Crowd “Editing” Your Photo Project

The idea of crowdfunding your photography project has become increasingly popular, especially since startup sites like Kickstarter and Emphas.is have gone mainstream. These days, it’s not unusual to hear about photographers asking you to take a few minutes out of your day to learn about their project and consider contributing to help finance their endeavors.

The great thing about sites like Kickstarter, IndiGoGo, and Emphas.is is that you can donate securely online, and most have a built-in rewards system that lets the project owner reward people with little (or even rather big) gifts based on how much they donate. (P.S. You can learn more about all of this in our free guide, Crowdfunding Your Photography Project).

One crowdfunding project that we’ve been paying particular attention to lately is Borderline: North Korea by photojournalist Tomas van Houtryve. Tomas is an internationally recognized and award-winning photographer whose images appear regularly in TIME, The New York Times, Newsweek, National Geographic, and more.

Tomas has made two prior trips inside North Korea, where he made an effort to see beyond the state’s “meticulously orchestrated fictions,” he says.

“The reasons for documenting contemporary North Korea are fully obvious. The difficulties of doing so are equally clear…With the same ruthless skill that it keeps its population in check and its enemies at bay, North Korea also keeps journalists in the dark. Any report about the country is merely a rough sketch of a giant puzzle, often contaminated with triumphalist propaganda or laced with speculation. My own photography is no exception.”

This past year, Tomas worked with the Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund to document the 1,400 km China-North Korea border. Now he’s committed to completing the next phase with help from his crowdfunding project on Emphas.is, which will allow him to photograph the North-South Korean border and the DMZ.

Beyond photographing an extremely closed-off and almost alien world, what makes Tomas’ project unique is how he will use PhotoShelter to involve backers in the editorial process and essentially “crowd-edit” his images. Upon his return, Tomas will send his backers a lightbox via PhotoShelter so that people can rate and comment on the images. Then he will use that feedback to put together a tight edit of photos.

This process worked really well for Tomas’ last photo book, “Laos: Open Secret“. He asked for feedback from his backers every step of the way, giving people the chance to take part in the final selection. “The resulting mini-book is a lot more condensed and personalized than you would find in an average large print-run book,” he says, “yet much longer and more in-depth than the average magazine feature.”

The crowd-edited photos from Laos will also form a chapter in his forthcoming 288-page book, “Behind The Curtains,“ which documents life inside all of the countries still under communist rule. The first batch of books will be shipped to people supporting his new Borderline project with a $65 contribution or higher.

To get involved in Tomas’ project, please visit his Emphasis page for Borderline: North Korea. With a little less than a month to go, he’s more than halfway to his fundraising goal and needs support from people like you to reach his $5,000 goal.

Kudos to Tomas for the work he’s doing to share a view of North Korea with the rest of the world, and thank you for involving PhotoShelter in this innovative approach to crowd-editing your book!