Fact Sheet for NGO Partners
What is “Meet Your Neighbours”?
What’s special about this particular project?
Meet Your Neighbours is a photographic project that aims to
Meet Your Neighbours uses a very distinctive style of photography
connect people with the wildlife in their communities that is often
to stop the viewer in their tracks. Each subject is photographed
over-looked and undervalued. This matters because for many,
in a backlit white field studio. This technique not only shows it in
most people, these neighbourhood plants and animals are
great detail but reveals its translucent qualities too. Set against
usually their first, perhaps only, contact with wild nature. Without
a pure white background, each subject becomes a celebrity, an
this first hand experience, it is hard to build a concern for the
individual rather than merely a member of an ecosystem. This is
wider natural environment. The core message: “biodiversity
specialised work that very few photographers are practiced in.
begins at home’.
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 the commitment?
Who is behind the project?
ere’s how it works: you commission a partner
Meet Your Neighbours is run by Clay Bolt (US) and Niall
photographer to make the photographs and acquire
Benvie (Scotland). Both are long-standing professional outdoor
all-time rights (for your organisation’s use) to the
photographers with a passion for “the local” and Niall is a
pictures that he or she shoots during the Meet Your Neighbours
founding fellow of the International League of Conservation
commission. The form of payment for this commission is to
Photographers.
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
For full professional profiles please visit the links below: • Clay: www.claybolt.com • Niall: www.niallbenvie.com
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.
The list of endorsing organisations, including the ILCP, is growing and the project is part-funded by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland.