Award-Winning Filmmaker to Document the Life of Famed Photographer Clyde Butcher

Elam Stoltzfus (www.stoltzfusmedia.com), an Emmy award-winning documentary filmmaker, plans to produce a documentary featuring the life of nationally acclaimed wilderness photographer Clyde Butcher (www.clydebutcher.com), known throughout Florida for his exquisite black and white, large-format photographs of the state’s landscape, with the help of an online campaign to raise funds independently for the project.

The duo is turning to the Internet to raise funds and seek support through www.Kickstarter.com, an online crowd-funding site, for the full-length biological film CLYDE BUTCHER: Passion and the Power of Photography.

In line with the Kickstarter.com guidelines, artists have a set number of days to raise all the funds or the project receives nothing. Stoltzfus’ film has a 29-day fundraising window, from start to finish. If the allotted budget of $175,000 isn’t raised before March 31, all pledges are canceled and the film will not be funded.

Having worked together for more than 25 years, this will be no ordinary project. The feature-length documentary film will use interviews of Butcher’s friends and family to tell a universal story of one man’s journey through love, loss and life. Thematically organized around key moments in Butcher’s life that reflect a wide range of human emotion and experience, the film seeks to reveal a larger more complex portrait of the artist.

“I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone else but Elam because he really knows me,” said Butcher. “And I think that’s very important.”

Many interviews have already been filmed and will include interviews with Butcher dating back to 1989. Additional footage will be shot on high-definition, broadcast-quality equipment. Upon successful funding, Stoltzfus expects to deliver the final cut before the end of the year.

“This fundraising model provides an opportunity for many people to be a part of telling Clyde’s story,” said Stoltzfus, when asked why Kickstarter.com was appealing. “We can join together to create a piece of art that reflects both Clyde’s photographic story and his involvement with the environment.”

To learn more about the film, readers can visit the project’s pitch page here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/39823887/clyde-butcher-passion-preservation-and-power-of-ph

About Clyde Butcher

Clyde Butcher’s black and white photographs explore his personal relationship with the environment. For more than 40 years, Butcher’s photography has been preserving the untouched areas of the landscape on film. His images, ranging in size, are captured with an 8”x 10”, 11”x 14”, and 12”x 20” view camera. The large-format camera allows him to express the elaborate detail and textures that distinguish the intricacy of the landscape.

Recent projects include work for Florida’s “Save Our Rivers” program, the South Florida Water Management District, the D.E.P., Divisions of State Lands, the Bureau of Submerged Lands and Preserves, Everglades National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Audubon Society, The Nature Conservancy, River Keepers and the Wilderness Society. Butcher has been honored by the state of Florida with the highest award that can be given a private citizen: the Artist Hall of Fame Award. He has also received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the North American Nature Photography Association and honored with the Humanitarian of the Year for 2005 from International University. Butcher was also given the Heartland Community Service Award from the state of Florida for educating the people of Florida about the beauty of their state. The Sierra Club has gifted him with the Ansel Adams Conservation Award, which is given to a photographer who shows excellence in photography and has contributed to the public awareness of the environment.

A large selection of Butcher’s photography can be seen at his Venice Gallery & Studio in Venice, Fla. and at his Big Cypress Gallery, which is located on 13 acres in the center of the Everglades in the Big Cypress National Preserve. For more information, visit www.clydebutcher.com/events.cfm.

About Elam Stoltzfus

Stoltzfus previously directed an award-winning half-hour documentary on Clyde Butcher, Visions of Florida: The Photographic Art of Clyde Butcher, in 1990 that was shown nationwide on Public Television. His directed works include six feature-length nature documentaries on the state of Florida, four of which were shown nationwide on Public Television.