In somewhere around 100 different ways on this blog, I've tried to stress the importance of showing over telling. Very recently I was happy to speak with Bryan Tighe of Collective Lens, a beautiful and comprehensive web-based photozine that helps small nonprofits and causes show their stories and impact in powerful and touching ways. The site does a wonderful job of realizing and putting to work the impact of the visual, especially with regard to telling the story of an initiative, a people, and/or a country, and shows a lot of potential for helping organizations find support by sharing their impact visually.

After traveling extensively through the developing world, Bryan and his wife Laurie were somewhat caught off guard when they came home and found Britney Spears on the front page of CNN. They wondered, "Why is she on the front page when so many other people are living in poverty?" They realized that there needed to be a way for organizations to speak out - to reclaim the spotlight from American pop-starlets. Flickr is a great tool, they thought, but so much great content gets lost in an overwhelming heap of content. In response, in order to create a tool to give small non-profits a visual voice, they created Collective Lens, which serves as a multi-dimensional photo-stream for globally-minded nonprofits.

Basically, Collective Lens is where you should upload all of those awesome pictures   of the goings on in your daily operation - the ones that either tear at your heartstrings or put a smile on your face or motivate you or make you work just that much harder. The site welcomes into its group of snapshots these very pictures, and the collage is used to tell a bigger story about the group responsible, the people/places represented, and why the peruser should care. Photographs are contextualized by essays and blog entries. Collective Lens functions much like a magazine for those who want to know what's on in the world of development and compassion.

As for my two cents on where they could go from here: I look forward to seeing Collective Lens delving into further into interactivity. Perhaps they could develop an application or a widget that can be posted on sites and social networks. As it presently stands, I am checking out Collective Lens because I know that the content is, and as a result, I'm sort of the choir they're attempting to preach to. If some of these extremely touching, beautiful photographs could be shared on Facebook or MySpace pages, or if they could be embedded on a website, Collective Lens would be more likely to be reaching out to a more-substantial audience. Either images clicked on could offer a pop up with info about the photographer, the subject, and the organization represented, it could bring the user back to the Collective Lens page where they can read blog entries and other valuable information, or the action could trigger a little bit of both.

I love what the site is pulling off at present. It is handsomely designed, it functions nicely, it embraces the important of the visual narrative, and it is filled with thoughtful articles and interviews - and I look forward to their movement towards an off-site presence that will most certainly function to strengthen their one on.