A technician makes adjustments to a wind turbine at the National Wind Technology Center in Boulder, Colorado. Technological climate solutions can lack emotion but revealing both the engineering scale, human endeavour and dramatic interactions between them will resonate with a broader audience.

Ocean Visuals

A new evidence-based collection of impactful and diverse imagery of ocean, coastal and climate stories released by Climate Visuals ahead of COP27. The Ocean Visuals collection is accessible and free to use by the media, journalists, non-profit sector, campaigners and educators in articles and communications.

Ocean Visuals is a response to the urgent need for more impactful, diverse and equitably accessible ocean-climate imagery while ensuring ethical and fair payment to photographers. The project is a partnership between Climate Visuals and Communications Inc, funded by Erol, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (UK Branch) and Macdoch Foundation / NPT Transatlantic.

Ocean Visuals is built on strict guidelines for ethics, values and image manipulation. Combined with eight ocean-climate photographic principles, derived from a review of evidence and research into ocean imagery, it will raise the bar on visual communication at COP27 in the ’Ocean Super Year’ and into the UN Decade of Ocean Science.

The Ocean Visuals collection was exhibited within the Blue Zone in the digital exhibition programmes of the Nature Pavilion and also the UNESCO pavilion during the panel event ‘Communicating Ocean Science for Climate Action’ at COP27.

“This collection will support communications impact whilst diversifying climate and ocean imagery on a global scale”, explains Climate Visuals Programme Lead, Toby Smith.

“Thousands of photographers spanning 102 countries participated in an open call in September. Our independent jury have made their combined decisions and with the advisory board prioritised values and ethics to only select images that reflect best practice”.

"It was a pleasure to watch this collection come together from every corner of the globe, and explore the vast range of narratives, geographies and storytellers represented. We all hope for these images to be used to represent the mounting threats to our planet with depth and nuance", says Ocean Visuals advisory board member, Daniella Zalcman.

Visualizing Climate Change: An open call for photography

Together, Climate Visuals and TED Countdown released 100 photographs that showcase climate solutions alongside the global impact of climate change. The images were selected from more than 5,500 unique submissions from professional and amateur, gender balanced photographers - spanning more than 150 countries. The images are freely available to key groups communicating on climate, namely the editorial media, educators, campaigns and non-for-profit groups, via the Climate Visuals library.  

“We’re so incredibly grateful, proud, and excited about the submissions received and embodied in our judge’s final selections”, said Toby Smith, Climate Visuals Programme Lead. “The images portray diverse climate solutions, new narratives and voices, and impactful photography—all direct from communities around the world. We reached over 5.2M individuals in our Open Call in June. However,  the real impact starts now as the entire collection becomes accessible to climate communicators.”

“Communication is one of the key pillars in the fight against climate change,” said Logan McClure Davda, Head of Impact at TED. “How we articulate the impact of climate can make or break public opinion, and the ripple effect is seen throughout culture, business, education, media, and more. Together with Fine Acts, we’re pleased to be able to provide climate communicators with free resources to illustrate both the global impact of climate change and the solutions that make us hopeful.”  

Thank you to the KR Foundation

We are incredibly grateful to the KR Foundation, which in 2019 and 2020 supported us to grow our reach and catalyse a new visual language for climate change.

In this period, our series of interventions, grants, awards, advice and accessible evidence reached over 500 million people and produced  over 400 pieces of unique media coverage via collaborative partnerships with Getty Images,  The Guardian,  Covering Climate Now and World Press Photo. Our activities and numerous consultations are based on evolving research, unique industry perspective and our library - all accessed by over 11,000 individuals monthly.

Seeking further support and partnerships

Climate Visuals is actively seeking funding and additional support to take our work even further in scale and geography. New philanthropic, commercial and high-visibility partnership opportunities will increase this momentum of positive change within visual communications at large, and also empower complementary campaign groups and civil society –  an opportunity to change how we all see and act on climate change.  Our contact details are below.

Unique and trusted image library

In April 2021, this library was relaunched on a bespoke Digital Asset Management system from Capture, providing the digital architecture to both meet our rapidly growing user demand and provide the entry and distribution portal of Climate Visuals Countdown.

The library is a trusted source of content for over 500 climate change and environmental groups (see table below), providing a balance between examples of premium Rights Managed and Creative Commons imagery.

Contact

visuals@climateoutreach.org