The Water Desk is excited to be partnering with photojournalist Ted Wood to expand our free multimedia library of water-related imagery.
Our library has thousands of photos of key locations in the Colorado River Basin and beyond. We also offer aerial videos, some of them captured with drones and others filmed during flights with our partner LightHawk.
The imagery in our library is available for editorial and non-commercial use under a free Creative Commons license. See this page to learn how journalists, media outlets and non-profits can license the content.
Because so many media outlets, especially smaller and non-profit news organizations, have little to no money to pay for photos or videos, we want to provide a free resource to strengthen their water coverage.
At the same time, we recognize that many larger outlets do have the ability to pay for photos, so we’re encouraging them to hire photojournalists and asking them to donate to The Water Desk if they use free content from our library. We’ll devote all those donations to supporting photojournalists covering water issues.
Ted, who is one of our past grantees, recently teamed up with writer Jim Robbins to produce a fantastic story on the Gila River. Ted also used his recent Knight Science Journalism Fellowship to capture imagery for our library, and he’s continuing to work with us as a contractor.
For starters, we’ve published Ted’s images of Blue Mesa Reservoir, along Colorado’s Gunnison River, and Flaming Gorge Reservoir, which impounds the Green River in Wyoming and Utah.
These two reservoirs—parts of the Colorado River Storage Project—have been partially drawn down to prop up Lake Powell and preserve hydropower generation at Glen Canyon Dam.
Because so many media outlets, especially smaller and non-profit news organizations, have little to no money to pay for photos or videos, we want to provide a free resource to strengthen their water coverage.
Our library also has photos and videos of Navajo Lake, the third reservoir in the system that will help fill Lake Powell. I was able to visit there in April and August.
We’ve got a lot more content than just dams and reservoirs. For example, Ted’s photos of the Santa Cruz River illustrate a restoration project near my former home in Tucson.
We’re excited to roll out more of Ted’s images in the weeks and months ahead. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram to learn when we publish new content. And check out our interactive map for an overview of the multimedia library and to search by location.
If you’re a journalist working on a Western water story and need help finding a photo or video, please contact me at mitchtobin@colorado.edu. We’d also welcome any feedback on the library.
I want to thank Ted for contributing such great content and also give a shout-out to our consultant, Geoff McGhee, who helped us create a system for organizing and sharing photos and videos.
We hope this imagery offers a valuable asset for the field and helps enrich your understanding of Western water issues.
The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.