When the Institute first approached us about creating a story for their 25th anniversary, they didn’t necessarily have a workshop in mind. But the more we discussed the project – along with the organization’s expanding needs, staff interest and new website – building in-house capacity to produce videos and multimedia made the most sense.

The workshop took place over five days on Canoe Island in the San Juans. In the months leading up to our week together, three Institute staff members – Amy, Christian and Jessica – purchased a video camera and learned how to use it, conducted a dozen interviews, transcribed them into more than 60,000 words, and sorted through archival footage.

We spent Monday setting up workstations, reviewing transcripts, identifying major themes and a story outline, and sharing relevant examples. The next morning we got out our highlighters and scissors, identified relevant quotes from the transcripts and sorted them by theme: in this case, where did we come from and why does our work matter? We chose passages that most efficiently communicated this message and sequenced them into a rough paper edit. This took most of the day.

We decided to use this cut-and-sort approach because of the large amount of source material, and because it allowed multiple people to work on the transcript at one time. This is the same process that I use at home, except that rather than physically cut apart my transcripts, I usually copy and paste them into a document. We always create a paper edit before we begin to work in Final Cut.

With the paper edit complete, piecing the audio together moved relatively quickly. I should mention that this was our first time using Final Cut X, and Benj and I have since decided to integrate the program into our own workflow. Once we had what I refer to as a “radio edit,” the group gave it a listen and made a list of changes.

On Thursday, I worked with Amy to finalize the radio edit, while Christian and Benj began placing video and sequencing visuals that Jessica provided from the Institute’s extensive archive. This work continued late into the night. Friday, we watched a draft of the video and made a list of changes. We quit just in time to paddle a kayak around the island.

Amy, Christian and Jessica returned to the Institute and finished sequencing visuals and filling holes. We spent one more day together, learning about color correction, titles, compression and putting on the final touches.

We hope you’ll watch The High Ridge, and join North Cascades Institute in celebrating their next 25 years in the North Cascades.

Joel de Melo Bambamba and Suzete Guina are studying to become two of Mozambique’s first optometrists. After a series of civil wars left their country one of the poorest in the world, the population of almost 24 million is just beginning to recover. Yet, there are zero optometrists in Mozambique, and poverty and blindness are inextricable.

The Mozambique Eyecare Project aims to provide a sustainable solution to the problem of avoidable blindness through optometric education. There are 56 students enrolled in the project, thanks to a partnership between the Dublin Institute of Technology, Lúrio Univeristy in Mozambique and the International Centre for Eyecare Education.

This past spring, we spent two weeks in Mozambique to tell the story of Joel and Suzete and the project’s work at UniLúrio. We built an image library, a 10-minute video and a new website, mozeyecare.org, all launched for World Site Day. Our frequent collaborator Darin Reid did the design and built the multi-language site on WordPress. And a big thanks to the amazingly agile Nick Drummond who wrote and recorded most of the music in the piece.

Mozambique is one of five Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa, and as such, is somewhat disadvantaged when it comes to foreign aid. In fact, the optometry faculty at Uniúrio are all Spanish speakers because it has been difficult to find Portuguese or Brazilian staff. The similarities between Portuguese and Spanish also made our job significantly easier as Sara was able to communicate with almost everyone in Spanish.

A few behind-the-scenes photographs are below. Explore the “Stories” on mozeyecare.org to view more images from the project.

TEAM currently has 18 site managers from tropical forests in 15 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. This diverse group of scientists gathered in Dar to network, train and solve shared challenges from their home sites. Similar to the Natural Histories Project, our job was to find a way to bring this group of voices to a wider audience.

Over a few days, we completed short interviews with each site manager along with a high-key portrait. We pulled quotes from each that, when read together, help explain the researchers’ work and why it’s important. The issues TEAM is tackling are serious and the data significant, but it’s the dedication and passion of the people in the network that makes the project compelling.

The resulting piece, The Faces of TEAM, is distributed as a printed-on-demand magazine (order here) and an iPad-optimized PDF.

Excerpts below:

PATRICIA ALVAREZ
“Your days can go really crappy. Trust me. I got this scar here. I’ve been stung by a sting ray, a scorpion… You can have a really, really crappy day. You lost a boat. Your gasoline was taken by the river. It’s raining. Your tent is invaded by ants. You have the worst day of your life and you’re ready to cry and say I hate this place. I hate the jungle. They should burn the jungle and put cement on it. I’ve said it. And then you see this little monkey looking at you. It can be a little frog, it can be a fungi that I’ve never seen in my life. And that’s it. That’s the magic of Cashu.”

DAVID KENFACK
“The most exciting for me is the camera traps. The camera trap data is going to be very important for the management plan of the park because so far there is no clear picture of what is in the park as far as animals. Sometimes when we go to town we have encounters with elephants, but we don’t know how many elephants are there. We don’t know where they are. So with the camera trap studies we are going to have a better understanding of what is in the park, where it is, how dynamic the population is and so on. It’s also important for the entire country because it’s going to set an example for how to monitor wildlife. I think it’s the first time that this type of equipment has been used in Cameroon.”

BADRU MUGERWA
“I find it amazing that a small group of people came up with this idea. Now it has grown to a global scale and it’s an honor to be part of this network. It’s already part of the team vision, expanding more, having 40 sites. So I think my work is to keep it going. It’s not all about collecting data for a PhD study over three years and then keeping your data on a shelf. We need something long-term going on, and data shared on a global scale, just the way TEAM does it.
I think if we’re going to help other life survive, regardless of all the threats we are facing, it has to be a joint collaboration. We have to join hands to help other species to live, to continue existing.”

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!

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.

Pathways for Youth is an effort to create the next generation of public lands stewards and National Park Service employees. By deliberately connecting existing programs and partnerships, North Cascades is creating a continuum of meaningful park-based experiences. Our story follows several young people who discuss their own unique pathways through educational programs, internships and seasonal employment.

The visuals for this piece are primarily video interviews and video portraits. We set up a mobile studio and filmed all 10 interviews over one long day during a youth leadership conference at North Cascades Environmental Learning Center.

Visualizing the youth’s pathways presented the perfect opportunity for us to experiment with motion graphics and we employed a simple trail motif to tie experiences together. For music, we once again worked with Nick Drummond‘s ever-evolving collection of riffs and melodies.

We enjoyed this opportunity to collaborate with a few old friends from the North Cascades and hope the piece will help the Park continue to create opportunities for the next generation of stewards.

2/27/11 UPDATE: North Cascades National Park received almost $400,000 to expand the Pathways for Youth program in 2011. Congratulations to all involved! Read more

Our new Hozomeen story has been getting some play, and we wanted to share a couple of favorite blog posts about it. The first is from our friend, Eric de Place at Sightline Daily. Check out his review and read a passage about Hozomeen from Jack Keroauc’s Desolation Angels, “Hozomeen, Hozomeen, most beautiful mountain I ever seen. . . ”

Next, Tim Matsui interviewed Benj about our new story for his blog, The Chronicles. I love the connection Tim makes between old tools, like the ones made out of Hozomeen chert, and new tools, like the ones we used to create this story.

You can also read about Hozomeen on North Cascades Institute’s Chattermarks blog, Nau’s The Thought Kitchen, Aurora Select’s email newsletter, and North Cascades National Park’s video page.

A big thanks to everyone who’s helping to share this story!

The Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission (SEEC) first approached us to tell this story last winter. They had recently hosted an event called the Hozomeen Gathering, which brought together Washington tribes, British Columbia First Nations, archeologists, anthropologists, agency representatives and others to share knowledge and honor the long history of indigenous involvement with the upper Skagit watershed. Having completed a documentary video about that event, they wanted us to select one of the themes from the Gathering and tell a more focused story, a short piece that would capture the essence of Hozomeen: the place, its people and their intertwined history.

The challenge was selecting a single access point to such a monumental landscape and narrowing down the many voices that share a common interest in Hozomeen. When we learned about park archeologist Bob Mierendorf’s work with Hozomeen chert, we were excited by the tool stone’s ability to connect people with the landscape. We also thought that it would provide a good opportunity to explore the complex relationship between archeology and oral histories. So, with Bob as our main character, we selected other voices and perspectives to support our story: Canadian archeologist, Dave Schaepe; Sonny McHalsie, cultural advisor for the Stolo First Nation; and Larry Campbell, historic preservation officer for the Swinomish Tribal Community.

Having narrowed the focus and identified our characters, it was time to begin the fieldwork. Between June and September we spent three days with Bob. One of the many highlights was photographing artifacts from the archive in Marblemount and then visiting some of the sites where they came from. We also spent an afternoon with Larry, one day in British Columbia, and one day shooting aerials with help from LightHawk pilot Linda Chism — a total of six days of fieldwork for a seven-minute story.

Once we had all of these assets, we worked with Benj’s brother, Nick Drummond to compose a musical score. This was the first time we’ve worked with Nick on a client story. It’s very rewarding to use music that’s specifically designed for a story in terms of tone, scale, and even theme. In some places Nick used rocks that he found in his backyard for small percussion.

SEEC was created in 1984 when the High Ross Treaty prevented the further raising of Ross Dam and potential flooding in the American and Canadian Skagit Valley. Our newest multimedia story will help them achieve their unique mission to promote education, research, collaboration and cross-border stewardship of the Upper Skagit Valley. It currently appears on their website and will be featured on National Park Service’s website and in live presentations.

» View story

1/12/11 UPDATE: Tim Matsui posted an interview with us that includes more details on how this story came together, here.

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.

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Listen to the full program

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.

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.

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

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.”