It has been a while since I have posted anything to the blog. Its original purpose was to send updates from my 2007 trip to Russia and it has not gotten used much since then. In fact I accidentally deleted all the wordpress files while I was updating the main waterphoto site (oops). Luckily the database was still intact so the stories were left untouched. I plan to update this more frequently—all good bloggers pledge to do when they neglect their blogs. But that is not why Im writing today.

The real purpose of my writing today is to introduce a new idea to fund my next venture to Russia and Central Asia. My ultimate goal is to produce a story or set of stories that can be sold to various media outlets in both Europe and the states as well as anywhere else that wants to publish them. The tricky part of these types of ventures is—how do you get the money to shoot a story like this on spec? Well there are several approaches that have proven to work for many journalist over the years.

• Pitch the story to one of your editors and hope they fund you.
• Use the resources of your photo agency to fund the story.
• Collaborate with an NGO to gain access to the story and perhaps some funding.
• Spend your own money.

Each of these options is a good game, but they mostly require the photographer having some level of established credentials. So how do those of us just starting out get the funds to do this? Well the NGO option and the use your own money option are the two best ones left to most of us. Not having a proven track record it will be hard to get a major media outlet to fund you and most likely you are not with an agency yet or have not been there long enough that they would fund a large project.

Well this is where my idea just might work. Get the people interested in seeing your story published to help you fund it. In other words ask for donations. It sounds obvious and Im sure Im not the first one to think of it. In fact I know of several photographers who have gotten family members to help them fund their first projects. So the new approach I plan to take it to open the funding up to anyone who can read this blog.

I think if you have a story that people care about and a group of followers and a modest budget then it might just be possible to fund your trip through PayPal donations. So that is my plan for the upcoming Russian/Central Asian trip.

In the next few days I will post a preliminary proposal and a rough budget as well as a link where interested parties can donate funds. In the interim I would love to hear anyone’s thoughts on how this could work.