ENVIRONMENTAL EYE FOUNDATION

 

Mission Statement

The Environmental Eye Foundation (EEF) exists to provide photographs for the environmental and conservation community.  Photography is the most effective means to communicate the beauty and fragility of the earth, and it is a medium well suited to all types of media, from traditional print to the world wide web and television. Non-profit environmental groups need strong images to counter special interest public relations and advertising, but they do not have the means to hire world class photographers to get those pictures.

Environmental Eye seeks to redress this imbalance by providing free images to bona fide environmental groups via a web site linked to a huge library of photographs and video clips which can be downloaded for free. The site will be password protected so these valuable images won’t fall into the wrong hands. EEF will insist that donating imagemakers get a credit line, along with EEF.

Richard Blair and Kathleen Goodwin, two renowned photographers with over 100,000 location photographs, will start the image library with their work. They have over 35 years’ experience managing photography and publishing businesses, successfully dealing with copyright issues.

EEF will actively seek to expand its library with the work of other photographers who can submit images online. Many, if not most, photographers, would be happy to donate photographs for this project for three reasons. They care about the environment, would like to get a credit line from a good organization, and know that there is no money to be made from hard working non-profits.

Start up costs to set up the design of the website, the programming of the image database, the scanning of images in several sizes: for online viewing, web use and for print. Another cost is the P.R. effort to publicize the work of EEF so groups can find and use it, money to maintain an office and staff to screen users, edit and catalog the images plus expand the website.

As EEF matures, it is hoped that travel money could be made available so photographers to get current images of important new events, such as the damage from the BP oil spill, and photographs of endangered species and places in need of compassionate attention. EEF will also publish books with the best environmental images for educational purposes that further conservation.