um you know the world of photography is pretty saturated with people doing all sorts of projects and I talked about this before when I've talked about getting out and trying to stand out in that oversaturated world um you need to have that idea and you need to have that seed and when you have something that is firmed up that you can believe in that you can sell then you got to do the footwork to sell it but that gives some people something to talk about then you have to work on creating buzz and all the other things that go into that um Gary did the last project on Kickstarter and there are internet um ways of raising money and raising funding for things um if you're interested in like I said it's not NGO work but if you're interested in non-government work then you need to go meet people who are in that world and start making contacts and start networking and start going to functions and events where you can meet the right people to do that um don't come on too strong but let them know what it is that you want to do and what it is that you're working working on um

um if you've never done any kind of documentary storytelling work I want to talk about a photographer that that I met U about year and a half ago um when I used uh we were doing the photography show which was an audio show that we were doing on iTunes with my friend Wade Griffith and we interviewed uh together a photographer that Wade knows gentleman named Tyler sharp and Tyler is an amazing photographer and he has done a very Corky and Ecentric line of work that has kind of been into that journalism NGO story singg humanitarian type of venue and one of his first jobs that he did was he was shooting in Africa with with a safari group

and I asked him how the heck did you ever even get into that and it was a chance meeting that he had there is locally in Dallas there's a Dallas Safari Club um he got in with them and they said well hey we need images and photos want to come on a trip and he was able to make that happen granted a gentleman like Tyler who goes into that you're going to have to have a lot of flexibility and be ready to travel and go do do that but if that's the kind of work that you want to do it's something worth pursuing so getting out of that photography world and getting into the world of the people who do those projects is probably the best way to start

um until you can start getting some experience and like Gary hust would start shaping your ideas and the types of things you want to do into actually formulating actual projects that you can look into getting funded so anyway um I know this goes deeper than what I'm answering here um but you know Google around start looking into resources uh one last guy I know is Ken Burns and Ken Burns is a documentary filmmaker who is known for um the great baseball miniseries that he did um he's done them on everything World War II the Civil War um you know and he's made a career out of doing stuff that's NE or National Endowment for the Humanities funded projects

and you know you can't go to the ne or the Nea just as an individual and say hey give me some money I want to make a cool documentary about baseball that we're going to run on PBS what you have to do is he actually have to start a nonprofit which is exactly what Ken Burns did um and Ken started you know his his filmm company I believe it was with his brother I may be getting that wrong but anyway the two of them started a group they figured out what they needed to do to be eligible for funding and they did all that work to come back around to the idea of making something cool that is useful to people that is historically relevant and that's interesting

and he found a way to get it done so anyway that's a long spun answer to the original question of how do you go get in into NGO photography but anyway it's worth looking at and if you are the type that you know you want to make your living doing photography you want to dedicate yourself to it you like storytelling photojournalism type stuff that's certainly a great Avenue to look into and there can be some pretty interesting projects that could come along there so anyway once again guys this has been another episode of our photo Friday Q&A session leave a comment leave a question and I'll see if I can get to it on a future episode and once again thanks for watching this been The Art of Photography and I'll see you guys in the next video later

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody my name is Ted Forbes from The Art of Photography and welcome back to another session of our photo Friday Q&A where each week I answer questions that you have about photography and if you have a question you'd like to have considered for a future episode please leave it in the comments below and I'll see if I can't get to it and our question today I really loved and I actually had to go some do some research on it because it's an area of Photography that I am not as experienced with but I do have some examples and I think I can probably help you get into this but basically Chris Carter has asked a question question um basically how do you get into NGO photography and how do you get jobs in the NGO um world and I had to go look this up because I am not familiar I've never done any NGO work and if anyway to back up and explain if you're not familiar with what NGO is basically an NGO is a non-governmental organization and these organizations basically exist they can they are um eligible for grant funding for nonprofit status and basically if you have an NGO or a non-governmental organization you have funding available to you where you can do projects on a wide scale that do things like humanitarian awareness um a lot of Storytelling and this is a very interesting career move and I think very viable for people who are interested in doing photojournalism in particular storytelling and I had to research this because I don't have any direct experience with this myself and I had a little trouble coming up with where to start on something like this um I will put Link in the show notes here but um the website that I found that seemed to be fairly helpful was a website called ngop photography. org and again um this is not something I have a lot of experience in but there are a lot of tips on here for people um you know tips on what they look for when they're hiring a photographer for NGO work um that kind of thing and so hopefully that could be at least start the research path and getting some experience and understanding of how those things work the other thing that immediately came to my mind is somebody who thinks more entrepreneur about things is if you're interested in nonprofit or non-governmental work um is to come up with projects on your own and this is a lot of work um it's very tedious but if you look at people who have had a lot of success with this um in grant-funded types of projects uh it does make sense and I think it can be very interesting and there are several avenues that you can look at and I'm going to give you a couple people as examples of who I would look for um first off uh is a gentleman who does both photography and video movie documentary work that I met a couple years ago at a dinner reception um by accident U gentleman named Gary hustwit and Gary is probably best known for the trilogy of movies that he did that were documentaries on um kind of ready-made objects or you know one was on a tight face so helvetica was probably the biggest of those movies it was essentially a documentary on the tight face helvetica he did another one called objectified which which dealt with product design and you know then there was urbanized which was the third in this Trilogy where he talked about uh urban planning City Planning and the like and all three exceptional documentaries um when I met Gary I was talking about how did he get into this and at the time he had just started working on a newer project where he was talking about olympic cities and basically documenting in kind of um a non-biased way what happens when the Olympics come to a city and you know all these stadiums are built and all these facilities and then when the Olympics are over the city has to care for a lot of structures that were built for a very specific event some cities handle these better than others some cities um have allowed these stadiums and structures to go into ruin um they've had a negative impact financially on the local economy and some of them have flourished and and been creative and done other things with them it's a very interesting topic and Gary was starting this project and he was telling me about it he's doing a book and you know all these appearances and stuff and I said well you know Gary how did you get into this and he said really all it takes is you need to get an idea and you need to get out and hustle it and as simple simp le as that is I think Gary's right and you know he right there the three films and then this olympic cities book photography thing that he's doing those are three wonderful ideas for projects and I talked about this before when I've talked about getting out and trying to stand out in oversaturated world of Photography and documentary film whatever it is um you know you need to have that idea and you need to have that seed and when you have something that is firmed up that you can believe in that you can sell then you got to do the footwork to sell it but that gives some people something to talk about then you have to work on creating buzz and all the other things that go into that and you know essentially Gary did the last project on Kickstarter and there are internet um ways of raising money and raising funding for things um if you're interested in like I said it's not NGO work but if you're interested in non-government work then you need to go meet people who are in that world and start making contacts and start networking and start going to functions and events where you can meet the right people to do that um don't come on too strong but let them know what it is that you want to do and what it is that you're working working on um the other thing too is if you've never done any kind of documentary storytelling work I want to talk about a photographer that that I met U about year and a half ago um when I used uh we were doing the photography show which was an audio show that we were doing on iTunes with my friend Wade Griffith and we interviewed uh together a photographer that Wade knows gentleman named Tyler sharp and Tyler is an amazing photographer and he has done a very Corky and Ecentric line of work that has kind of been into that journalism NGO story singg humanitarian type of venue and one of his first jobs that he did was he was shooting in Africa with with a safari group and I asked him how the heck did you ever even get into that and it was a chance meeting that he had there is locally in Dallas there's a Dallas Safari Club um he got in with them and they said well hey we need images and photos want to come on a trip and he was able to make that happen um granted a gentleman like Tyler who goes into that you're going to have to have a lot of flexibility and be ready to travel and go do do that but if that's the kind of work that you want to do it's something worth pursuing so getting out of that photography world and getting into the world of the people who do those projects is probably the best way to start um until you can start getting some experience and like Gary hust would start shaping your ideas and the types of things you want to do into actually formulating actual projects that you can look into getting funded so anyway um I know this goes deeper than what I'm answering here um but you know Google around start looking into resources uh one last guy I know this is running long but I will give you um an example of is Ken Burns and Ken Burns is a documentary filmmaker who is known for um the great baseball miniseries that he did um he's done them on everything World War II the Civil War um you know and he's made a career out of doing stuff that's NE or National Endowment for the Humanities funded projects and you know you can't go to the ne or the Nea just as an individual and say hey give me some money I want to make a cool documentary about baseball that we're going to run on PBS what you have to do is he actually have to start a nonprofit which is exactly what Ken Burns did um and Ken started you know his his filmm company I believe it was with his brother I may be getting that wrong but anyway the two of them started a group they figured out what they needed to do to be eligible for funding and they did all that work to come back around to the idea of making something cool that is useful to people that is historically re relevant and that's interesting and he found a way to get it done so anyway that's a long spun answer to the original question of how do you go get in into NGO photography but anyway it's worth looking at and if you are the type that you know you want to make your living doing photography you want to dedicate yourself to it you like storytelling photojournalism type stuff that's certainly a great Avenue to look into and there can be some pretty interesting projects that could come along there so anyway once again guys this has been another episode of our photo Friday Q&A session leave a comment leave a question and I'll see if I can get to it on a future episode and once again thanks for watching this been The Art of Photography and I'll see you guys in the next video laterhey everybody my name is Ted Forbes from The Art of Photography and welcome back to another session of our photo Friday Q&A where each week I answer questions that you have about photography and if you have a question you'd like to have considered for a future episode please leave it in the comments below and I'll see if I can't get to it and our question today I really loved and I actually had to go some do some research on it because it's an area of Photography that I am not as experienced with but I do have some examples and I think I can probably help you get into this but basically Chris Carter has asked a question question um basically how do you get into NGO photography and how do you get jobs in the NGO um world and I had to go look this up because I am not familiar I've never done any NGO work and if anyway to back up and explain if you're not familiar with what NGO is basically an NGO is a non-governmental organization and these organizations basically exist they can they are um eligible for grant funding for nonprofit status and basically if you have an NGO or a non-governmental organization you have funding available to you where you can do projects on a wide scale that do things like humanitarian awareness um a lot of Storytelling and this is a very interesting career move and I think very viable for people who are interested in doing photojournalism in particular storytelling and I had to research this because I don't have any direct experience with this myself and I had a little trouble coming up with where to start on something like this um I will put Link in the show notes here but um the website that I found that seemed to be fairly helpful was a website called ngop photography. org and again um this is not something I have a lot of experience in but there are a lot of tips on here for people um you know tips on what they look for when they're hiring a photographer for NGO work um that kind of thing and so hopefully that could be at least start the research path and getting some experience and understanding of how those things work the other thing that immediately came to my mind is somebody who thinks more entrepreneur about things is if you're interested in nonprofit or non-governmental work um is to come up with projects on your own and this is a lot of work um it's very tedious but if you look at people who have had a lot of success with this um in grant-funded types of projects uh it does make sense and I think it can be very interesting and there are several avenues that you can look at and I'm going to give you a couple people as examples of who I would look for um first off uh is a gentleman who does both photography and video movie documentary work that I met a couple years ago at a dinner reception um by accident U gentleman named Gary hustwit and Gary is probably best known for the trilogy of movies that he did that were documentaries on um kind of ready-made objects or you know one was on a tight face so helvetica was probably the biggest of those movies it was essentially a documentary on the tight face helvetica he did another one called objectified which which dealt with product design and you know then there was urbanized which was the third in this Trilogy where he talked about uh urban planning City Planning and the like and all three exceptional documentaries um when I met Gary I was talking about how did he get into this and at the time he had just started working on a newer project where he was talking about olympic cities and basically documenting in kind of um a non-biased way what happens when the Olympics come to a city and you know all these stadiums are built and all these facilities and then when the Olympics are over the city has to care for a lot of structures that were built for a very specific event some cities handle these better than others some cities um have allowed these stadiums and structures to go into ruin um they've had a negative impact financially on the local economy and some of them have flourished and and been creative and done other things with them it's a very interesting topic and Gary was starting this project and he was telling me about it he's doing a book and you know all these appearances and stuff and I said well you know Gary how did you get into this and he said really all it takes is you need to get an idea and you need to get out and hustle it and as simple simp le as that is I think Gary's right and you know he right there the three films and then this olympic cities book photography thing that he's doing those are three wonderful ideas for projects and I talked about this before when I've talked about getting out and trying to stand out in oversaturated world of Photography and documentary film whatever it is um you know you need to have that idea and you need to have that seed and when you have something that is firmed up that you can believe in that you can sell then you got to do the footwork to sell it but that gives some people something to talk about then you have to work on creating buzz and all the other things that go into that and you know essentially Gary did the last project on Kickstarter and there are internet um ways of raising money and raising funding for things um if you're interested in like I said it's not NGO work but if you're interested in non-government work then you need to go meet people who are in that world and start making contacts and start networking and start going to functions and events where you can meet the right people to do that um don't come on too strong but let them know what it is that you want to do and what it is that you're working working on um the other thing too is if you've never done any kind of documentary storytelling work I want to talk about a photographer that that I met U about year and a half ago um when I used uh we were doing the photography show which was an audio show that we were doing on iTunes with my friend Wade Griffith and we interviewed uh together a photographer that Wade knows gentleman named Tyler sharp and Tyler is an amazing photographer and he has done a very Corky and Ecentric line of work that has kind of been into that journalism NGO story singg humanitarian type of venue and one of his first jobs that he did was he was shooting in Africa with with a safari group and I asked him how the heck did you ever even get into that and it was a chance meeting that he had there is locally in Dallas there's a Dallas Safari Club um he got in with them and they said well hey we need images and photos want to come on a trip and he was able to make that happen um granted a gentleman like Tyler who goes into that you're going to have to have a lot of flexibility and be ready to travel and go do do that but if that's the kind of work that you want to do it's something worth pursuing so getting out of that photography world and getting into the world of the people who do those projects is probably the best way to start um until you can start getting some experience and like Gary hust would start shaping your ideas and the types of things you want to do into actually formulating actual projects that you can look into getting funded so anyway um I know this goes deeper than what I'm answering here um but you know Google around start looking into resources uh one last guy I know this is running long but I will give you um an example of is Ken Burns and Ken Burns is a documentary filmmaker who is known for um the great baseball miniseries that he did um he's done them on everything World War II the Civil War um you know and he's made a career out of doing stuff that's NE or National Endowment for the Humanities funded projects and you know you can't go to the ne or the Nea just as an individual and say hey give me some money I want to make a cool documentary about baseball that we're going to run on PBS what you have to do is he actually have to start a nonprofit which is exactly what Ken Burns did um and Ken started you know his his filmm company I believe it was with his brother I may be getting that wrong but anyway the two of them started a group they figured out what they needed to do to be eligible for funding and they did all that work to come back around to the idea of making something cool that is useful to people that is historically re relevant and that's interesting and he found a way to get it done so anyway that's a long spun answer to the original question of how do you go get in into NGO photography but anyway it's worth looking at and if you are the type that you know you want to make your living doing photography you want to dedicate yourself to it you like storytelling photojournalism type stuff that's certainly a great Avenue to look into and there can be some pretty interesting projects that could come along there so anyway once again guys this has been another episode of our photo Friday Q&A session leave a comment leave a question and I'll see if I can get to it on a future episode and once again thanks for watching this been The Art of Photography and I'll see you guys in the next video later\n"