The USAID Enterprise Competitiveness Project is a five-year initiative that works with small and medium businesses to increase their competitiveness, help them access new markets and mobilize investments to create more jobs and increase incomes of Kyrgyzstani households. The key goal of the Project is to create more jobs and increase incomes of people, especially women and youth. That is why USAID prioritizes regions with the highest levels of poverty and unemployment: Batken, Jalal-Abad, Naryn and Osh. The Project also focuses on sectors that can grow faster and create more jobs, especially for women and youth: agriculture, apparel, tourism, manufacturing, education, and IT.

As part of its agreement with USAID, the USAID Enterprise Competitiveness Project has committed to promote the project’s visibility among its beneficiaries, partners, and counterparts, and public in the Kyrgyz Republic. To achieve this, it is seeking a professional photographer to create images that support its communication and outreach efforts with high-quality original photos.

RESPONSIBILITIES: The photographer is expected to become familiar with the project’s activities and the stories it wishes to develop. The USAID’s Development Outreach and Communication Team and USAID’s Enterprise Competitiveness Project’s Communication Team will work together to provide photographer with a detailed shot list and clear expectations of the end product.

The photographer is expected to actively contribute to the elaboration of a shot list to ensure that a comprehensive set of photos is created for each story.

While USAID’s main objective of this assignment is to acquire images that will allow telling a story of a specific intervention, it also seeks to acquire images that can be used over long term to create communications products (banners, flyers, leaflets, social media posts) for various occasions (events, information campaigns, conferences, etc.). For this matter the photographer is encouraged to create useful images outside of the shot list if and when possible.

USAID and the project are also interested in images that can be used in before-and-after sequences. Therefore, in addition to documenting the results of the USAID Enterprise Competitiveness Project’s activities, the photographer will attempt to recreate past actions, document sites of previous events, or create images evocative of a past situation.

The specific objectives of this assignment are as follows:

• Pre-Production: advise the Project on the elaboration of a shot list that will ensure that the essential images are captured. The photographer will provide advice on the preparation of a program of visit to the project site to ensure that the best scenes are captured. The Project will provide the photographer with examples of images and oriented around USAID’s Video and Photo Shooting Guide.
• Production: Create high-quality, unique, original, and aesthetically compelling images of the USAID Enterprise Competitiveness Project’s activities, partners, and beneficiaries. The images will meet high professional standards. The entire set of images will have a coherent style, look, feel, and treatment. It is expected that each scene and subject will be photographed with optimal lighting techniques and solutions. Photos will highlight the USAID Enterprise Competitiveness Project achievements and impact. It is expected that the photographer will support creating images by suggesting scenes or poses that will match the subject being documented. The positive emotions that the pictures will carry will include hope, happiness, determination, confidence, courage, joy, enthusiasm, pride, etc. Negative emotions, where appropriate, will avoid unnecessary sensational drama.
• Post-Production: Conversion of RAW to JPEG, retouching, editing, color correction, etc. and images delivery.

Throughout the assignment, the photographer will meet with the Project team members and its partners before each site visit to: 1) discuss the background, scope, and logistics of photo sessions and/or field visits; 2) discuss key messages, priority images/storyboard/shot list to each site; 3) provide regular updates to the USAID Enterprise Competitiveness Project’s Senior Communications Advisor; 4) receive feedback from the Senior Communications Advisor; and 5) finalize the work and submit all required photos and materials included in the deliverables section within the required timeframes.

It is expected that the images will meet high quality documentary or photo-journalism standards expected by international media organizations or leading photography agencies.

When and where possible the use of professional and portable off-camera flashes or strobes is expected.

All photography work will be acquired using a camera equipped will a full frame sensor (35 mm equivalent) capable of a resolution of at least 5760 x 3840 pixels.

DELIVERABLES

The photographer will be provided with up to 10 assignments of field photography work during a year. The following are the expected deliverables:

1. A photo set including between 150 to 300 photos for each story assigned by the USAID Enterprise Competitiveness Project.

Each photo set will include:

• Original RAW files
• The edited/retouched files in JPEG format. The JPEG files will include two versions of each image:
• Full-size / high-resolution
• A reduced size so that each photo fits between 3 and 5 megapixels.

The photos can be delivered on a physical memory storage device (USB stick, external hard drive) or transferred digitally via a cloud-based service such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, etc.

2. The photographer will obtain from each photographed person a completed and signed photo release form provided by the USAID Enterprise Competitiveness Project.

The final delivery of all images and release forms shall be made to the USAID Enterprise Competitiveness Project within 14 days upon completion of the production phase of the assignment.

COPYRIGHTS OWNERSHIP

All photographs become the sole property of USAID without copyright, credit or use restrictions. Thereafter, USAID will have unlimited and unrestricted usage rights to all images. Photo credit will be given, as appropriate, to the photographer by name in usual and customary manner, appropriate to the use of the photograph.

The photographer may use all the photos produced under this contract for her/his portfolio and/or to show as samples of work to prospective clients.

The photographer may use the photos produced under this contract for other purposes by obtaining the written permission and consent by USAID.

Interested candidates are encouraged to send their Applications with the subject line ” Photography services” to the email: hr.ecpkg@gmail.com  by submitting the following information:

• Technical qualifications of the photographer/photographers, including CV;
• Samples of work. This can include, but may not be limited to, 15-20 printed samples, links to online portfolios/galleries/publications, links to photographs published online by reputable media organizations, etc.
• A simple budget detailing fees and production costs.