By Karen Ducey
Many of us got into photojournalism because we wanted to make a difference, do some good in the world, and use our visual storytelling skills to make the world a better place.
But with the downfall of newspapers reducing staff jobs and opportunities for freelancers, what are our options? Do we throw in the towel and declare we’re done with journalism? The pay is poor. Freelance positions are only as good as your last assignment. Editorial support is virtually nonexistent. Grants, few and far between, are extremely competitive.
I began my photojournalism career in an era where working for a nonprofit was absolutely not journalism. And freelancing for any business or nonprofit was completely out of the question.
But are the rules changing?
Could partnering with a nongovernmental organization, or NGO, give your work the exposure and audience it needs to make an impact? Could it be the means to the end to get work published in editorial outlets? Could a freelancer actually make a living?
For news organizations, could partnering with a nonprofit result in more robust stories that they couldn’t otherwise afford to give their readers?
I talked with photojournalists, editors and nonprofit photo editors, all with solid backgrounds in newspapers, on the ins and outs of reporting for nonprofits. What exactly is that gray area between nonprofits and news organizations? Can they meet and mingle? Or do you need a different badge to get in each door?
Here are some excerpts from our conversations. They have been lightly edited for clarity.
Would The Washington Post consider publishing work that was photographed for a nonprofit? Dudley says yes, as long as it’s journalistically sound.
Dudley M. Brooks: I think that where we are right now is that nonprofits actually are looking at photojournalists a lot closer. I mean, they always have. But there was always this difference of approach as to how the subject matter was covered. I think that the chasm of that difference is getting a lot narrower.
I think that a lot of people who are doing work for nonprofits are really doing journalism, as opposed to doing things that are trying to show what this nonprofit’s agenda is.
My criteria would be whether it was journalistically sound.
If you’re going to tell the story, whether this nonprofit is allowing you to tell the story the way that needs to be told, honestly and objectively, and that’s the mission with this, then I would take each case just by itself to judge from there.
One of the first questions I would ask is, let’s not look at the pictures that this organization funded you used. Let’s look at the pictures that you have the rights to that actually tell a fuller part of the story. I would want to see those pictures first.
I am somewhat suspect that it has gotten more muddled. So many photographers who have gone out to look for work and this is where they found it, you know, and so you do this, and then you figure out a way to actually kind of expand the market for new life from your photographs to tell the story that you are interested in.
I would probably go as far as to put a tag on the story that explained the story was originally published in so and so and who sponsored this thing, what the source of the material was.
But again, it’s one of those things where you have to run it up the flagpole.
I've had organizations come and say, “Hey, I’m with this organization. Here is a story of this issue that we're doing.” Most times if it comes to me like that, I’m not necessarily interested in it because you have an organization pitching you to validate an agenda. Whereas if the photographer comes to me after the fact with another edit of the work that they’ve done, that’s kind of a different deal, especially if they own the copyright.
I don’t think that for a photographer one avenue should preclude the other. I think that once you get to a certain level of how to do what we do, then you understand where some boundaries are, hopefully, and then you know how to navigate “What's this? And what's that?”
The bottom line is that 1. People need to work. They need to ply the craft that we have. And I would encourage photographers to explore all different types of avenues. As long as you know where the lines are. As long as you know how to navigate the field. I’m not going to ask a freelancer, “you can only do photojournalism.” Or you can only work for journalistic publications when there are all these other corporate or nonprofit or grant-funded availabilities out there. 2. It’s unfair to the photographer, and then 3. It’s unfair to the situations and the stories that they’re trying to tell. I mean, if you can’t tell it this way, I don’t have problems with you trying to tell it another way.
Dudley M. Brooks on LinkedIn
Earthjustice believes in the power of strong, beautiful, storytelling photos. In addition to Chris’ multimedia storytelling, they hire photographers with photojournalism backgrounds and pay them fairly. Why does Earthjustice value this work? And how does it contract with photographers?
Chris Jordan-Bloch: I worked for newspapers for 10 years, and it was all I ever wanted to do. I felt like I found my calling in life: to be a photojournalist. And I remember when I got to a certain point in my career, like the better I got, the worse the career ladder became. So I was fortunate enough that I got to come to a nonprofit and tell stories on staff at a nonprofit. And I’m able to hire great documentary storytellers to tell stories.
I come from photojournalism. And I believe deeply in the power of pictures. It’s such a meaningful and profound way to tell stories.
I think you can’t really tell stories well and not have great pictures or have meaningful visuals.
A person who has a background in photojournalism absolutely appeals to me to work with because they are going to understand how to work with people, which is probably the most important thing: how to make people feel comfortable and feel seen and feel respected. And then based on their portfolio, they’ll probably also have mad skills. Because usually when you come from photojournalism, that means you’ve had to learn four or five different types of photography at a pretty high level.
I think organizations make decisions about how they’re going to be perceived by the public and by donors. And photography can kind of be a signal of, like, we’re operating at a little bit higher level, we’re being a little bit more strategic in everything we do, including our photography.
I think that there are definite similarities between sort of advocacy work and editorial work. Especially in the fact that really meaningful storytelling, whether that’s documentary photography or charity-driven portraits or whatever, that can really drive the story. I feel like some of the difference might come in the purpose with which we take on the story and the work we do after the story. I think that editorial work can obviously be a little bit purer and a little bit more “both sides driven.” And advocacy work has kind of an agenda and is a little bit more agentic. It has a goal to see a story a certain way. Some photographers are all set to get involved (with us) because they have their point of view too. A lot of times that’s what drives great work. But other photographers I’ve approached about working with us, they’re a little bit less interested, (saying), “I don't know that I necessarily want to exactly come fully down on one side the way that you guys are down on the side.”
Maybe there used to be a time when you didn’t want to be labeled as a person who worked with nonprofits because then you were seen as no longer pure. But at this point, I feel like nonprofits are a great place to tell stories.
Our typical contract is the copyright stays with the photographer. Then we try to get sort of an in perpetuity for our own purposes, whether we can use it for an email alert, and then a blog post, then a web feature, and then a year later, for some little blurb in a magazine. You know, we used to do the old school thing where we would circle back to the photographer constantly. And it got to be a combo of it got expensive, but more than that, it just got to be…. I think that nonprofits aren’t really staffed up to do that level of image management.
Chris says sometimes Earthjustice and the photographer will also negotiate on the rights of others who get to use the pictures; for instance, the person or group the photographer was taking a picture of. Or sometimes it could be for the media that might want to use it for a story. Or if the photographer doesn’t want to give up or share editorial rights.
We then say, “Here's the photographer's contact info; they have the rights to this image; you can reach out to them if you would like to license it.”
Whether or not the media gets to use it is a conversation that we have. No matter what, the photographer is always aware of everything. And we don’t do a “work for hire” where we buy up all the rights to everything that the photographer has.
CREDITS:
Chris Jordan-Bloch website
Rebecca Drobis website
Melissa Lyttle website
Lauren is a force of nature. A conservation photographer and videographer with a newspaper background, Lauren is always busy. How does she get so many assignments? The key to her success, she says, is partnerships.
Lauren Owens Lambert: The NGOs, in general, I think are going more in the direction of a more journalism-type approach to even their own work. I feel like it’s less PR marketing. And they’re not just talking about their own projects and their own role in that project. They’re talking about the issue as a whole.
I think most of the NGOs and either news organizations or publications all agree that a good story is a good story. And you want to get it out there, and you want to share it. So I think for the photographer to own your copyright is probably one of the most important things you can do as an independent photographer. So you have that freedom and ability down the road.
Lauren also freelances for AFP. But photographing for the wires, she says, is totally separate because they own all rights to all her work for the first 30 days.
And it’s also different because it’s news and it’s fast, and it’s timely. So for me with the environmental kind of stories, I have less of a need for it. It’s sort of like a whole different thing.
I've partnered with an organization called Boston Harbor Now. And I’ve been working with them for the past three, maybe four years doing this photo story, where it’s just like creating a collection of portraits of people working in and around the waterfront of Boston. So we’re talking about sea-level rise and climate change and a little bit about the economy.
We had the show in Boston in partnership with Photoville, who supplied the structures and the printing. The layout and design were helped by the Social Documentary Network. The International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP) designed the online multimedia version using interviews I recorded that were translated into English and Spanish along with maps. It takes a team for sure! When we had the physical show, it was in two different locations in Boston, simultaneously across the harbor from each other. So it’s sort of like connecting the waterfront and the harbor, to kind of like a more abstracted sense by having the show exhibited in two locations at the same time. A big component was to make it accessible and free to the public.
It was up for a couple of weeks. We were trying to get it extended to be a month-long. But ironically, we actually had a bomb cyclone hurricane in October, and it was completely destroyed. I mean, it’s kind of ironic, because it was sort of like a climate change event.
Regarding the contract:
They’ve kind of hired me for it. They paid me for the photography. They paid me for a little bit of the postproduction, like the production of the show and everything. So it’s very much an exchange.
Regarding the copyright:
We're going to share it. Again, it’s sort of like they will own the images and they can do what they want with them, and I will own the images and I can do what I want with them.
I think the takeaway is that it is very gray. It’s very murky. It’s very case by case. You know, depending on what your goals are and what the goals are from whoever is paying. I just think open communication with everybody is always the best and the only thing you can do. Just be honest and open with your intentions and what the work either is going to do or already has done.
After the show has been up and the story’s kind of done, I think there’s real opportunity to maybe get it into some art magazines. It’s less journalism, it’s a little bit more like an artistic interpretation of how we talk about a subject that is climate change. So maybe there’s a potential with working with the organization again, to kind of get the word out, in museums or artistic publications or things like that. So that’s something that I’ll continue to look at down the road.
CREDIT: Lauren Owens Lambert website
Tom was a career photojournalist. Why did he make the switch out of newspapers? How does Partners in Health approach visual storytelling?
Tom Patterson: Everyone has to constantly decide how they’re willing to have their labor used. To go back into economics it’s like, how are my 40 hours going to be used? And for what purpose? And like, what mission will I support? I loved journalism. And I still love freelancing occasionally, if the right situation comes along. But you know, whether it’s local journalism at a newspaper or at a big broadcast station, every publication, whatever it is, already has a context. And working at a big international NGO also has a context. It’s like, what are you willing as a person to put your labor into? I want my work to help people. That’s very important to me on a personal level, individually and collectively helping people. I believe journalism has the ability to do that. That’s why I got into journalism long ago.
Sometimes I really miss working in journalism every day. But its decline clearly impacted my personal ability to make stuff happen, which was really important to me. I came around to the idea that awareness is not enough for me; just making people aware of stuff doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t get things done in a way that I felt was important. I won’t get into politics. But the fact that I started working with Mercy Corps and with NGOs around 2016 was very important for me personally, like a mental sea change of how life is short. Time is short. How am I making things better, every day? I want to see that tangibly. Awareness is not enough. So now I’m in a place where I can more directly impact and advocate for the most vulnerable people in the world. Like that’s our mission. It’s amazing.
It’s great in a lot of different ways. During the hiring process (at Partners in Health), I was specifically asked if I abided by the NPPA Code of Ethics. Many of us who tell stories for NGOs and other nonprofits come from the journalism world. We consciously try to bring along that ethical framework into what we do every day.
The ethical framework we learned in journalism, at journalism school or even just working at papers — you know, using truth to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted — with respect to vulnerable subjects is paramount. The same ethical systems, never faking a photo or using computer software to misrepresent a scene. Same ethical systems, super important. Gathering accurate, authentic information to explain and support the story as it is. Same overlap that we do every day. Explain the story as it is rather than the story as we’d like it to be. So that’s what the best nonprofits specifically want, someone who can reliably capture the stories that they need, but in a conscientious way.
With issues of authenticity and context, we are moving toward trying to have members of the community tell their own stories. That doesn’t mean unprofessional — this has to be professional work. But we are really trying to, rather than helicopter in and tell people what to do, it’s super important as part of this ethical framework to help members of the community tell their own stories and support their own solutions. Part of that involves hiring local contractors and staff members when possible.
You know, in a lot of ways, these are not our stories to tell. We can get into the whole voice for the voiceless kind of crap. Because that’s been really disproven. Everyone has a voice. We have to help people use their voices.
When hiring freelancers, Patterson looks at the photographer’s relationship with the community and empathy to the cause:
I'm not talking just hard skills, like, you know, video or editing or writing or other things like that, but more about, like, how are you approaching the story?
We want to hire people who care about the work that’s happening and are interested in the well-being of the people in front of their camera, who are considering in an empathetic way how things are in an objective and subjective sense on both sides of the camera.
When I was young and dumb, running around taking pictures, I didn’t think so much about the impact on other people that my work was doing. Now, I’m trying to do that. The people in the pictures are partners in the process.
On discussing newspapers’ use of handout photos because they can’t afford to send their staffers around the world:
Some of that is that journalism standards have changed. Not even from an NGO perspective, but journalism standards have changed. It’s a natural consequence as a result of funding difficulties. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen newspapers run images they wouldn’t normally run in the past. I've seen them run front-page photos. I don’t want to name newspapers, but newspapers I wasn’t expecting, you know, to run building mugs on A1 that they never would have done before, because that’s what they had. It is what it is.
A lot of people are trying to think of how to make this work from a practical perspective. In our time at Blue Earth Alliance, it was often working with American photographers who go around the world trying to make a living at this. And it’s very, very hard. Brutally hard. So I have empathy for photographers as we’re moving from journalism into other forms of work. It’s an open question about how we can do this.
On getting the work out there in forms other than newspapers and magazines:
There are other avenues once we get over the idea of advocacy being bad. I think everyone is an advocate for their beliefs, no matter what they’re doing. I think the veneer of objectivity is just that, a veneer for a lot of situations in journalism. So I think it’s important to stand up for what you believe in and make a living at it at the same time.
CREDITS:
Tom Patterson website
Nadia Todres website
Scott McIntyre website
Andre is the recipient of the 2021 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Domestic Photography. He stresses how important it is for photographers to keep their copyright. Ethically he’s seen photojournalists shoot for nonprofits and republish their work in editorial outlets for years.
André Chung: I think it’s really important for photographers, especially those transferring from staff positions to independent, to realize the power of ownership in regards to their copyright. Most newspapers have some arrangement to redistribute and capitalize on the images that they own, whether through partnerships with Getty, AP or company distribution networks. They also typically sell prints to the public and license usage to other entities. As independent photographers, we are in the same position to capitalize on our work. Working with nonprofits and repurposing the work for editorial or even commercial clients in certain cases is ethical and necessary for a thriving photography-based career. Independent photographers are doing the same thing as institutions, and we shouldn’t feel skittish about it as long as we put professional standards first.
I don't shoot for anybody who wants to own the copyright. I just walk away.
I’ve worked for nonprofits that after you sign up with them, and you get the job, they want to have releases, but they don’t want your release. They want their own release that basically only frees stuff up for this particular nonprofit. And, you know, it’s typically a broad release. You’ve got to watch what they’re doing in the contract, where they may try to reserve marketing, advertising, annual report stuff. And if you’re not savvy, and you haven’t looked up the pricing for it, they really do try to contract you for editorial rates. And they claim nonprofit status, but when you look them up, they may have a $3 billion endowment.
When asked if he’s resold any work he’s done for nonprofits to a newspaper:
Stuff I’ve done has been just really specific to do what they’re doing. I haven’t really seen where there’s a whole lot of overlap. But what I have found is that I’ve been able to develop contacts with doing nonprofit work that I can then go back to, when I’m working on a story, or if I’m selling it on my own, or if someone has called me with an assignment and says, “Hey, we’re trying to do a piece on this issue.” And then I can make calls beyond whatever they’ve given me as a starting point. And I can say, “Hey, I know some people; this is what’s going on. Are you interested in this? You want to give me another day for this?” So it's really good to have that. It’s just having more people in your Rolodex. Having more listening posts out there.
I do know that there are a lot of photographers who will coordinate with a nonprofit and use them as an access point to a story. And then, you know, they’ll do this just in exchange for images, because they’ve already got a story that they’re working on, a pitch that they’ve sold, and they maybe have a grant for or something along those lines.
I agree that newspapers are the strictest on ethics, but I have seen for years magazines using the work of photographers who work with nonprofits. I mean one image, this is an old image, but it stands out in my mind, was Nachtwey’s image of the Rwandan man who had recovered after being slashed. It was a profile of him. He photographed that for the Red Cross.
And people embed with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) all the time. And that work is picked up by magazines and different news outlets. And certainly, the climate is different in Europe because they don’t necessarily see it as a conflict. And I personally don’t see it as conflict. It’s kind of one hand washes the other. With the business model that we have now, I’m just being realistic. I think that’s why we're seeing a lot of this erode on the newspaper side because they simply don’t have the funds to tell the stories that they need to tell.
Credit: André Chung website
André Chung photo credit Kat Kelley-Chung
Scott originally founded ZUMA Press as an assignment-based photo agency to work with nonprofits. What’s the editorial resale market like for these photos?
Scott McKiernan: Newspapers barely buy anything. They’ve got set budgets, they give way too much money to the AP and they buy the text and photos as a package.
The people who might buy are magazines, broadcast — local and national TV shows — as well as the “60 Minutes” and “Dateline” and all those kinds of people. They’re much bigger markets than the newspapers themselves for buying.
We're a known entity. We are a marketplace. And I wish we made many more zeros next to what we make.
Scott stresses that it's not enough to simply have your work on your website. You need to put it in a marketplace.
All photographers need to think of themselves as visual storytellers. Their stories need to be told. Their work needs to be seen. And it’s going to be seen if you put it in bigger and better marketplaces. And sometimes it’s not good to be in only one marketplace, which basically goes against what I should say as an owner of an agency, but we always tell photographers we can sell it better if only we control it, but if you have a direct line to something, then great. You should make it happen. We encourage that. Now, if we’re assigning you, then it can’t go to somewhere else. That has to stay with us. If we’re getting you the credential to go to, it needs to stay here.
I think nonprofits are important. But what’s very important to photographers in general, I feel, is that you need to, and this will be true for all forms of photography, you need to have eyes wide open. You need to go and understand what you expect from them.
Credit: Scott McKiernan LinkedIn
Robin shifted to photographing for nonprofits after a long career in newspapers. He talks about how he got started, what that’s like and the editorial resale market for his work on ZUMA Press.
Robin was a photojournalist for 20 years at newspapers, then left to venture out on his own. He became aware of the nonprofit Our Children’s Trust because his son is a plaintiff in the federal case. Loznak began providing pictures to the org for free early on, but now he’s a paid contract photographer for it. The team traveled around the country, including some high-profile climate rallies in Washington, D.C, and New York City and another event where climate activist Greta Thunberg spoke to Congress. The images were used by the nonprofit mostly for social media outreach.
Robin Loznak: I’ve been working with a nonprofit law firm that’s based in Eugene, Oregon, called Our Children’s Trust. They are involved in climate change litigation, representing youth across the United States.
I’d be feeding them photos, and just being able to work on the deadline was good, and understanding how that works from my years as a news photographer.”
Prior to COVID, it was the same team for the whole time. And we definitely got a really good working relationship and understood what was needed.
I’m not an employee, I’m a contractor, but I am part of the team. It’s slightly different than being just a pure journalist working for a newspaper when you’re actually working for the organization you’re covering.
But that being said, I have a relationship with a photo agency, ZUMA Press, which I’ve had for almost 20 years. Both of the nonprofits that I’ve been working with, when I set up my contract, I spoke to them about sharing images with ZUMA Press, and they agreed that it would be OK to do that.
It seems to benefit the nonprofits to have a news outlet for their images like that.
But Robin says his edit for ZUMA is different from the one he delivers to his nonprofit clients:
I have a pretty good feel of what news wire pictures they want. The newsworthy pictures are the ones that I’m sending to ZUMA. I’m not sending them the personal backstage pictures; occasionally one of those would be good, too. But you know, it’s more press conference pictures and the court, like what the pool photographers will be providing in the courtroom. In fact, I have been the pool photographer in a couple of courtrooms.
There’s not much direction. I’m pretty much allowed to do what I need to do. You know, I’m really looking at it like I’m documenting history, and they’re open to that. They want me to do it.
Robin also works with the NGO Heart to Heart International in Haiti. It is a medical and humanitarian aid organization, which interests him because of his background as a vet tech and volunteer firefighter. He applied and got a volunteer position with the NGO as a photographer and writer. He is now paid:
I searched and searched on the internet and sort of wrote letters to several of them, and Heart to Heart International, from Lenexa, Kansas, they actually were thinking about doing kind of a similar thing to what Our Children’s Trust was doing. Meaning putting more photos on a timely basis up on their social media and their website to inform and encourage people to give to their nonprofit. They had a position that they were sort of advertising for, but it was a volunteer position. So I applied for it.
Robin then attended a three-day disaster response team training in Kansas that he paid for with his own money. His first deployment was after Hurricane Dorian hit the Bahamas. Accompanying a doctor and logistics person, he had access to very remote locations where he captured and transmitted pictures:
We went in, we were the first people into some of the really hard-hit areas in the Bahamas, on Abaco Island. We ended up finding the place where the organization ended up setting up a clinic that was there for a couple of months.
It really helps to bring people into the story and bring their donors on board. And it was super successful.
Since then he’s been deployed to places hit by wildfires in Oregon, supplying thousands of hygiene kits, and recently to Haiti after the earthquake where Heart to Heart International has a medical presence already on site composed of Haitian doctors and nurses:
Again, we had a great, great response and really got the word out what Heart to Heart is doing down there.
The NGO pays all Robin’s expenses and a daily rate when he deploys with the organization, but Robin admits the copyright remains in its hands. Nevertheless, it is OK with his posting his images on ZUMA Press, where they have gotten picked up by news organizations. Robin keeps any proceeds from these editorial sales and considers it a win-win for both him and the organization.
Heart to Heart and Robin are diligent in ensuring the people he photographs don’t feel exploited. They use translators and have a release written in the local language explaining what they’re doing and why they’re doing it and that their decision to be photographed, or not be photographed, in no way has anything to do with the medical care they’re being provided with.
Robin explained that when he’s with an NGO in these locations covering disaster response, he doesn’t have the freedom to roam around as he would if he were on assignment for a news organization or working on his own:
I’m kind of tied to the NGO because I’m there on their dime; they’re paying me, right? So they (the other photographers) could go down the street or across town to maybe where a funeral is taking place, and if they have access, to take pictures there. Whereas I really can’t do that, because I’m doing my job with the NGO. So there is that sort of thing like you are a little different than just being just out there documenting for a news organization because I’m documenting it for the NGO.
Having it on ZUMA, I think it helps because I get a little bit of sales from it. But also some publications don’t really want handout photos. But having it on ZUMA, they’re not really handling photos anymore. In a way, I don’t know what the ethics there are because I was working for the NGO when I put them on ZUMA. But I think everyone just feels more comfortable getting them from ZUMA for some publications.
When I started 20, 25 years ago as a journalist, I think the handout photo was a bigger no-no. And I think just because of the way the world works now, handout photos are more accepted. Probably because maybe there are more people like me who are actual photojournalists working for organizations so that they can see the value in the pictures.
On increased access because of working with a nonprofit on a story:
Heart to Heart actually has Haitian people in Haiti treating patients. That was just truly amazing. Whereas a lot of the NGOs that I ran into in Haiti had Europeans and Americans treating Haitians. And our access, I think, was way better in getting into villages that other people were probably not getting into to help people. We were in areas way up that had been a week since the earthquake hit, and they had had no contact with any medical care.
Update April 13:
Robin just got back from a three-week deployment to Romania, Moldova, and Poland with Heart to Heart. The advance team was on a fact-finding mission to see where the organization could help out with the Ukranian refugee crisis. While they have mobile units and medical teams that could be set up, they discovered where they could help most was in shipping medical trauma supplies to Ukraine. They could also provide funding for a van to an organization in Romania that monitors illegal human trafficking, a situation that has grown tenfold since the Ukranian crisis began. While in Poland, Robin contracted Covid-19. In his words:
It was first scheduled to be a one-week trip, like a fact-finding mission. And we stretched that to two weeks because there were a lot of facts to be found and a lot of networking to do and how Heart to Heart could fit into helping the refugees. But then I end up getting Covid and had to stay an extra week in Poland in a hotel room, which was not my my greatest moment in life, but it was just mild. I ended up there because you can't fly without getting an official Covid test. The official test was reported to the government so they they put me on lockdown in the hotel.
Even when they first decided to send me with that team, they were like, “You might not get a lot. We're not sure what's going to happen because we might just be networking with people. We're not sending the medical team.” But we ended going to a couple different borders and places. And then met with that trafficking thing. There definitely was enough to photograph. We actually spent a couple days at a refugee center, and we spent the night in Moldova with Hope Worldwide, the ones running it. In fact, Hope Worldwide was the group that received the big shipment just as we were leaving. And so I just made general photos and videos of the refugees coming across and refugees in the refugee center, and then interviewed people. And the general stories and general photos of the refugees and the refugee crisis. And Heart to Heart was really happy with it because they use that in their presentation on their social media, and on their website, to show a crisis going on. And they talked about how they're planning to help and what they're helping, but using my videos as B roll.
I think it had a lot of impact. I've heard from the team leader, and a comms director at Heart to Heart, and the response has been tremendous from people wanting to help. And I like to think that a lot of that has to do with my photos and video that I presented them. And they agree with that.
Credits: Robin Loznak website
Karen Ducey is an independent photographer based in Seattle. She can be reached at [email protected]. Twitter @KarenDucey Instagram @DuceyPhoto. She has been a member of the NPPA since 1996.
