The Photographic Museum of Humanity Grant is an international contest with the aim to finance talented photographers and discover new talents. A total of $4,000 will be awarded.
Category: photography
Photocrati Fund
The Photocrati Fund offers a $5,000 grant to a photographer to undertake an important humanitarian and environmental photography project. Our goal is to identify outstanding photographers and to provide the resources necessary to pursue projects that will have a tangible and positive effect on the world.
PhotoPhilanthropy Activist Awards
The PhotoPhilanthropy Activist Awards identify outstanding work done by photographers in collaboration with nonprofit organizations worldwide, with prizes ranging from $2,000-$15,000. The application period begins in October.
Soros Justice Fellowships
The Soros Justice Fellowships Program’s Media Fellowships is for individuals with distinctive voices proposing to complete media projects that engage and inform, spur debate and conversation, and catalyze change on important U.S. criminal justice issues. Deadline is in October. Watch the Open Society website for the next round.
Rory Peck Training Fund
The Rory Peck Training Fund makes hostile environment training affordable for freelancers. Since its launch in 2000, the Fund has given over 500 bursaries to freelance journalists, photographers, cameramen and filmmakers, enabling them to gain the vital skills and knowledge needed for work in hostile environments. The Trust works with five approved course providers. You must take your training with one of them, but it is up to you which one.
Rory Peck Trust Assistance Grants
Rory Peck Trust offers individual grants to freelance newsgatherers and/or their families who find themselves in a critical situation. This includes freelancers who have been threatened, imprisoned or injured, forced into hiding or exile, or killed.
Tim Hetherington Grant
The Tim Hetherington Grant is an annual grant awarded to a photographer to finalize a project on a human rights theme. It is open to professional photographers who have participated in a recent World Press Photo Contest. Applications are accepted in October every year.
Deadline for Alexia Photography Grant Approaching
The Alexia grant is a phenomenal award that provides grants and scholarships to photojournalists, enabling them to create work that gives voice to those who go unheard, fosters cultural understanding and exposes social injustice. In 2000, this grant changed my life when I won the professional grant. I was young and inexperienced and it allowed me to start my first story in the tiny, impoverished country of Guinea Bissau. It was there – without the pressure of a deadline, or the expectation of a magazine that I learned the importance of patience, of taking time to tell a story. I thought I would stay a month but ended up living there for a half year, telling the stories of how the majority of people on this planet live. It was a powerful turning point when I realized I want to spend my life working to highlight the commonalities of human existence rather than our differences. It was also at that moment I realized that I was not going to be just a photographer. I was also going to be a storyteller.
The deadline for The Alexia Foundation Professional and Student Grants is Jan. 13, 2014 at 2 p.m. Eastern Time. The Professional Grant carries a prize of $20,000 for a professional photographer to produce a substantial photo or multimedia story that makes the world a better place. There are a total of six Student Grants available. The student winner will receive funding for a semester at the Syracuse University London Program, a $1,000 cash grant to help produce the proposed body of work, a $300 gift card from Dury’s Photo and $500 will be awarded to that student’s academic department. Student awards will also be given to a Second Place Winner, and three Award of Excellence Winners.
This year, a new student grant has been added, The Gilka Grant, honoring Robert E. Gilka, the longtime director of photography for National Geographic Magazine and an important supporter of The Alexia Foundation. The Gilka Grant will recognize the best project proposal that also includes a multimedia component. The winner will receive a $1,500 scholarship to attend the Kalish Workshop.
I hope you apply and submit those proposals that inspire us. At the end of the day all of us are not only photographers. We are storytellers and its important to cover not just the headlines but also to focus on the stories that unite us. Good luck!
Link to student grant: http://www.alexiafoundation.org/grants/student_rules
Link to professional rules: http://www.alexiafoundation.org/grants/professional_rules
Link to grants page: http://www.alexiafoundation.org/grants
Film for Ripple Effect Images
MediaStorm created a beautiful film about my work with Ripple Effect Images. Our aim is to tell the stories that empower women around the world. Watch it HERE.
For photographer Ami Vitale, the pivotal moment occurred in Guinea-Bissau.
It was the start of her career and she was visiting her sister in the Peace Corp. Vitale expected Africa to be filled with war, famine, plague or the other extreme, exotic safaris.
Living in West Africa for six months showed her not only “how the majority of people on the planet live their day-to-day life,” but that people were not as hopeless as the newspapers portrayed. There was “a great deal of joy there.”
It is a revelation that has guided Vitale through 80 countries and a 13-year career.
Her original desire to take “beautiful pictures” was transformed into a desire to do justice to people and their stories. As a photographer Vitale’s focus has centered on issues surrounding women, poverty and health. The common denominator to all of her stories, she realized, is nature, specifically climate change. And it’s women who bare the brunt of those changes.
But when a woman is offered the tools to improve her situation, she runs with the opportunity. She transforms communities. “It’s a ripple effect,” says Vitale.
It’s the desire to see change that led Ami Vitale to join Ripple Effect Images, a photography organization started by Annie Griffiths that shares imagery with other changemakers.
“We are telling the stories that are so important and get lost in the headlines,” says Vitale. “They are the key to connecting things and allowing people to get engaged and make a difference.”]
COFFEELAND: Images from Ethiopia in Afar Magazine
Check out this month’s issue of AFAR travel magazine and the story “COFFEELAND” by writer David Farley. This was an epic journey across Ethiopia tracing the origination of coffee that goes back to the thirteenth century. Legend says that a herder named Kaldi noticed his goats “dancing” after nibbling bright red berries. Kaldi brought the berries to a nearby monastery where holy men declared they must be the work of the devil and threw them into a fire. Yet, the aroma was too tempting and they quickly raked the roasted beans from the embers, ground them up, and dissolved them in hot water, yielding the world’s first cup of coffee.
This journey did not involve dancing goats but I did travel with brilliant coffee expert Geoff Watts from Intelligentsia coffee and the incredible people from TechnoServe who taught me more than I could ever imagine about my favorite beverage. I also got to meet farmers who showed me what they believed was THE ORIGINAL COFFEE TREE. This happened in two different villages and there seems to be some debate over which one holds the original tree. Wherever the truth lies, I do know that the culture around coffee in Ethiopia is a serious affair. Its much more than gulping bottomless cups on the go. For those who’ve been invited to a coffee ceremony, it the highest possible gesture of respect and friendship. If you are attending an Ethiopian coffee ceremony, be prepared for a long wait. A traditional ceremony can last a couple of hours and it feels like a spiritual ritual as incense is burned and the grounds are brewed three times. The first round of coffee is called awel, the second kale’i and the third bereka which actually means ‘to be blessed’.
The experience and knowledge changed the way I will ever think about coffee. Here in the USA, we sling it back but after witnessing first hand the tremendous energy and love it takes to get the best beans to market, I came back a changed woman. And on the advice of these coffee experts, my french press is now sadly sitting in the back of the closet and we are brewing coffee by hand with the best roasted Ethiopian coffee. Here are some of the images from the trip but pick up a copy of Afar to see the whole story.
