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News from BDSJS and Facing Climate Change
Recent Press
In the past few weeks, our work has been profiled in two different publications. Most recently, The Wall Street Journal Photo Journal posted a small gallery of our work featuring TEAM’s global camera trap study. A big thanks to photo editor Rebecca Horne for working with us on this post. (Learn more about our work in Tanzania here.)
And our local paper, the Methow Valley News, did a very nice profile of us the last week of January. They only kept the article online for a week, but you can read the text of Ann McCreary’s article after the jump.
Blue Earth Photo Contest
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.
An update on Facing Climate Change
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.
Multimedia workshop: The High Ridge
Our friends at North Cascades Institute have been connecting people, nature and community for 25 years. This fall, we helped them to celebrate this milestone by leading a hands-on multimedia workshop. They just launched a brand-new website with the video we created at that workshop, The High Ridge: Celebrating 25 years in the North Cascades.
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.
Back to Bell Rapids
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!
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