from Facing Climate Change. Here is what some of the prisoners have to say about our presentation in written evaluations:
“I’ve been at SCCC 10 months and I’ve never seen anything about the Sustainable Prisons Project. I knew we had recycling, but never knew this was an organized, multi-faceted effort. Thank you for the educational opportunity.”
“This program is revolutionary. By involving prisoners in programs where they take responsibility for their community, they are thereby reintegrated into our society.”
“The lasso ring is the foundation of northern life. Firefighting costs are alarmingly high. Prisoners can be part of the solution to today’s problems. I like the presentation and will recommend it to my family.”
Multimedia on High Country News
One of our favorite publications, High Country News, just published a few of Benj’s images along with our new Parks Climate Challenge multimedia piece. The work accompanies, Living on Glacial Time, an excellent feature story by Ana Maria Spagna. She joined us, the PCC team and geologist Jon Riedel for a hike up to see Mount Baker’s Easton Glacier, which – as you’ll learn from her essay – is shrinking.
Learn more about our work with Parks Climate Challenge.
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