Ami Vitale worked with Instagram to create a beautiful film about the work happening at Reteti Elephant Sanctuary. Instagram featured it on its new IGTV channel for World Elephant Day, where it was viewed over 630,000 times.
You can view it here.
Category: Africa
Wildscreen Photo Story Panda Award
Ami was named one of the three finalists for the 2018 Wildscreen Photo Story Panda Award. To win this award is to have your work judged as one of the best examples in the natural world storytelling genre by the industry’s most respected and accomplished leaders.
The finalist gallery was recently featured in The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph.
InStyle Magazine Badass Women List
I have been named as one of fifty in InStyle Magazine’s Badass Women, a series celebrating women who show up, speak up and get things done. I believe all of us are “badasses” in our own way, but it is still an unbelievable honor to have been included, alongside so many inspiring women, including Jane Goodall, Christiane Amanpour, Stephanie Sinclair and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. See the full list here.
Further, for the InStyle August issue honoring spectacular women, I had the chance to interview one of my favorite Badass Women, Sasha Dorothy Lowuekuduk, Reteti Elephant Sanctuary’s first female head keeper and one of the first indigenous Samburu women keepers in all of Africa. I’m so proud of everyone at Reteti where all the women and men are working to not only protect elephants, but are also breaking stereotypes and pushing the boundaries. Read my full Q&A with Dorothy at InStyle.com.
WeTransfer’s Union of Concerned Photographers
“It’s one thing to know the planet is in crisis. It’s another to see what that looks like.”
I am proud to be a member of WeTransfer’s Union of Concerned Photographers along with Lucy Pike, Mandy Barker, Frans Lanting, Luca Locatelli, & Joel Redman. We are a group of photographers dedicated to using the power of imagery to underline the urgency of environmental concerns. Learn more and get involved at we.tl/UCP
You can read my story on WeTransfer’s Union of Concerned Photographers website here.
“My Africa” at the Tribeca Film Festival
Ami Vitale is thrilled to announce the release of her latest film, My Africa, which is a blue chip VR film on the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary, featuring voiceover by Oscar-winning actress Lupita N’yongo. Ami directed the film with Emmy Award-winning Passion Pictures, Vision 3, and Deep VR for Conservation International.
My Africa premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival as part of the 2018 Tribeca Immersive program to a fantastic reception, where it ran at the Tribeca Festival Hub in NYC from April 20-28.
The film made the Forbes Awesome list and the ABC News Best VR Round-Up from the festival.
My Africa made its online debut on April 30. Since then, it has been written up by Mashable, Earther, and others.
You can watch and share it here.
2018 World Press Photo: First Place, Nature Stories
I’m humbled and honored to named the first place winner in the 2018 World Press Photo awards for my National Geographic story “Warriors Who Once Feared Elephants Now Protect Them.” Thank you to all my friends at Reteti Elephant Sanctuary Community United for Elephants for trusting me to share your powerful story, to my editors Alexa Keefe and Sarah Leen for giving us the platform to share it and now to World Press Photo, for further casting the light on this important story of community and conservation.
I was awarded a World Press Photo, Second Place, Nature, stories, in 2017 for “Pandas Gone Wild.” In 2015, I received a Second Place, Singles, award in the World Press Photo Nature category for “Orphaned Rhino,” which is also from my body of work on Northern Kenya, like this year’s prize. This work is a long term examination of the change in the relationship between people and animals in the region.
In the photo above, keepers feed baby elephants at the Retiti Elephant Sanctuary in northern Kenya, the first sanctuary in Africa to hire indigenous women as keepers.
Please have a look all of the World Press Photo stories. Some will break your heart, others may make you laugh and hopefully inspire all of us to work harder to find solutions to our planet’s most pressing challenges.
You can also see my lecture at the World Press Photo Festival, where I shared the full arc of my photographic journey, including this story on the Retiti Elephant Sanctuary.
Dave Matthews Band Ecovillage
Ami Vitale’s photographs of the Retiti Elephant Sanctuary and the heartbreaking image of Sudan, the last male Northern White Rhino’s final moments are featured on 6 foot high cubes in the Dave Matthews Band Ecovillage. They will be on display there at the entrance to all 47 shows this summer, drawing attention to the importance of wildlife conservation.
Jackson Hole Science Media Awards: “My Africa”
My Africa, a blue-chip VR film Ami Vitale directed on the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary for Conservation International won top prize for VR/360 Storytelling in the Jackson Hole Science Media Awards.
From the infinitesimal to the infinite, science plays a profound role in virtually every aspect of our daily lives. There has never been a more dynamic time in scientific discovery and innovation and the need for communicating science to public audiences and policy-makers has never been more important!
Recognizing excellence and innovation in 22 Content, Program and Craft categories, the Jackson Hole Science Media Awards celebrate the world’s most effective science storytellers and stories. Award-winners will be showcased at special screening events hosted with partner organizations around the world.
See the full list of 2018 winners here.
BBC: A Life Devoted to Photography
The BBC published a feature on Ami Vitale’s life and work, “Ami Vitale: A Life Devoted to Photography.” It offers a behind the scenes look at other elements that go into having a successful career in photojournalism, including the need for photographers to often fund their own work in order to do justice to a long term story that extends beyond editorial budgets. The story also focuses on the connection between Ami’s environmental work and her earlier stories about people.
Ami explains: “As a photographer, the more I’m asked to document people and their issues, I realize I’m documenting nature, and the more I get asked to document nature, I realize I’m photographing people’s lives. It’s one and the same. In a world of seven billion people, we must see ourselves as part of the landscape. Our fate is linked to the fate of animals.”
Read the full feature here.
2018 World Press Photo Nature Stories Nomination
I’m humbled and honored to be among the nominees for the 2018 World Press Photo awards for my National Geographic story “Warriors Who Once Feared Elephants Now Protect Them.” Thank you to all my friends at Reteti Elephant Sanctuary Community United for Elephants for trusting me to share your powerful story, to my editors Alexa Keefe and Sarah Leen for giving us the platform to share it and now to World Press Photo, for further casting the light on this important story of community and conservation.
I was awarded a World Press Photo, Second Place, Nature, stories, in 2017 for “Pandas Gone Wild.” In 2015, I received a Second Place, Singles, award in the World Press Photo Nature category for Orphaned Rhino, which is also from my body of work on Northern Kenya, like this year’s prize. This work is a long term examination of the change in the relationship between people and animals in the region.
In the photo above, Joseph Lolngojine, a Samburu warrior turned elephant caretaker, watches over Kinya. Moments after this photo was taken, it was decided to bring her to the sanctuary to try to save her life.
Please have a look all of the World Press Photo stories. Some will break your heart, others may make you laugh and hopefully inspire all of us to work harder to find solutions to our planet’s most pressing challenges. This year, World Press Photos will announce the winners at the Awards Show in Amsterdam on April 12, 2018.
Shortlisted for the main prize are five photographers, Patrick Brown, Adam Ferguson, Toby Melville, Ronaldo Schemidt and Ivor Prickett with Prickett nominated for two separate images shot in Mosul. World Press Photo launched a new code of ethics for entrants, which means that images submitted to the prize have been thoroughly checked before the shortlists have been announced.
