We have to admit, it’s an impressive list: Maggie Steber, Ron Haviv, Andrea Bruce, Stephanie Sinclair, Ami Vitale, Guy Calaf, Kate Brooks, Tyler Hicks, Kael Alford, Adriana Zehbruaskas, Jared Moossy, David Guttendfelder, Rena Effendi, Anastasia Taylor-Lind, Jon Vidar, David Bathgate, Tewfic el Sawy, Henrik Kastenskov/Bombay Flying Club.

You can read all about the Foundry Workshop in our interview with founder Eric Beecroft from last year’s edition in India (year one was in Mexico). The workshop began in 2008 as a more affordable workshop option that international and emerging photographers could afford.

With such a prestigious list of instructors this year, we thought it would be good to hear from a few of them about the Foundry experience and their advice for workshops in general.

Miki Johnson: What is your favorite thing about being involved in the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop? Do you have a favorite moment from past years?

Ron Haviv: Watching the growth of the students in such a short period of time. The realization from many that this is a great way to spend your life. Seeing that moment on students’ faces is inspirational to me.

Ami Vitale: The collaboration and working with fine photographers and fun people. It’s always a great experience and I’m always inspired by my students and colleagues. Last time I left feeling  full of inspiration and ideas. Watching students grow in the short span of the workshop is incredible.

Tewic el Sawy: My favorite take-home sentiment from participating in the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop is the mutual camaraderie and unfettered sharing of knowledge, information, and support between instructors and students/attendees. As for my favorite moment: during the final screening of the students work at the Manali workshop, learning that Dhiraj Singh (one of my class attendees) had deservedly won the top photography spot/prize of the workshop.

MJ: What is the most important things for students to realize when they participate in a workshop, to help them get the most out of the experience?

Ron: To open their minds to the knowledge that all the photographers, both students and teachers alike, are sharing with them.

Ami: To have fun and not to be too hard on themselves. I think some people come into this and put so much pressure on themselves to succeed.  This should be an environment of exploration and learning — and making mistakes is part of the learning process.

Tewic: The most important lessons that students will learn is to leave their ego at home, to help each other, to collaborate, and to be optimistic. Speaking for my class, they will realize that the more they know of multimedia, the more they’ll progress in their careers.

MJ: Was there a class or instructor that helped you become the photographer that you are now? How did they do that?

Ami: Rich Beckman. I’m back in grad school with him again! He’s always been ahead of the curve when it comes to finding new paths for storytelling. I’m studying Multimedia and Film with him now.

Tewic: I took a class in Havana with Magnum photographer Costa Manos and he told me that my photographs were “too simple.” He was right, and I’ve been trying to complicate them ever since.

Blurb’s Photography Book Now competition has also launched its third year. In addition to $25,000, the grand prize winner will also be given the opportunity to show their work at ICP, the Annenberg Space for Photography, and the George Eastman House. The competition is a reminder of the potential of self-publishing, something we discussed extensively in our Future of Photobooks series.

'Cat Walk' from 'Chica Barbie.' ©Carl Bower

Miki Johnson: Tell me a little about how you first found out about the beauty pageants of Colombia.

Carl Bower: I saw a small article in the New York Times that said there was a pageant there for practically anything imaginable — Miss Sun, Miss Sea, Miss Purity, Miss Pretty Legs, Miss Honey — the list went on. I was intrigued by the juxtaposition of these contests with everything else I had been reading about Colombia: the cartels, the guerrillas, the bombings and kidnappings. I thought of how such parallel realities could coexist and the extent to which our popular conception of the country had been a caricature formed by stories of the drug trade.

At the time I came across the article, I was supporting a close friend in her battle with breast cancer. She had been a national champion ballroom dancer and a competitive bodybuilder. Her appearance was something that she took pride in and took pains to maintain even as she lost one breast, then another, and suffered the effects of chemotherapy and radiation. Throughout her ordeal, I noticed how her sexuality seemed undiminished, if not stronger. I started to wonder, if a beautiful person gradually loses elements deemed to be part of that beauty, where is the tipping point at which they are no longer beautiful? Is there one?

In my anger and frustration with the cancer and growing obsession with the commoditization of beauty, the story of the pageants struck a nerve. Here was an environment where all the issues I was grappling with were stripped bare and distilled to the point that it might be possible to convey some of them on film.

At first I tried finding the pageants through government records, but most of the information was unreliable or outdated. Through a friend, I met a fashion designer commissioned to create the dresses for a candidate to the national pageant. I photographed her preparation and coaching, learned of regional pageants, and met with judges, organizers, parents of contestants. I visited modeling agencies and schools where girls were being trained to compete in the pageants from the age of four.

'Aguardiente' from 'Chica Barbie.' ©Carl Bower

When I learned of festivals occurring throughout the country, I went to various towns and introduced myself in their mayors’ offices. I went everywhere: to the national pageants, with their weeks-long round-the-clock media blitz, to high school pageants, to pageants with just three candidates.

I began to see how the pageants were one of the few unifying threads in a country compartmentalized by geography, politics, and social stratification. It seemed that everyone, regardless of social standing, had an opinion about them: not on whether they were good or bad, or whether they should exist, but on who should win. When I returned to the United States, I found that some of the complexity I experienced was missing from the photos, so I went back. I kept finding new layers of meaning, so I ended up going back again and again.

MJ: You said that as you’ve gotten deeper into the story it has gotten more complicated and you feel more ambivalent about the role of these pageants in the culture (something visible in the images). What were some of the contradictions you discovered?

CB: When I began photographing, I felt that the pageants were essentially meat markets. It wasn’t just that thousands of people were scrutinizing the contestants’ bodies; what struck me was the categorical, exhaustive, and unforgiving nature of it. Are her ankles thick? Who has breast implants? Who doesn’t but should? Whose ass is too small, too large, or shaped like melons when it should be like oranges? After the current Miss Colombia was crowned last November, there were months of public demands that she have her nose fixed to better compete in Miss World.

Even in comparison to our own celebrity-obsessed culture, the arguments and scoring in Colombia had developed to the level of sport. I thought of all the young girls in the audiences with their jaws dropped in awe. Had they already decided what it meant to be a woman, what it meant to have value, what they needed to be loved? Given my friend’s experience and the questions and emotional baggage I began with, I think I was preconditioned to see things in fairly stark terms.

Those feelings haven’t changed, but they have been complemented by others. For example, there was almost always a genuine enthusiasm in the crowds, which included old, young, male, female, rich, and poor. And despite the crude assessments, the favorites of the crowd were not always the most beautiful — they often seemed the most intelligent or exuded a stronger sense of character. While the source of young men’s enthusiasm was fairly easy to track, older men and women expressed a sort of paternal affection. And even as the candidates molded their personalities into coquettish personas, they were still excited to be there.

'Miss Coffee' from 'Chica Barbie.' ©Carl Bower

One of the first things I had trouble reconciling was the absolute mania over the pageants with an environment where the threat of violence was nearly ubiquitous. More than half of the Colombians who invited me into their homes eventually showed me “The Picture.” The face in the photo was always different, but I came to expect and dread the moment it would come out. A brother killed by the FARC. Someone’s else’s brother, killed for the pesos in his pocket. A friend kidnapped years ago who hadn’t been seen since.

The woman who introduced me to the fashion designer went to the funeral of a very close friend, then held a huge party at her apartment only a few days later. I asked if it was difficult, having it so soon. She gave me a long look. “If we went into a period of mourning every time someone we knew was killed, we wouldn’t have time for anything else.”

It’s boring to be a victim, and tiring. Pageants, soccer matches, festivals and concerts are not only opportunities to forget, but a form of defiance. A refusal to be defined by the violence or to wait in vain for it to end. Colombia’s problems have been grave, but Colombians themselves are astonishingly optimistic. It is one of the things I respect most about them, one of the things that keeps drawing me back.

MJ: Tell me about what it’s like to be a foreign male documenting these events so tied up in creating definitions of youth and femininity. Even here some people might question a man dealing with “women’s issues.”

CB: I don’t see that these are strictly women’s issues, or that a man shouldn’t be able to discuss them or be without empathy. We are all pressured at some point to fulfill certain roles based on what we look like more than on who we are. Sometimes we go along; sometimes we don’t. It’s actually the theme of the group show I’m in at the Farmani Gallery in New York, titled Select Gender.

I didn’t start this because I’m a feminist advocate or viewed the world primarily from a female perspective. It happened because I watched helplessly as one of my best friends was overcome by breast cancer and because of the pain and admiration I felt for the way she confronted it. I responded to what was in front of me, in the only way I knew.

After documenting her experience for several years (Diane’s Story), I began looking at the culture of the pageants. I’d love to say I set out on an altruistic mission, but this was originally driven more by my own anger and confusion and attempts to understand the issues. Despite my initial motivation, this project has probably raised more questions for me than it’s resolved, and I’m at the point now where I feel that may be an end unto itself.

'Circle of Men' from 'Chica Barbie.' ©Carl Bower

I don’t think my gender hindered the project once people got to know me. I tried to be very open about what I was doing, explaining that I was mostly interested in the idea of the contests, how young women were transforming themselves to meet a very specific ideal, and the fact that the obsession for the contests was on a scale North Americans could only imagine. I think some people were just relieved to have a foreigner focusing on anything other than violence and the drug trade.

I tried to speak with the organizers, security teams, judges, and always the candidates themselves before I started photographing, so they knew I was approaching things from a different place. Some didn’t know what to make of me, but decided that I must be harmless.

I traveled with the candidates whenever possible, until most just thought of me as part of the entourage. I was usually allowed to work in areas that were off limits to local photographers, who were perceived as using their credentials as passports for voyeurism and chatting up the girls. So in many cases my position as an outsider was probably an advantage.

MJ: This project is now your first book. What have you learned about making images for a book and how that differs from a long photo story?

CB: I viewed a book as an extended essay until I started laying one out, turning the pages and realizing things just weren’t working. When I first started shooting, I was thinking only of a series of images, each driving home a different aspect of the themes I was exploring, built into a narrative.

When I started paying attention to books I really liked however, I started to see that many were not only documents but meditations, and that the interplay between these forms gave them a certain rhythm that drew me in and kept me there. In the books I returned to most, there seemed to be a point where I wasn’t so much studying the pictures as breathing them in, absorbing them through osmosis, without being aware of exactly what I was thinking.

I also found myself flipping back and forth more, sometimes going back and pausing a long time at a more meditative picture without knowing why. When I jumped forward to where I’d been before, I realized my perception of the latter photo had changed, like I’d been given a key without knowing the direct connection, or passed a divide between information and understanding. Photo stories, more topical and limited in length, often can’t accommodate the more meditative pictures. But the books are dead without them.

Throughout the recent digital revolution in photography, I have continued to shoot film, but there is one area where I have happily adopted new lightweight digital capture — audio. With the technology jumping leaps and bounds, audio that previously required large, complex recorders can now be captured on small digital recorders, perfect for the kind of multimedia storytelling that I’m exploring.

I’ve been intrigued with the advance of multimedia in the last few year, and especially how it can be used to enhance the art of storytelling. I have a deep respect for still photographers moving into video — like Tim Hetherington with his award-winning documentary Restrepo — but I’m not ready to turn in my viewfinder for a video camera yet. What feels right to me right now is the multimedia slideshow.

You see, I love to write and I enjoy the process of preparing a script to accompany imagery. The multimedia slideshow allows me to go one step beyond the still image with regards to storytelling, but still aligns with my belief that still images are more powerful than moving ones.

My first dabble in multimedia, I decided to create a slideshow (above) of my black-and-white fine-art project on Chinese Turkestan in an attempt to reach a wider audience. In my visits to the region several times a year for the last several years, I began recording audio with a small hand-held recorder. For the slideshow’s audio I used a “Call to Prayer,” essentially a man who stands on the top of the mosque and calls everyone to come and pray several times per day. It is something I hear all the time while working in the region and I thought it was fitting.

From Ryan Pyle's project on Chinese Turkestan.

My goal here was never to produce a “news” piece or include various clips of audio with fuller storytelling. I wanted to create a space for the viewer to fully experience the still image. For that reason, the sequencing was incredibly important, and difficult. I payed particular attention to composition and flow, and I’m still working on it, since the project itself is not yet complete.

One of the exciting things about this first foray into multimedia is starting to think about how this slideshow can support the still images in terms of publicity and marketing. For instance, I integrated the slideshow into my presentations at a few universities and galleries during a recent trip to the U.S. I was very pleased with both the impact of the slideshow and the feedback I received. Remembering that the end goal is to have my images reach the widest possible audience, I believe an audio slideshow contribute to that in many ways.

I have several more videos currently in production, including ones with a narrative as well as more audio from locations. You can follow the process on my blog.

By clicking on the links below the IMPACT logo, you can move through the exhibition, viewing galleries of images, all related to the idea of “Outside Looking In.” Each “gallery” will include a series of images a photographer has uploaded to their blog along with this same IMPACT logo.

At any time you can click on the IMPACT logo to be taken to back to this post, where all the participating photographers are listed. (The “next” button actually takes you to a random gallery, so keep clicking if you get a repeat.)

By allowing viewers to move between different photographer’s online galleries, we hope to gain exposure for their work while providing a multifaceted visual study of the chosen topic.

We also wanted to remind viewers of the important role photographers play around the world, so we asked participants to share images from a project where they had an impact or were impacted themselves. If inclined, they have also included a link to an organization that they believe is having a positive impact on the world. Please help us increase this project’s IMPACT by sharing it with your community.

Enjoy!
The IMPACT Team: Yumi Goto, Miki Johnson, Paul O’Sullivan, Jeremy Wade Shockley

Get Your Free Web Ring Webring by Bravenet.com

Gazi Nafis Ahmed: Inner Face

Daniel Beltra: Tropical Deforestation

Fabiano Busdraghi: Physics, adventure, poetry and photography in Antarctica

Shiho Fukada: No Retirement Plan

Sean Gallagher: Desertification Unseen

Bill Hatcher: New Zealand Masters of Sport

Ed Kashi: A “Fady” in Madagascar

Michael Kircher: Adventure for Healing

Pete Marovich: A Look Inside the Old Order

Sara Mayti: The Sound of a 4.16

Thomas Peschak: Saving the Most Important Fish In the Sea

Ian Shive: American National Parks

Jeremy Wade Shockley: The Mountain Kingdom

Art Wolfe: The Ganges River

Rachel Wolfe: Jamaica

Name: Josh Maready
Website: joshmaready.com
Age: 30
Location: NYC

What kind of photography do you specialize in?
I shoot mostly fashion and portraiture, but I feel really connected to photojournalism and documentary. I like capturing pieces of history that otherwise might have been lost or forgotten.

Personal project name and short description
Pic-A-Pet: This is a slideshow and interview with Mr. Madonna, the owner of a small plant and pet store named “Pic-A-Pet” in my hood in Inwood, at the very top of Manhattan.

When and why did you start it?
My old apartment was right above where the super put all of the trash overnight before he put it out on the street, and because of it there were always some stray flies that found their way in. I got pissed and went on a search to find some Venus fly traps that led me to Pic-A-Pet. I loved that place ever since I first walked in.

I have soft spot for old stores — the dirtier and more cluttered the better. Those places are so full of stories and have so much soul, you know?  I instantly wanted to take pictures of that place and hear some of those stories, so I grabbed my camera and voice recorder and sat down with the owner, Mr, Madonna.  Sadly, he had Stage 4 cancer and died a couple of weeks after our interview. It’s pretty amazing to think that because of the interview I did, a few of his stories will always be alive. That’s powerful stuff.

Mr. Madonna by Josh Maready

Do you have a particular image you are especially drawn to so far?
From this story, I like two images the most: a portrait of Mr. Madonna smiling and a picture of his cluttered cash register that he told me he hasn’t used since the first day he opened. In the portrait, maybe it’s the smile he’s wearing, even though I knew he was in pain, or maybe the sunlight hitting the dust on his glasses. The register, to me, is a perfect summary of everything I love about old stores.

What has been the most challenging thing about the project?
The most challenging part was the editing. I sat down and talked with Mr. Madonna for almost an hour and a half. So taking all of those stories and condensing them into 10 minutes was tough.

What has been the most rewarding thing about it?
Just what I said earlier — to know that I was a part of keeping someone’s legacy alive is a huge honor.  Mr. Madonna was loved by so many people. And even though this is a small and unworthy tribute for such a good man, at least it’ll give people a taste of what he was like.

In your ideal world, where would this project end up?
I hope this ends up in front of the eyes of people who appreciate the stories of the unknown heros of the world as much as I do.

Do you recommend personal projects to other photographers, and why?
Totally. I try to find time to fuel the creative fire by shooting things that really mean something to me. This project was time consuming and finding free time is hard. Freeing up time is usually hard to justify. But to look back and feel like I’ve done something good for the world is worth it.

Wow – you wanna hear something weird? Right now as i’m writing this I just got an email from someone who had known Mr. Madonna. They told me they just watched the slideshow/interview and then poured their heart out about Mr. Madonna and told me a few of their own stories about him. That’s it, man! That’s why I love this stuff! That’s good fuel for the fire and motivation for the next few stories I have in mind…

The front page of Phil Toledano's "Days With My Father" microsite.

During a recent talk at Amnesty International, I freaked out the organizers a bit by suggesting that the web was not the best place to see images. They had booked me for a debate in which I was supposed to be arguing for the greatness of the digital revolution, in which we can see everything for free, all of the time.

In the last year I’ve looked at so much multimedia and taken in so much photography that I’ve completely lost a sense of perspective and awe in what I’m looking at. It’s slightly pathetic,  but the critical, sometimes cynical eye I’ve developed keeps me from getting too close, too intimate with anything I look at. Before, I used to just enjoy looking at an image, a simple but wonderful pleasure — now I consume it and spit it out the other side, like a wine taster who sucked on too much vinegar.

At my Amnesty talk I spoke about getting up one morning to find a book come in the post from Joseph Rodriguez. It was a great moment. One to be treasured. Our lives touched, his work seeping into mine. I felt energized.

But right now I feel like slamming the door on multimedia, I’m worn out on its endless possibility. Exhausted.

So what can I offer this month? Two things.

One to illustrate a point and the other because when I look at it, the work it transcends all of my exhaustion and reminds me what it is to be a human, to love and to lose and also to be lost.

Phillip Toledano’s “Days With My Father” is a masterpiece. Its a love letter that has nothing to do with any of us but that is written in such a way that it could have come from the pages of any of our lives. Its a gift and it proves that I was wrong, the web can be the best place to experience photography. The experience can be utterly transformative. No more words needed — just check it out.

I came across the the second multimedia feature I want to flag via Twitter. It’s astonishing. A panoramic image of a Nairobi street that takes the YouTube video six minutes to travel down. It comes from the book Trading Places, The Merchants of Nairobi by Steve Bloom.  It held my attention for at least a minute before I got bored and moved on. Had I come across this image in a gallery, though, I would have spent a lot longer examining and re-examining it.

So maybe I was right in the first place and the web is not the best place to view images. What do you think?

These three women are members of a granny support group that meets weekly to discuss issues and solve problems related to caring for their many young charges. ©Karen Ande

Miki Johnson: Tell me about the book you just released with Ruthann Richter, Face to Face: Children of the AIDS Crisis in Africa. What was the impetus of this project and what were you hoping to achieve with it?

Karen Ande: This book represents the culmination of seven years of work. The project began in 2002 when I was traveling in Kenya with my husband and friends. Our tour guide asked me if I’d like to visit an orphanage she had opened in the town of Naivasha and photograph the children, whose parents had died of AIDS.

I agreed to do it, thinking it would be a one-time visit that might result in a few shots she could use for fundraising. I did not realize that the children would charm me and that their survival hung in such a delicate balance. The orphanage ran out of rice the day I was there.

We left them with some money for food and I eventually went home and began to print the photographs. When I saw the images emerge in the developing tray I realized that I had an opportunity and a decision to make. I could choose to become involved in this issue or not. I chose to get involved, to reach out to nonprofits who were already supporting projects, to make multiple trips to document this issue. It has taken an enormous amount of time and personal finances, but I have never looked back.

Vannah is only 15 years old but is caring for five younger brothers and sisters after their parent's death from AIDS. ©Karen Ande

I am driven by this issue — 12 million children have been orphaned by AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. There is little infrastructure to care for the children, but many local people whom I have met through NGO’s have creative viable projects that make a difference in these children’s lives. I hope this book will convince people to take a close look at the children I’ve met and begin to care enough to try to help them.

MJ: You’ve said that when you started photographing it was important to you to focus on the positive, things are getting better and people who are making a difference. Why was this so important to you?

KA: People do not hang around to be depressed. The media overexposes us to images of suffering I think, consistently giving us two messages: 1) there is really nothing one person can do to affect these overwhelming problems, and 2) money donated to Africa will be diverted by corrupt governments and aid agencies and never get to the people who need it.

In fact there is a great deal one person can do if they know how. If you donate to organizations working with in-country activists who know and understand their communities’ needs, the money is not wasted. In fact it is often the best way to help, as these projects are generally successful and sustainable. We list many NGO’s in our book that support these types of projects.

Ultimately I would like my photography to make a difference to the people and organizations I have worked with. While I certainly photograph heartbreaking situations—I do not try to misrepresent the situation by providing an artificially cheery picture—I learned that people in desperate circumstances also have dreams, hopes and goals for themselves. Not many photographers document them.

These three young girls are proud of their new school uniforms, but not too proud to muss them on the sidewalk during a game of hide and seek. ©Karen Ande

MJ: How have you connected and worked with NGOs? Have you ever found it hard to find or tell the positive story in a situation?

KA: Connecting with NGO’s has generally been easy for me. The first organization I volunteered for was Firelight Foundation of Santa Cruz, California. I simply called them up and told them about photos I’d taken at an orphanage in Kenya, that I intended to go back, and that I’d noticed they sponsored some projects near where I planned to be. Would they like me to take photographs for them? I made an appointment with the staff and went in with a portfolio under my arm.

They agreed to connect me to some of their grantee partners and I began what became a seven-year saga of visiting grassroots projects piloted by local activists responding to AIDS in their communities. These projects included micro-enterprises, schools, home-based care, HIV education projects, and more.

My working arrangements with NGO’s have varied. I ask to be reimbursed for my on-the-ground expenses while I work with the agencies’ partners. I was reimbursed once for airfare, but that was unusual. The great advantage for me working with NGO’s is that I have been given access to people I would never otherwise meet — child-headed families in Kibera or HIV-positive parents and children, for example.

Patrick stands in front of his mother's bed. She herded cows for a living and made about $1.00 a day. ©Karen Ande

You asked if I sometimes have problems connecting to the positive in a situation. Of course I do. I once met a family that included a dying mother, a 13-year old girl named Esther taking care of her plus her three younger brothers. They lived in a 10’x10’ tin shack, with sunlight pouring in the window, an open door, and all of the holes in the walls. The mother had TB and was to die several weeks after I took this photograph (left) of her with her youngest son.

One of the things that I see in this photograph is love. We devote a chapter in our book to this family. We managed to stay involved, arranging the children to be placed together in an orphanage. We followed them there and this boy is now in boarding school. Esther trained to be become a seamstress and now is able to support herself.

MJ: Do you find that viewers of your images react differently than they do to other “social documentary” images that tend to focus on the horror and pain of a situation?

KA: People feel more empowered by images of solutions than of pain. I don’t ignore pain in my images. I think it is very easy to focus on pain because the images themselves are so compelling and they affect you emotionally. But the stories I photograph are bigger than that. Yes people are seriously ill, yes children are orphaned. But those orphans play games, and the seriously ill people sit in the sun and talk with their friends. The people are engaged in living. Pain is not the entire picture.

MJ: How are you using your images and this book to continue making a positive impact on the people you have documented?

KA: We have partnered with many of the NGO’s whose projects we feature to use the book for fundraising — as gifts for major donors, for example. As the authors, we are donating the profits of the book to these organizations and others that help African children.

Pronghorn antelope in western Wyoming.

Name: Joe Riis
Website: www.joeriis.com
Age: 25
Location: Moose, Wyoming right now and moving to Bijou Hills, South Dakota, early in 2010. I want to live in a cabin on the prairie.
Full-time job: Wildlife photographer and videographer

Personal project name and short description
Pronghorn Passage, a conservation photography project that focuses on the Grand Teton National Park pronghorn migration. Each fall a herd of 400 pronghorn antelope migrate from Grand Teton National Park down into the Upper Green River Basin of Wyoming, a total round-trip journey of 300 miles. This migration is the second longest overland mammal migration in the western hemisphere (after caribou in Alaska). The migration corridor is being squeezed down by residential development and mineral extraction on the private and public lands that it crosses. Pronghorn Passage is a collaborative project between myself and essayist Emilene Ostlind.

When and why did you start it?
The project was actually Emilene’s idea; she approached me and wanted to work together. She is a writer, and was just finishing up working at National Geographic Magazine and as Steve Winter’s assistant on his snow leopard story in India. She was coming back home to Wyoming to write a selection of essays about the pronghorn migration and wanted me to photograph it. At the time, I was just finishing up a 2-year conservation photography project on environmental threats to the Missouri River. I was ready to start photographing something new, and the pronghorn project, which had never been photographed before, seemed like a great idea.

I started researching and filling out grant applications in November 2007, and started my fieldwork in May 2008, the day after I graduated from the University of Wyoming with a bachelor’s in Wildlife Biology. We got the project fully funded through the National Geographic Expeditions Council, The Banff Centre, University of Wyoming, North American Nature Photographers Association, Grand Teton National Park, and Patagonia the clothing company. I feel very fortunate to have received so much financial backing for the project, which has allowed me to focus all my efforts on fieldwork.

I am still surprised by the support we got, but the bottom line is that the pronghorn story had all the elements to a good wildlife story. A small herd of pronghorn migrating a super long distance over an incredible landscape, under threat, that had never been photographed before — plus we were two young Wyomingites who wanted to live with pronghorn. The reason is hadn’t been photographed before is because it takes a huge time commitment, at least a full year. No one knew exactly where they were migrating so I had to do field biology before I could photograph it. Because most of my work is by camera trap, I have to know exactly where the animals are moving.

Do you have a particular image you are especially drawn to so far?
I like the top picture because it was my first decent picture of the project and the first camera-trap picture I ever made. The one with the truck is very simple: It gives the viewer a glimpse into the plight of the pronghorn.

The Grand Teton pronghorn are the only pronghorn in the world that traverse big rivers, so I spent two months this past spring focusing entirely on river crossings. The bottom picture was the first camera-trap picture I got in the water. The picture probably won’t get much use, but I like it a lot.

What has been the most challenging thing about the project?
Since I went to school for wildlife biology and haven’t ever taken a photography course, the computer work and file management is hard for me. For example, managing file names for five cameras is difficult, especially when I have multiple camera traps making pictures at the exact same time. And editing, of course. I always want to pick the pictures that took a lot of energy to get, which many times are not the best images to tell the story.

What has been the most rewarding thing about it?
I’ve been able to discover and see things about this migration that no one knew happened. I’ve see some wildlife spectacles that I know I am very fortunate to experience: wolves, bears, mountain lions, and huge herds of elk and pronghorn. Those are things that I knew I was going to see when planning the project.

What I didn’t know was that I would meet and spend time with so many people who live in the mountains of western Wyoming. I am not talking about the people living in Jackson Hole, I am talking about ranchers, cowhands and wranglers, loggers, postmasters and snowplow drivers, oil and gas folk, the people who are actually Wyomingites.

One family in particular, the Domeks, have been awesome to get to know. They’ve opened their lives to me and let me in; I feel like I’ve almost become a member of the family. It’s hard for me to explain my relationship with them in words, but through example they’ve taught me a lot about what I “want” and “need” in life. I’ve had so many great conversations with them over a cup of tea or bottle of wine, usually sitting next to the wood stove, in their little cabin on the hill. One morning during breakfast this past winter, the five of us watched a pack of wolves hunt a small group of pronghorn from the kitchen table. It was absolutely incredible.

In your ideal world, where would this project end up?
Well, I am a wildlife photographer so the easy answer is National Geographic Magazine, mainly because the readership of NGM is so large and spans the globe. But I think that qualifies more as a dream than reality. I have a pronghorn feature story scheduled for the November issue of Ranger Rick Magazine, which is cool because almost every grade schooler in the U.S.A. reads that magazine. I also have a feature in National Geographic Adventure this coming winter/spring sometime.

The magazines are great, but I really want to see my images printed big in a exhibition. I think camera trap pictures look awesome when they get really big. Emilene and I are planning the Pronghorn Passage exhibition now, which will include about 25 pieces, printed big on canvas wraps. The Field Museum in Chicago is at the top of my list for museums. It would also be great to take it to D.C. — I think our policy makers need to see it.

Do you recommend personal projects to other photographers, and why?
It’s the only way to make a break right now. Pick a subject matter that you truly care about, pick something that’s difficult, then shoot the best pictures of your subject that have ever been made. And finally, don’t finish the project until the entire story can be told with 10 to 15 pictures.

The great thing about personal projects is that the amount of time and dedication you put into it is totally up to you. The reward is a direct result of the effort; you don’t work for anybody and no one tells you what to do. So you have the total freedom to create something that wouldn’t be made if it wasn’t for you doing it. I like that.

I’m writing this from a small hotel in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where duckrabbit and the Bangladeshi photographer Sheikh Rajibul Islam have been working on a documentary about the effects of climate change on this beautiful country.

If the scientists’ predictions are right, up to 20 million Bangladeshi’s will become environmental refugees in the next 50 years. There is no bigger long-term story than the havoc man is wreaking on nature.

It would be easy for us at duckrabbit to reduce our stories about Bangladesh to the most brutal, the most shocking. This is always a temptation for photojournalists looking for the money shot, for their World Press award, but it’s a cheap and ultimately destructive way to capture the world because it reduces people to the status of victims.

At the BBC I used to produce Costing The Earth, their flagship environmental documentary programme. We always strived to tell a balanced story, beyond emotion, because understanding is more important than shock, and debate is more powerful than bashing someone over the head with a message.

Adam Westbrook, a multimedia journalist and blogger, expressed this point brilliantly in a post about a controversial video advertisement by the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontieres:

“We want true stories, and we want them as gritty as the real world is. But we also want balance — and we recognize a third-world-cliché when we see it.”

There are plenty of weak multimedia pieces about the environment out there that suffer from the same clichéd black-and-white photography and lack of balance in their storytelling, but let’s not blow any more CO2 on their two-dimensional approach. Instead I want to point you to a visually stunning and deeply thoughtful piece of work by Toronto Star photographer Lucas Oleniuk.

Airsick: An Industrial Devolution is designed to persuade us that the earth is slowly drowning in CO2. Part of why it works so well is that, instead of focusing on apocalyptic images of the developing world, the piece is rooted in the familiar, in the industrialized world. I can’t watch this and not feel part of the problem. That is powerful multimedia.

(duckrabbit would like to thank the CBA for funding their recent Bangladesh trip.)