The deadline to submit your entries for the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops’ very first photography contest is rapidly approaching. Entries are due September 15, 2010.

For many of us our families are a great source of photographic inspiration. In delight, and in heartache, they are our muse. We’re looking for images that speak of FAMILY-in all its glory, from its humor to its quiet moments of grace.

Join our international community of photographers and share your photographs with our distinguished panel of judges. The experience will be rewarding. And the prizes are great!

Over $14,000 in prizes, including the workshop of your choice with tuition and housing, are at stake. Don’t miss out.

- Bart J. Cannon, Executive Director

With an important mid-term election approaching, environmentalists are keeping a close watch on what the results may mean for climate legislation as well as other critical environmental issues in the next Congress.  Blue Earth project photographer Subhankar Banerjee contributes his opinion on the California Senate race on The Huffington Post.

“Senator Boxer is doing the right thing by protecting the coast of her home state from offshore drilling. It’s time that we move away from the death grip of oil-and-coal and start a clean energy revolution in the U.S. During Wednesday evening’s debate Senator Boxer also pointed out that her aim is to make California “a hub of clean energy industry”. This is what all Americans need to hear.”

Read the rest of his article for details of how photos from his project help defeat efforts in the Senate to approve oil drilling in the Arctic Refuge.

- Bart J. Cannon, Executive Director

We are very pleased to announce the acceptance of four new projects: Choosing Hope: Reclaiming the Duwamish River - Tom Reese; Cameras without Borders: Photography for Healing and Peace - Eberhard Riedel; Sufis: Messengers Of Peace - Amit Mehra; Toxic Water, Poisoned People: When Mountains Fall To Pay For Coal - Paul Corbit Brown.

Everyone at Blue Earth wishes to congratulate our new project photographers! We very much look forward to working together to further their projects highlighting these important issues.

Choosing Hope: Reclaiming the Duwamish River - © Tom Reese.

“The Duwamish River can be hard to love, but it flows powerfully through the hearts of those who know it well. The Duwamish is one of earth’s vital arteries conveying lifeblood from mountains to the sea, so it can be difficult to accept that its lower 5½ -mile stretch has been turned into one of the most toxic waste environments in the United States - an industrial sewage canal flowing out past the scenic waterfront of Seattle.”

Cameras without Borders: Photography for Healing and Peace - © Eberhard Riedel.

“Recurrent racism, tribalism and fundamentalist ideology are tearing apart the human fabric. I work with peoples in Africa whose ways of life are under assault and who are suffering the consequences of violence, war and discrimination. This includes the Bushman of Southern Africa and Pygmy in Uganda and Congo, who are among the oldest inhabitants of Africa.”

Sufis: Messengers Of Peace - © Amit Mehra.

“Post 9/11, the general perception to Islam has been quite negative but what needs to be understood is the much larger picture of communal amity it stands for. It is a unique topic, which hopes to enlighten people about the inherent concept and nature of Sufism, the middle path in Islam, as a harmonious philosophy highlighting the benevolence of Islam; an aspect critical to its comprehension in these troubled times.”

Toxic Water, Poisoned People: When Mountains Fall To Pay For Coal - © Paul Corbit Brown.

“Appalachia is the second most bio-diverse ecosystem on the planet and yet it is being systematically destroyed by a cheap coal extraction method called Mountain Top Removal (MTR). Over the last 20 years, over 500 mountains have been destroyed, the water is now toxic with heavy metals and the rate of destruction is rising at an alarming rate.”

Want to help us support great projects like these? Join us for the annual Blue Earth Lottery, an evening filled with fine art photography, gourmet food, and delicious wine, and take home a print donated by one of our world-class photographers like Phil Borges and Subhankar Banerjee! Unlike auctions, every ticket holder is guaranteed a print for their collection.

Join the fun Sept. 30, 2010, 6 p.m. at the UW Center for Urban Horticulture at our annual fundraiser gala! Seating is limited. Order your lottery tickets today.

- Bart J. Cannon, Executive Director

The Nature Conservancy’s 5th annual photo competition is now open for entries.  35 photos will be selected as honorable mentions and finalists.  Winner will be selected by public vote and featured at The Nature Conservancy website as well as in their 2012 calendar, which reaches over 2 million households.

We can talk endlessly about the importance of conservation but mere words cannot compete with the visual impact of a great photo.  Beautiful photographs of nature encourage people to go out and see for themselves what is truly important to conserve.

Submit photos using the Conservancy’s Flickr photo sharing group.  All photos submitted should include the tag - “PhotoContest-TNC10″.  Deadline for submissions is October 4, 2010.  For full details visit my.nature.org.

- Bart J. Cannon, Executive Director

Attempted cleanup of heavy oil, Terrebonne Bay Louisiana, by workers of subcontractor for BP.  July 14, 2010.  They are throwing absorbent booms and pads into the mess and are just dragging it out again, over and over.  BP Gulf Oil coverage by photojournalist Gary Braasch and scientist Joan Rothlein

Though the well may be capped (at least we hope it stays that way), the ongoing disaster in the Gulf created by BP’s deep water drilling continues today.  Blue Earth project photographer Gary Braasch remains on the scene in the Gulf reporting on the crisis, even as the mainstream media turns its attention to the latest MTV music awards.

“It is my hope that these images and ideas will be useful to you not only in depicting this largest environmental disaster - but also in helping turn public and political opinion toward a positive change in our energy and climate policy.  My work here will help illustrate the link between the warming atmosphere and the overuse of fossil fuels and risky drilling for more oil.  I am reporting with Joan Rothlein, an environmental health scientist, and will be preparing reports and photos on many aspects of the oil spill that continues to heavily affect the Gulf waters.  The coverage ranges from the 4.9 million barrels of oil that flowed out from the rig site for three months - to the broad effects on and reactions by the people of the Gulf and telling details along the way.”

It’s easy to forget how much we rely on the dedication and professionalism of photojournalists like Gary to keep the public’s eye pointing in the right direction.  Follow his work, including his own posts from the field, and view more new images from his ongoing reporting at World View Of Global Warming.

- Bart J. Cannon, Executive Director

Blue Earth project photographer Daniel Beltrá is participating in a new exhibit in Aspen focusing on the ongoing Gulf oil spill disaster “SPILL - Crude Response: oil, plastics and perspective.”  The exhibit coincides with the current Gulf oil and climate discussions at the Aspen Institute’s Environment Forum.

SPILL shows us how artists experience environmental issues, and how we are all in it together. The exhibition was created to give policy and industry leaders an artistic way of looking at the Gulf Oil Spill. SPILL artists bring us real life stories of tragedy and hope, from their eyes, and the idea that we need to continue to focus on how important and vital the ocean is to our collective daily existence.

Participating artists include Daniel Beltrá, Aurora Robson, and Kenji Williams.  The exhibit opens today, July 28 and runs through September 25, 2010 at the 212 Gallery.

- Bart J. Cannon, Program Manager

Blue Earth project photographer Greg Constantine has just opened a new exhibit at The Go Down Arts Centre in Nairobi, Kenya featuring new work from his project Nowhere People.

Kenya’s Nubians: Then & Now is the first exhibition in Africa for photographer Greg Constantine (USA, b. 1970).  The Nubian community has lived in Kenya for over 100 years.  Brought to Kenya by the British in the late 1800s, Nubians served for the British in the King’s African Rifles during WWI and WWII and were vital in the development of East Africa.  Unable to return to their homeland, the British designated over 4000 acres of land for the Nubians and their families to settle on.  The Nubians named the land, Kibra or ‘land of forest’.  After Kenyan Independence, the Nubian community has historically been denied recognition and has been one of Kenya’s most invisible and under-represented communities.  Over the past 40 years, hundreds of thousands of rural migrants have flooded into Nairobi in search of work and Kibra has been the land where they’ve been encouraged to settle.  Eventually the Nubian settlement of Kibra would turn into Kibera, one of the largest slums in Africa.

Kenya’s Nubians: Then & Now combines rare, historical photographs of the Nubian community in Kenya with Constantine’s own work on the community’s struggle for recognition.  The exhibition aims to promote the dynamic and rich heritage of a community few in Kenya are aware of, and it intends to help tell the story of one of Kenya’s communities who, as one Nubian elder described is, “being squeezed into extinction.”

The exhibit runs through August 14, 2010 and will be accompanied by an outdoor exhibition/installation in the Kibera slum (outside Nairobi) from August 13-15.  After Kenya, the exhibit will travel to London - keep an eye out for details.

- Bart J. Cannon, Program Manager

Save the date!  Blue Earth’s 2010 Lottery will be held Sept. 30th, 2010 at the beautiful University of Washington Center for Urban Horticulture.  Join us for an evening of great food, wine and music, and the opportunity to take home a piece of fine art photography donated by world-class photographers through a fun and exciting lottery system.

Tickets sales will open here soon.  Lottery tickets are always very limited and always sell quickly, so keep an eye out - we’ll be making an announcement shortly.

Domestic Landscapes: Eastern Europe - © Bert Teunissen

We have been pleased to report recently on the progress of Bert Teunissen with his Blue Earth sponsored project Domestic Landscapes: Eastern Europe highlighting changing domestic interiors across Europe.  Teunissen has just added a new series from his recent journeys traveling almost 10,000 kilometers from his home in the Netherlands into the Balkans and back again.  He plans to travel to Rumania in September and The Ukraine and Belarus in 2011.

Take a few moments and check his latest work.

- Bart J. Cannon, Program Manager

In our post-modern age, the rhetoric of “terrorism” has embedded itself throughout public discourse.  It’s hard to examine any debate regarding public policy without finding multiple references to “security” as a justification for shutting down the flow of information to US citizens.  As one consequence, public spaces have now become off-limits, in the minds of many law enforcement personnel, to anyone holding a camera.

Attorney Venkat Balasubramani, also a member of Blue Earth’s Board of Directors, recently penned his thoughts on recent developments on his blog Spam Notes.  As anyone who cares about documentary photography knows, the struggle to keep public spaces actually public is critical campaign that we must win.

- Bart J. Cannon, Program Manager

San Diego Natural History Museum
Deadline: July 26, 2010

The Ordover Gallery at the San Diego Natural History Museum has announced a call for entries for the upcoming Best Of Nature photography show.  The Grand Prize winner will receive $1,000 for their image, First Place $500, Second Place $250, Third Place $150, Six Honorable Mentions $100 each and People’s Choice Award $100.  The show will be on view at the Museum November 13, 2010 - January 30, 2011.

Freedom to Create
Deadline:  August 15, 2010

The US$125,000 Freedom to Create Prize celebrates the power of art to: 1. Promote social justice, 2. Build the foundations for an open society, and 3. Inspire the human spirit.  There are three categories: Main Prize, Youth Prize and Imprisoned Artist Prize.  The Prize encompasses all forms of art in any creative field and is open to any individual or group of any gender, religion or nationality.  Entries may be of a single piece of work or a body of work.  Past applicants can enter again but must submit a different piece of art from a different body of work.

In case you can’t make his exhibit at the Museum Of New Art, Blue Earth project photographer Jeffrey Sauger will open a new exhibit at the Jack Hanley Gallery.  The exhibit features work from his project Where Furrows Run Deep, documenting the plight of African American farmers in the rural South.

The exhibit runs July 6-30th, 2010 at the Jack Hanley Gallery, New York (136 Watts).  If you will be in New York, be sure not to miss the show!

- Bart J. Cannon, Program Manager

At Blue Earth, we are constantly reviewing our programs to find ways we can improve services to project photographers.  In order to allow more time for proper review of project submissions and to better manage our staff time, our Board of Directors has decided to change the submission calendar from four to two rounds per year.  Submissions will now be accepted for review on January 20th and July 20th effective immediately with the next deadline of January 20th, 2011.

Please review our submission guidelines if you are interested in applying for project sponsorship.

- Bart J. Cannon, Program Manager

Blue Earth project photographer Jeffrey Sauger just opened a new exhibit at the Museum of New Art.  The exhibit features work from his project Where Furrows Run Deep, documenting the plight of African American farmers in the rural South.

Through these images, I hope for the audience to make a connection to the people who have opened their lives to me, to become more informed about the plight of the African American farmer, to acknowledge the existence of institutional racism that still pervades our society and to have an honest and open conversation about it.  In these tough economic times, many people can likely relate to the physical, emotional and financial struggles of the American family farmer.

The exhibit is open now through July 17, 2010 at the Museum of New Art, 7 North Saginaw Street in Pontiac, Michigan.  If you are in the area, be sure not to miss the show!

- Bart J. Cannon, Program Manager

In Goma, DR Congo, on Feb. 4 2009. Children arrive at a temporary resting place before being reunited with their families by the ICRC. Ozias Kambale Pimo, 11 from Kiwanja speaks about whether his parents are still alive. (c) Ron Haviv

The Seattle Center’s Harrison Street Gallery is hosting Our World at War: Photojournalism Beyond the Front Lines, an exhibit sponsored by the American Red Cross Serving King & Kitsap Counties and Seattle Center Productions.

The exhibit offers a unique and first-hand look at what war and armed violence do to people’s lives - from the heartbreaking loneliness of an elderly woman made homeless by last year’s war between Georgia and Russia to the unbridled joy of two brothers reunited after being separated by fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Forty unforgettable images of war-torn Afghanistan, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Georgia, Haiti, Lebanon, Liberia, and the Philippines by renowned war photographers Ron Haviv, James Nachtwey, Antonin Kratochvil, Franco Pagetti and Christopher Morris will be on display.

The Our World at War exhibit opens June 26 at the Seattle Center’s Harrison Street Gallery, 305 Harrison Street, and runs through August 15.  Free and open to the public, 9 a.m.-9 p.m. daily.

- Bart J. Cannon, Program Manager

The ICP Award winners have been announced, and now it’s time for the exhibit!  The 2010 International Conservation Photography Awards exhibit will be hosted by the Burke Museum and will feature the winning photographs and honorable mentions from the 2010 ICP Awards.  Over 75 conservation photographs from around the world will be on display from June 19 - Sept. 6, 2010.

If you will be in the Seattle area, be sure not to miss this unique exhibit!

- Bart J. Cannon, Program Manager

Calling all documentary photographers!  Need a fiscal sponsor for your project so you can accept grants from private foundations and offer individual donors tax deductions?  Blue Earth accepts project submissions only four times each year, and the submission deadline for the next round in 2010 is June 21st.

Our focus remains photographic projects whose goal is to educate the public about endangered cultures, threatened environments, and current topics of social concern.  If you are a photographer and would like to apply, it’s never too early to send in your application.

Check out our updated submission guidelines for more details.  As always, we’re happy to answer any questions about the guidelines or the submission process - just contact us.

- Bart J. Cannon, Program Manager

En Foco’s New Works Photography Fellowship Awards
Deadline: July 31, 2010

En Foco’s New Works Photography Fellowship Awards is an annual program selecting three or more U.S. based photographers of Latino, African or Asian heritage, and Native Peoples of the Americas and Pacific, through a national call for entries.  New Works helps artists to create or complete an in-depth photographic series exploring themes of their choice, and provides the infrastructure needed for national visibility and a professional exhibition of their new work in the New York area.  Submissions can be in any photo-based style or genre (documentary, autobiographical, landscape, abstract, digital, pinhole, alternative processes, etc.).

Picture courtesy of Daniel Beltrá / © 2010 Daniel Beltrá/Greenpeace; used with permission

The oil spill is an ecological tragedy of enormous proportions.  It’s unclear how BP is going address the situation, and the long term consequences will obviously be severe.  BP has not been forthcoming about the extent of the spill and what is being done to fix it.  There have also been disturbing news reports about efforts to stop photographers and journalists from documenting the spill and its effect.  We took a moment to chat with Daniel Beltrá who returned from photographing the oil spill.

Daniel Beltrá is an award winning photographer, who shoots for Greenpeace, among other organizations.  (Daniel’s “Amazon at Risk” was a Blue Earth sponsored project.)

Blue Earth: So you just got back from 28 days in the gulf, shooting the oil spill - what’s your reaction in a sentence to what you saw?
Daniel:  It’s one of the biggest ecological tragedies in many centuries.  It’s a time bomb.

Blue Earth: What brought you down there to photograph?
Daniel: Greenpeace called me for a four or five day assignment.  28 days later I was still there.  It’s been a difficult assignment to work.  Two weeks into the assignment, I realized it was a challenge to document this properly and that we need to show this to the rest of the world.

Blue Earth: How did you get to a spot from which you were able to photograph?
Daniel: I went out on a plane a lot . . . a donor provided air-time, and this made it possible to capture many of the images.

Blue Earth: Where there any logistical challenges to being able to document the spill?
Daniel: Yes, definitely.  The authorities were really playing the BP game.  There was an exclusion area of 3000 feet, a Temporary Flight Restriction.  90% of what I shot was above 3000 feet which is really challenging.

Blue Earth: What have you seen or photographed that you think the average person who watches on the news does not have a sense of about the spill?
Daniel: Probably the scale of the spill.  From time to time the oil would appear and disappear, and capturing the scale of the spill was difficult.  The use of dispersants was also very scary.  Some 800,000 gallons of a dispersant may have been used, and from what I understand, this type of a dispersant is banned in other countries, like the UK.  Nobody knows what will happen with the dispersant.  For a long time, the game was to hide what was happening . . . when the oil is below the surface, you don’t necessarily see it.

Blue Earth: There were reports of journalists and photographers being prevented by BP and by the authorities from photographing - did you experience any of this?
Daniel: All the time.  It’s a pretty difficult region to access, since it’s a coastal marshland with few points of access.  There were restrictions on air and water travel.  I’ve been chased off the beach, for example in Grand Isle.  The local law enforcement said it was OK to photograph from the beach, but later the Sheriff came and said:  “everyone out.”  When this happened I went to the command center thinking that I could sort it out, but an air force sergeant there said that I would actually have to go to a community center, and coordinate with BP.  At the community center, BP “coordinated” visits - they would basically escort you and call ahead.

Blue Earth: Apart from the ecological damage, what sort of other effects will this have on the area?
Daniel: It will have a huge effect on the way many people make their living in the gulf.

Blue Earth: Thanks for taking the time to chat with us!  Check out Daniel Beltrá’s website, blog, and Facebook page.

Guardian Audio Slideshow:  You can check out Daniel’s audio slideshow at the Guardian.

Greenpeace International Picture Desk:  Greenpeace’s International Picture Desk [Facebook] has a large selection of photographs of the oil spill.

The Big Picture:  The Big Picture from the Boston Globe has an excellent slideshow, including some of Daniel’s images:  “Oil Reaches Louisiana Shores.”

BP Photo Blockage:  For coverage of BP and government efforts to prevent photographers from documenting the spill, check out this article in Mother Jones:  “It’s BP’s Oil,” as well as coverage in Newsweek (”BP’s Photo Blockade of the Gulf Oil Spill“), TreeHugger (”BP Contractors and Coast Guard Prevent CBS From Filming Oil Spill Devastation“) and Mother Nature Network (”Coast Guard and BP threaten journalists with arrest for documenting oil spill“).

In addition to Daniel, two other Blue Earth photographers have spoken about the effect of the spill.  Florian Schulz spoke to NPR:  “The Oil Spill: A Conservation Photographer’s Reaction,” and the Seattle PI:  “Photographer: Don’t risk Arctic oil spill.”  Subhankar Banerjee wrote a piece for TomDispatch “BPing the Arctic?,” which received extensive coverage.

- Venkat Balasubramani, Member Blue Earth Board of Directors

Great news for the environment!  As you may have heard, the Obama administration finally acknowledged political reality and the scope of the ever growing disaster incurred by BP in the Gulf by suspending plans for experimental oil drilling by Shell Oil in the Arctic.

Blue Earth project photographer Subhankar Banerjee played his own key role again in building public pressure on the Interior Department with his essay on TomDispatch.com highlighting the dangers of deep water drilling.  Banerjee’s article was a critical call to action and was picked up UPI, Salon, CBS News, The Nation, Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, Grist, Mother Jones, Alternate, ZNET, and many others.

If you haven’t already, be sure to read his article.

Bart J. Cannon, Program Manager