Patagonia Sin Represas: Patagonia Without Dams

I created this video with environmental photographer (and my frequent collaborator) Bridget Besaw on the proposed large-scale dam project in Chile’s southern Patagonia region. Bridget fell in love with the region through traveling in and photographing the wild, largely untouched landscape, something I also experienced when I traveled to Patagonia in December 2010, and again in March 2011. Bridget speaks about what’s at stake environmentally and culturally if this dam project moves forward, despite widespread opposition among Chileans.

I interviewed Bridget about her relationship to this story and edited the piece. Since it’s debut on the Patagonia website in November, 2011, the video has received over 40,000 hits.

Keeping Cats Healthy in Maine

The Community Spay-Neuter Clinic in Freeport, Maine offers subsidized spaying and neutering for cats and dogs throughout Maine. Since their opening last year, the clinic has spayed and neutered an impressive number of animals—nearly three thousand. The clinic, along with The Center for Wildlife Health Research asked me to create a series of PSAs to highlight the clinic’s work, and to increase public awareness about domestic cats’ impact on birds and wildlife. I produced, shot, and edited this series. Watch the videos here, or on the clinic’s website.

From Chile

I recently traveled to Chile as part of my collaboration with Bridget Besaw, in December 2010, and then again in March of of 2011. Along the way, we gathered the materials for a couple of multimedia pieces that showcase two of Chile’s finest features: its pristine natural landscape and its wine. The first stars Isla Jechica, a marine/eco-tourism project in the heart of the remote Guaitecas Archipelago, in Chile’s Patagonia region. We spent several days there documenting the island and learning about the project. The second is about the Cousiño Macul winery, Chile’s oldest winery, located in the hills just outside of Santiago.

NOAA Voices from the Fisheries

As Multimedia Project Developer for NOAA’s Voices from the Fisheries project, I culled through NOAA’s large archive of audio and video interviews with fishermen, from Alaska to Alabama to Maine, that were recorded from the 1970s to the present by local organizations. Despite the differences in geography and time, there were many common themes within the interviews: a love of the sea and a solitary existence; the challenges of making a living fishing and the burden of tightening regulations; the craft behind the tools of the trade, including lobster traps, nets, and wooden boats. Based upon these observations, I developed themes to categorize the interviews: Life as a Fisherman, Challenges to Local Fishing Industries, Beyond the Boat, and Fishing Knowledge and Fishing Techniques. From the hundreds of interviews within the archive, I selected twenty to highlight that fit within the themes, and did what I could to improve the quality of the audio recordings, many of them recorded on tape and then digitized. The original interviews were over an hour long, and from that, I produced short, one to four-minute narrative-driven pieces; I chose to remove the interviewers’ questions in the pieces, so the listener only hears the voices of the fishermen and fisherwomen telling their stories. Upon completion of the editing, I consulted with NOAA’s web team and guided implementation of the multimedia on the website. We came up with a clean design that is easy to navigate, and that prioritizes listening to and watching the multimedia stories.