Lives: Seattle, WA
Website: www.flickr.com/photos/dean_forbes/

I don’t recall how I first heard about photophilanthropy.com but I’m glad that I did. That’s how I found Blue Planet Network and it resulted in my first volunteer documentary trip overseas. It was an experience I will never forget and one that I plan to repeat in 2011.

In spring 2010 I was in the midst of planning an autumn trip to Asia to do personal photography when I found BPN via photophilanthropy.com. The idea of being more than a tourist, giving something back and the opportunity to see and experience things well off the tourist track had been on my mind somewhat. I follow a couple of “humanitarian” photographers on the web and was intrigued by the notion of this kind of photographic work. Photophilanthropy.com was the ideal resource. I looked at the websites of the member organizations and found that BPN had projects in India, one of the countries that I wanted to visit. I contacted BPN and offered to visit drinking water projects by its member non-governmental organizations.

I flew to India in November 2010 and spent three weeks there: I did personal travel for one week and spent two weeks with three NGOs in two Indian states. I visited remote villages to see and document drinking water, sanitation and watershed development projects. This was organized by Rajesh Shah, a BPN staff member based in India who runs BPN’s award-winning Peer Water Exchange database.

I am a semi-professional photographer in Seattle. I have a day job working in media relations for a major cancer research center. I do photography for my employer and for myself. My work is on display via my website on flickr.com and some of them are represented by Getty Images for stock sales.