We’ve been working with a lot of great clients recently, which hasn’t left us with much time for our personal project, Facing Climate Change. However, we have some exciting news to share!

Over the summer and fall we received two generous contributions that allow us to focus exclusively on finishing a new series of stories, based in the Pacific Northwest, through this spring. One of the grants came from the Kongsgaard-Goldman Foundation for $8,000 and the other is from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund for $12,000.

The other good news is that we have a new project partner, the Washington State Department of Ecology. They helped us connect with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and we plan to work with them to distribute the stories through a series of community events next summer. It turns out that our series fits perfectly with a community outreach mandate they have for their upcoming Climate Change Response Strategy.

You can learn more about Facing Climate Change on our website, and follow our progress over the coming months on this blog.

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.

Before the snow began to fall, I made a quick trip out to Hagerman, Idaho to revisit the Bell Rapids agricultural development for Facing Climate Change. Sara and I completed most of our fieldwork for that story in 2010, but it’s a tale of change in Big Sky Country and I knew I had to get above it. (Field notes from our first trip are here.)

Once again I turned to LightHawk for help. LightHawk is an organization that supports environmental initiatives with mission-based flights and this was our third collaboration for Facing Climate Change. With beautiful clear weather, pilot Dennis Fitzpatrick and I spent several hours in his Cessna working our way up the Snake River and over the 25,000 acres of abandoned fields.

What had been missing from our coverage – the scale of this economic shift and landscape-level change – was easily captured from the air. I made images of ghost pivots (the abandoned tracks of irrigation systems) under the shadows of new wind turbines, empty potato barns with their roofs blown off, and the Snake River winding its way through the dry plain.

A big thanks to Dennis and LightHawk and stay tuned for the release of this piece and the rest of our new climate change series later this year!

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.

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 »

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!

LightHawk’s View From Above annual report just came out and I was honored that a photo from my Skagit series was featured. The organization provides donated flights to conservation organizations and has been a huge help with our work. A big thanks to LightHawk and pilot Linda Chism for their continued support.

Read the report.

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.

“What I love about this project is that it is both a true celebration of natural history  – which is inspiring in itself – but it is also something that can speak to very diverse audiences. It shows the faces of natural history – young and old, male and female, diverse backgrounds. It shows that anyone can be a natural historian, and that everyone can find a reason to care about this field, whether or not it is part of their profession.”

Read Hayley’s full post.

In late July over a hundred tribes and First Nations from the US and Canada paddled towards the Swinomish reservation near La Conner, WA. The Tribal Canoe Journey takes place each summer in the Salish Sea, and this year the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community was the host. On the first day of the event, the host tribe formally grants the visiting canoes permission to come ashore to eat, rest, and share songs, dances and stories. Most of the canoes are paddled by youth, and for many of them the journey is an opportunity to learn and reconnect to the traditional ways of canoe culture.

Nick and Tyler have a busy touring schedule this fall. More details at nickandtylerband.com.