Download - Meet Your Neighbours: NGO Fact Sheet
What’s special about this particular project?
Meet Your Neighbours uses a very distinctive style of photography
to stop the viewer in their tracks. Each subject is photographed
in a backlit white field studio. This technique not only shows it in
great detail but reveals its translucent qualities too. Set against
a pure white background, each subject becomes a celebrity, an
individual rather than merely a member of an ecosystem. This is
specialised work that very few photographers are practiced in.
Meet Your Neighbours provides the materials for the set and a
training DVD to participating photographers.
Why get involved?
• Photography is the core component of any successful
conservation campaign: it can elicit an emotional response
from the viewer more effectively than words, especially if it is
good photography.
• This project provides the chance for your organisation to
acquire a royalty free collection of high quality photographs
that can be used for many years to come. Thanks to its
unique look (one that is appearing more regularly in National
Geographic) the photography will give your campaigns a
distinct appearance. The clarity and simplicity of the pictures
also makes them perfect for educational use.
• The focus of the project is on “local”. As such, the material is
perfect for the essential grass-roots public engagement work.
Back yard plants and animals are ambassadors for less wild
places.
• People often pay more attention to what’s on their own
doorstep when those outside their community express interest
in it. The Meet Your Neighbours project, through its website,
can provide an international platform for the local issues you
campaign on.
What is “Meet your neighbours”?
Meet Your Neighbours is a photographic project that aims to
connect people with the wildlife in their communities that is often
over-looked and undervalued. This matters because for many,
most people, these neighbourhood plants and animals are
usually their first, perhaps only, contact with wild nature. Without
this first hand experience, it is hard to build a concern for the
wider natural environment. The core message: “biodiversity
begins at home’.
F a c t S h e e t f o r N G O P a r t n e r s
Who is behind the project?
Meet Your Neighbours is run by Clay Bolt (US) and Niall
Benvie (Scotland). Both are long-standing professional outdoor
photographers with a passion for “the local” and Niall is a
founding fellow of the International League of Conservation
Photographers.
For full professional profiles please visit the links below:
• Clay: www.claybolt.com
• Niall: www.niallbenvie.com
The list of endorsing organisations, including the ILCP, is growing
and the project is part-funded by the Royal Zoological Society
of Scotland.
What is the coMMitMent?
ere’s how it works: you commission a partner
photographer to make the photographs and acquire
all-time rights (for your organisation’s use) to the
pictures that he or she shoots during the Meet Your Neighbours
commission. The form of payment for this commission is to
be agreed between the NGO and the photographer: while
Meet Your Neighbours strongly believes that the photographer
should receive proper financial remuneration, we realise that in
some parts of the world this may not be possible and ask each
partner to be creative in finding an arrangement that benefits
both. This may include accessing external funding through
your organisation’s usual channels: MYN places no restriction
on sponsorship deals with third parties and will cooperate in
acknowledging their assistance to participating photographers.
This sort of photography isn’t readily available and as such, its
value should be reflected in negotiations. Meet Your Neighbours
does not pay photographers.
We suggest close cooperation between NGO and photographer
so that you get coverage of all the species you need. For the
first three years after the commission is completed, Meet Your
Neighbours also has rights to the pictures too, after which they
revert to the photographer, as well as the NGO.