D.’s back tattoo, created during a stint in juvenile prison, commemorates his estranged family. From Samantha Box’s “Invisible”

Untitled, Arizona XIII, 2010. From Christoph Gielen’s “Incarcerated Populations: American Prison Perspectives”

Last week’s “Collaborations For Cause” was a great success, with over 130 attendees participating!  This was our latest workshop for nonprofits, communications professionals, creative multimedia storytellers, photographers, and socially responsible corporations.  It was a great learning opportunity for me personally, and I know based on the comments we’ve received thus far that it was for many others as well.

Board member Tim Matsui, and also a former Blue Earth project photographer, was kind enough to share a few photos with us.

Blue Earth President Natalie Fobes helped kick off the day.

Emcee, and Collaborations For Cause planner extraordinaire, Dan Lamont introduces a panel, featuring Dan Green from the Gates Foundation; Jane Sutton-Redner, World Vision US; and Milenko Matanovic, founder Pomegranate Center.

Dan Green from the Gates Foundation.

Benj Drummond, Blue Earth board member and project photographers, moderates a panel with Gary Hawkey, iocolor; Helen Cherullo, Mountaineers Books; and Dan Ritzman, Sierra Club.

Attendees listen to a presentation at Collaborations For Cause.

Kevin Sparkman from FusionSpark Media moderates a discussion on ethics with Scott Anger, Founder and Creative Director, Pandau and Blue Earth project photographer Tom Reese.

A view from the stage.

Russell Sparkman from FusionSpark Media moderates a discussion Blue Earth project photographers Tom Reese and Sara Joy Steele & Benj Drummond; Milenko Matanovic, Pomegranate Center; Scott Macklin, Associate Director, Master of Communication in Digital Media Program, UW; and Anil Batra, web analytics/marketing expert.

Photographer Florian Schulz, before presenting his keynote Friday evening, signs copies of his new book “To The Arctic.”

We do appreciate the participation and contributions to the dialog that each of our attendees provided.  Plans for future educational programs are in the works!  Check back here for more information…

- Bart J. Cannon, Executive Director

All photos © Tim Matsui

Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. From Asim Rafiqui’s “The Idea of India: Religious and Cultural Pluralism as Resistance to Sectarian Conflict”

A Sure€“o gang member from San Diego walks across a field to the fence on which he and other gang members spray painted gang tags the night before, near his house in Grant County, Washington, in January 2010. This gangster’s parents moved from California to Washington in large part to get away from the gang influence. Within 3 month’s of their arrival however, he was already getting back involved with gangs. From Mike Kane’s “Gangland, USA: The proliferation of Latino gangs in rural America”

Cassie feeding calf. From Tammy Cromer-Campbell’s “Fruit of the Orchard to Dying for Profit”

Blue Earth is pleased to announce the winners of our Spring 2012 Photo Contest! Our work is based on the belief that a dramatic image can change our perception and alter our understanding of a subject. This idea defines our mission to raise awareness about endangered cultures, threatened environments, and critical social concerns through documentary photography. Our very first photo contest this spring was intended to exemplify Blue Earth’s mission and the power of photographic storytelling.

Everyone at Blue Earth, including our members without whom Blue Earth would not exist, wishes to congratulate our contest winners. And many thanks to our jurors: Jason Houston, Picture Editor Orion Magazine; Gary Halpern, President PhotoMedia & Blue Earth Board Member; and Eric J. Keller, Gallery Director Soulcatcher Studio.

When The Ice Will Disappear - Samuel Feron, 1st Place.

“Part of a glacier in Iceland, this piece of ice detached and arrived on the beach. Each time a wave reaches it, a little of the glacial ice disappears into the ocean. After several days, it will have completely melted. Vatnajökull, Iceland.”

Pronghorn Antelope Killed by Train - Christopher Boyer, Runner Up.

“During the winter of 2010/2012, record snowfall and high winds made foraging and migration nearly impossible for Pronghorn on Montana’s northern prairies. Elevated railroad grades, blown free of snow, provided one of the only corridors along which the animals could move in search of forage and milder conditions. Fast moving trains killed singles, pairs and groups, with one collision near Hinsdale slaughtering more than 240. I catalog the human footprint on landscapes throughout the west, and this image highlights the complex and unanticipated consequences occurring at the intersection between human and natural ecosystems. Montana Highline, 2011″

Demolition of the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant Cooling Tower - Dale Shank, Runner Up.

“This photo is one in a sequence of aerial photos I took prior to, during, and after the implosion of the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant cooling tower located in Rainier, Oregon. Still and video images of the imploding tower are symbolic reminders of the controversies and conflicts associated with nuclear power facilities. In the Pacific Northwest, Trojan became a poster-child for those opposed to nuclear power. Activists rallied around issues relating to the risks of radioactive material leaking into the Columbia River and into the atmosphere. They were part of the growing global concern of finding safe, long-term disposal of nuclear waste. Plant operator Portland General Electric shut down the facility several times to repair steam generator tube leaks and eventually decommissioned Trojan some twenty years before its expected lifespan. Its spent fuel rods are still stored at the facility.”

Many thanks to our contest sponsor!

Volunteer glacier monitors in Iceland. From Benjamin Drummond and Sara Joy Steele’s “Facing Climate Change: Illustrating Global Change   through Local People”

Green sea turtle emerges from a nesting body pit. The tagging project run by the Sea Turtle Conservancy is one of the oldest of its kind in the world. Chelonia mydas. Tortuguero National Park, Costa Rica. From Neil Ever Osborne’s “Faces of Chelonia”

Collaborations For Cause opens this Friday. Space is going quickly - but a few tickets remain. This retreat is a unique opportunity for nonprofits, change-makers, visual story-tellers, and cause-driven photographers to gather at Whidbey Island Center for the Arts, May 4-5th.

The ways in which stories are told, disseminated, and “consumed” continue to change at a break-neck pace. New technologies have made us all visual story-tellers and put increasingly fractured audiences squarely in charge of the exchange of information. In an incredibly noisy media environment with no dominant model, those of us who seek to sustainably generate interest and garner support for our worthy causes face an increasingly daunting task.

Blue Earth and the University of Washington Master of Communication in Digital Media Program are pleased to present this retreat, produced by Russell Sparkman and The Langley Center for New Media, to bring together media innovators in an environment of collegial collaboration designed to enhance our mutual understanding and to help us all better achieve our goals.

Space at the retreat is limited!

Many thanks to our sponsors!

M.I.A. Gallery
Deadline: May 31, 2012

M.I.A Gallery is seeking Seattle based photographers of all altitudes to show their work in a group exhibition during the month of August 2012. The theme for this exhibition is to showcase art with a voice for social activism in Seattle. Photography is a medium that can capture change anywhere in the world, show us what motivates you to have a voice for a better future. Submissions may also be delivered in person at the gallery.

Download (PDF) the application for more details.

“I’m going to be the last herder in my family,” Erdenemunkh, a herder I had just met, said. It was the same thing I had been hearing for the previous three days.

I had been traveling in Azraga, a small region in Central Mongolia that has been hit by a devastating “dzud” - a terrible winter that had killed 40% of Erdenemunkh’s livestock. And his losses weren’t even particularly severe - one of his neighbors lost all but 1 of his 80 cows. For these nomads, most of whom don’t have a bank account, their herds represent their savings, their net worth, and their future earning potential. Losses this high are shocking and recovery is a slow and arduous process.

Speaking further with Erdenemunkh, I learned that there are many, serious problems facing nomads. First is the changing climate. Summers, critical times for animals to store fat, are shortening. Winters are deepening and worsening. Combined with this, a lack of regulation has resulted in an unsustainable increase in the number of animals being grazed, especially goats, which are prized for their cashmere. This increase is killing off areas of local vegetation, and, with the roots dead, the top soil blows away in the constant winds of the Mongolian steppes. The result is newly barren land, an expanding desert creeping northward.

Against this bleak backdrop, urban Mongolia is booming. Over the next decade, the International Monetary Fund predicts that Mongolia will be the fourth fastest growing economy in the world - based principally on its mining sector. Nomads, frustrated at the difficulties of life on the steppes, are moving in droves to the capital, doubling the size of the capital in the last 15 years.

After hearing all of this, I wasn’t surprised that Erdenemunkh, who quite school at 13, is pushing his children to excel scholastically. As a herder without any other skills or education, his options are limited, and his fate is determined by an increasingly difficult landscape. He insists that his children graduate from school to find jobs in the city.

- Taylor Weidman

Visit Weidman’s project page to learn more about his Blue Earth project Nomads No More.  Stay tuned for more updates from the field!

Tar Mine and Truck #4, Alberta Tar Sands, 2010. At the edge of an 80-meter deep mine, a massive tar sands truck is dwarfed by the surrounding landscape. These 400-ton trucks are the world;s largest measuring 25 feet high, 47 ½ feet long, and 32 feet wide. The mines, machinery, and trucks of the Alberta Tar Sands were the inspiration for Avatar’s Edmonton-born art director’s vision of the mining operation on Pandora. From Garth Lenz’s “Energy and Ecology”

Swallows converse over a gourd hung for purple martins to nest in. In the distance are industrial stacks and Mount Rainier. From Tom Reese’s “Choosing Hope: Reclaiming the Duwamish River”

“Basua Youngsters, 2009,” & “Moment of Joy, 2009,” by Yohana Jubujubu, 11 y/o; Semuliki Settlement, near Bundibugyo, Uganda. From Eberhard Riedel’s “Cameras without Borders: Photography for Healing and Peace”

Orange Sneezeweed, Yankee Boy Basin, Uncompahgre National Forest, San Juan Mountains, San Miguel County, Colorado, August.  All flowers are photographed in the field still attached to the plant with a natural light studio. From Rob Badger and Nita Winter’s “Beauty and the Beast: Wildflowers and Climate Change”

From Bruce Farnsworth’s “Amazon Headwaters: Locals Working Toward the Global”

Big fires are set to clear the rainforest jungle for soy plantation around Santarem in Para State, Brazil, Dec. 10, 2003. From Daniel Beltrá’s “Amazon: Forest at Risk”

From Janis Miglavs “Africa’s Undiscovered Myths: Searching for Man’s Original Stories”

Chicago 1995, when an urban heat wave killed more than 700 people.  This - and scientific predictions of global warming effects - foreshdowed the overwhelming heat  of August 2003, when more than 20,000 deaths occured across Europe, and the Northern Hemisphere heat wave of 2006. From Gary Braasch’s “World View of Global Warming”

L.C. Cooper walks through a field that used to be part of his farm before he went out of business in 1999. He was was the third black director of Agricultural Extension Service in Warren County. May 2001, Warrenton, NC. From Jeffrey M. Sauger’s “Where Furrows Run Deep”

Watertower, Treece, 2010. From Dina Kantor’s “Treece”, a series documenting the residents and landscape of a fading American town. A former mining community, Treece is now economically and environmentally devastated. The residents are in the midst of a government-funded relocation program, so they can escape living on unstable land that is contaminated with lead.

The remnants of two obliterated mountain tops have been shoved into the valley to create a “valley fill.” The green area is a series of settlement ponds meant to capture the runoff from the mine site. Nearly 2,000 miles of streams and headwaters have been buried, polluting much of the Appalachian watershed. From Paul Corbit Brown’s “Toxic Water, Poisoned People: When Mountains Fall To Pay For Coal”

Shrine of Sufi Saint Hazrat Shah Niyaz. From Amit Mehra’s “Sufis: Messengers Of Peace”

In The Democratic Republic of the Congo, it is more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier. In a country plagued by decades of violence, rape has become the weapon of choice on both sides of the ongoing civil unrest; it is cheaper than bullets and is guaranteed to leave a community subservient or destroyed. Rape has been a tool of war since the beginning of time, but what is different in Congo is the systematic nature of this crime and the shear numbers of women being attacked. Tens of thousands of women have been raped in Congo in the last ten years of civil war, most of them gang raped. According to the United Nations Population Fund, an average of 1,100 rape cases are reported each month. The future of Congo remains uncertain. Each new battle between government forces and rebel militias leaves behind the scar of more brutalized women and girls. The rape epidemic continues to jeopardize the chances for recovery from this brutal war.

Masika Katsuva, mother of four daughters, was once the wife of a successful businessman. In 1999, Rwanda-backed militants broke into the family’s home. The rebels tortured her husband to death and raped two of her daughters. Finally, they raped Katsuva on top of her husband’s mutilated body. The rape was so savage that she had to undergo eight surgeries over the course of a year to repair delicate tissue. She now runs a combination halfway house and vegetable farm just outside Goma. It is a sanctuary for violated women that enables them to gather strength and self-respect through medical attention, faith, work and, most important, the company of others who share their horrific experiences. From Mary F. Calvert’s “Scarred For Life: PTSD In Rwanda”

An elderly Tibetan man wears antique sunglasses in Choshar. From Taylor Weidman’s “Nomads No More”

Juana Emilia Perez, (far left)  and family watch her youngest son compete in a rodeo on February 17, 2008 in San Pablo Huixtepec in the Central Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico.  Of Juana’s six children, five are in the United States. The annual rodeo used to be a big event. Now organizers have to invite cowboys from other Mexican villages to get enough competitors - there aren’t enough local men left. 80% of working-age men from town immigrate to the U.S. in search of work.  Due to riskier and more costly border crossings, the migrants  stay in the U.S. and do not come back home in fear that they will not be able to get back across the border. It’s been 18 years since Juana saw one of her sons.  “When they boys turn 15, they go” says Juana. “They don’t come because they don’t have papers. They are there so they can have something here in their town: to have land, a house, a truck and something for their family.” From Dana Romanoff’s “No Man’s Land: The Women of Mexico”

A little girl holding her doll watches 25 yr old Yusta with curiosity as she is being photographed. 1 in 4,000 people in Tanzania are albino, making albinism 5 times more common there than in Europe or North America, yet albinism is not well understood by fellow Tanzanians. Myths about magical powers of albinos are abundant and they are often taunted, feared or shunned. From Rozarii Lynch’s “Life in Peril: Tanzanian Albino People”

K., a young transwoman, pauses on 34th street while on her way to the Village to prostitute on “the stroll.” Transgender people comprise the highest proportion of homeless LGBT youth, and are the most marginalized of all LGBT youth in general. Because of their gender non-conforming identity, they are often turned away from the few social services that are available to homeless lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth. In particular, they are often denied access to shelter services, particularly in shelters that segregate clients based on birth sex. Discrimination (transphobia), educational disruption, and lack of appropriate identification that reflects their chosen name and gender (a difficult thing to obtain for homeless transgender people, since it involves access to legal medical services and money to pay for state agency fees) makes it hard for many young transwomen to find a legal job, leaving sex work as one of the few options available to them. At the time of this image, K. had been homeless for about 8 years. August 2006. From Samantha Box’s “Invisible”

Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. From Asim Rafiqui’s “The Idea of India: Religious and Cultural Pluralism as Resistance to Sectarian Conflict”