Organizational Background:

WABA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization in Washington, DC that empowers people to ride bikes, build connections, and transform places. We envision a just and sustainable transportation system where walking, biking, and transit are the best ways to get around. Since 1972, WABA has put justice at the forefront of engaging with local advocates and community members, empowering them to take action on the transportation issues pertinent to their communities. The results seek to broaden public support for bicycling and just transportation as a way to care for the people and the environment, to conserve resources and evolve thoughtfully.

Project Overview:

Until now, in our 50-year-history, we’ve relied primarily on volunteer photographers and our overburdened staff to maintain a photo library, which the organization uses for a plethora of purposes, including promotional emails and printed materials. 

WABA is commissioning a photographer to recruit a diverse selection of Black and brown folks, and capture photos of them riding bikes–in order to refresh our library of promotional images. When WABA and its membership talk about a just transportation system, we are talking about transportation equity. In an equitable transportation system, your identity and experience—your race, gender, or ability; how much money you have, and where you live—don’t affect whether you can use safe, comfortable multimodal transportation options. The photos should reflect these varying experiences of moving through the Washington, DC region. The goal is for community members and WABA supporters to feel reflected in the promotional images used for external communication such as promo emails for events, advocacy actions, and printed materials.

Qualifications:

• Experience photographing people and movement (experience with portrait, sports, and street photography genres is especially welcome)
• Proficiency with professional camera equipment including shooting in RAW and ability to provide a clean, colorful editing style in line with WABA’s current image library and brand.

We are open to a variety of experience levels, backgrounds, and approaches, as long as you are able to provide the finished product that we are looking for.

Scope:

We are seeking approximately 50 photos to promote events, classes, trails, and general family biking. They should have a candid energy that communicates fun recreation and transportation. We would like to capture as many locations in the region as possible, but have a specific budget of $10,000. We would also like the photos to reflect the diversity of our membership and the region as a whole. For this project that involves photographing Black families and individuals enjoying regional trails and protected bike lanes.

We envision two shoots, one on trails and one on a protected bike lane (PBL). The trail shoot would take place in the afternoon, on Marvin Gaye trail with a Black or interracial family on hybrid bikes. Bonus if other types of family-biking equipment is captured: electric cargo bikes, bike trailers, young children on balance bikes.

The PBL shoot will take place in one of DC’s major bike lanes (not in NW). This would take place in the morning, in order to capture commuters making use of the PBLs.  

In both shoots, we would like to showcase the widest possible age range and represent different types of bikes (we are happy to consult on this matter). We would like to leave the actual recruitment process up to the photographer and require the exclusive copyright of the finished photos. 

Finally, we would prefer for this to be completed by the end of this calendar year (CY 2022). This is an ongoing project, so feel free to pitch on one or both shoots. Include a price per shoot so that we can budget more for next year. 
Submit proposals to jonathan.kincade@waba.org by November 18, 2022. Feel free to reach out directly if you have any questions.