Welcome to the Crowdsourcing Mornings segment! Every weekday morning, Geek Alabama talks about and features one crowdsourcing project from crowdsourcing sites such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and others. The hope with Crowdsourcing Mornings is to feature and help a project be successful and reach its fundraising goal. Please enjoy today’s featured project!
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Some fifteen years ago, I had just returned home from reporting on Greenland’s shrinking glaciers and ice melt for The Climate Group, a non-profit organisation working with businesses and government leaders globally to address climate change, and I started to think about water as a subject for a long-term project under the working title Water: Source of Life. As the project progressed and as concern for the climate accelerated, I found myself covering wildfires, droughts, floods, pollution, deforestation and the many other areas of life where man was working to his own profit without consideration of what that work might mean in the long run.
This will not be a gloomy book, full of man’s failures. It’s a culmination of all those years of work which show how the health of the planet may be conserved as well as some aspects of man’s carelessness with his surroundings. It’s full of pictures that show the role water has played since ancient times in religious rituals, images of the joy and camaraderie of women and children around standpipes put in place by our NGOs, and the graceful beauty of a windfarm in the misty distance of the sea.
Water is the most important element in our lives…
Water cannot explain the science behind what is happening throughout the world and it does not supply the answers. It is not a political work nor is it intended to be a text book—although I would be delighted if educators thought it worthy of being used in this way. Instead, it is a collection of those pictures I have found most memorable when on assignment for stories that illustrate how water shapes our lives.
I have gradually become aware through the years of my gathering images that something extraordinary was happening to our world—this year has shown above all others that the planet is struggling. There is too much water in some places, too little in others. Ice is melting at an unprecedented pace and it’s so very easy to dismiss what is happening when we see it briefly on TV and then it’s gone. I am concerned that our ecosystem is less than robust and if just a few people think of ways in which we can support it, I feel I can rest and let my work tell its tale.
The book…
Water has been designed by Stuart Smith of GOST Books, an independent visual arts and photography publisher based in London. He and I wrangled amicably over the layout, each of us with images in hand that had to be included in the small prints laid out on the floor of his office. The book will be printed in Verona by EBS on GardaPat Kiara paper and with a hardback clothbound cover.
For this book, I have collaborated with my wife, the journalist Kathie Webber, who has written all the text and worked with me to produce the captions. She has also extensively archived my images and contact sheets, and has continuously been a creative sounding board in this process.
As of November 3rd, this project has raised $7,200 of their $13,819 goal. This project has 7 days left to raise the $13,819 or it will not be funded. For a pledge of $52, you will get one signed book. For a pledge of $98, you will get two signed books. To learn more and to pledge money, go to: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gblimitededitions/water-a-photo-book-by-ian-berry?
Categories: Crowdsourcing Mornings Stuff
