Wilderness photography, help or hinderence

OK I'll kick off.

As alot of us are trying to help the planet survive. I was wondering what peoples thoughts of Wilderness photography were. What I mean is when we see a photograph of say the antarctic is our first thought wow what a wonderful place it should be left in peace for ever. Or do we think wow I'll plan a trip there ASAP and join the other photographers in making it become more commercial and accesible and therefore less of a wilderness. In other words for places like the rain forest, the desert, the ice fields etc. Does photography have to share a portion of the blame for these places becoming just another tourist attraction or does photography help preserve these wonderful places.

I have my own thoughts on this I just wondered what other peoples take on this is.

Simple rule of life: Whatever you do - it's the wrong decision.

By my good friend, the Scottish philosopher and humourist Derek Leveret.

Nice quote! I'll have to remember to use that.

Steve,

A very important post. May I refer you to

http://www.openphotographyforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61

where some of my attitudes are expressed.

There are a number of competing interests.

My take and IMHO, the RULES:

First we mustn't destroy what's there: leave prsitine. In antartica wear rubber boots. They should be wiped with disinfectant before going on shore.

Don't interefere with a colony of anything.

Don't alter habitat.

Never feed wild animals. The young won't learn survival skilld. Young monkeys in Zimbabwe reserves can starve in the winter, waiting with a hand stretched out for cars packed with handouts that come no more!

Don't befriend wild animals. They need their own species to survive and it will get them harmed when the next person wants them as a trophy.

When you return, post images to remind people of the precious heritage which we have give ourselves dominion over. Offer to talk at schools, libraries etc. Have exhibitions.

All that builds an informed concerned grass roots base.

Don't disclose or bring publicity to fragile environments unless for protection.

Help prgrams to defend environment. At least donate!

Asher

Steve Foster said:

OK I'll kick off.

As alot of us are trying to help the planet survive. I was wondering what peoples thoughts of Wilderness photography were. What I mean is when we see a photograph of say the antarctic is our first thought wow what a wonderful place it should be left in peace for ever. Or do we think wow I'll plan a trip there ASAP and join the other photographers in making it become more commercial and accesible and therefore less of a wilderness. In other words for places like the rain forest, the desert, the ice fields etc. Does photography have to share a portion of the blame for these places becoming just another tourist attraction or does photography help preserve these wonderful places.

I have my own thoughts on this I just wondered what other peoples take on this is.

Click to expand...

Does photography have to share a portion of the blame for these places becoming just another tourist attraction or does photography help preserve these wonderful places.

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This is a tough one, the problem is that humans are involved. I know of some locations that only continue to exist because of photography either prompting debate, awareness or tourism. Yet in other locations, it seems that unwanted activity causes a tipping point to occur. The results being a fast downward spiral.
I have to give a faux answer, "it depends".

On a point that is somewhat related; I am not trolling here - Has anyone seen Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth"?
As a "Brit" I do not pretend to understand US politics, nor do I want to. I saw the movie and can recommend it as an eye opener, worth going to see.
It contains spectacular images and facts, whatever your politics, it is interesting.

National Geographic News have a Fact or Hype? page that may be helpful.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/060524-global-warming.html

$0.02

Well, when I went to Antarctica it wasn't because I saw pictures from there but rather because I always wanted to go there, and finally had the money for it. When we were there it was very impressive to see the operators and how incredibly anal they were about obeying all rules, regarding approaching animals, etc. Not that there's anything wrong with it - just at the contrary; I was just surprised, since I know that usually people take rules in a relaxed way. I guess they know that as soon as the first oil spill happens it's over with tourism, since it's ruled by committe that for once doesn't have much to gain by lobbying.

I just wonder (and worry) if all operators that are going to Antarctica are as concerned / thoughtful. After all, more and more people are going there every year, and soon it will be like the Grand Canyon... fortunately the climate is hostile and the price tag is very high, which will keep many people out (don't mean to sound rich here). After all, most people prefer a day on the beach over a day freezing your butt off.

My word Asher, you like long posts!

I agree with everything you've said exept your second to last point points out the problem. ANY form of advertising, even for protection of an area will have some negative effect (although inumerably more positive ones) in that this will still attract attention to the region you are trying to protect, invariably this is not always positive attention. The question is would such a region survive with the advertising or does the advertising stop the destruction of the region. I think it's a catch 22 situation or to quote Bart Simpson "your damned if you do, and your damned if you don't"!

Hi Stan,

I am pleased that they are very strict on the rules. My own opinion is that a very fine balance has to be found, although I am a hypocrit as I would jump at the chance to visit some of these wonderful places. But there is a part of my soul that is saddened by the fact that there are virtually no areas of the planet that have not in some way been affected by us.

Steve Foster said:

My word Asher, you like long posts!

I agree with everything you've said exept your second to last point points out the problem. ANY form of advertising, even for protection of an area will have some negative effect (although inumerably more positive ones) in that this will still attract attention to the region you are trying to protect, invariably this is not always positive attention. The question is would such a region survive with the advertising or does the advertising stop the destruction of the region. I think it's a catch 22 situation or to quote Bart Simpson "your damned if you do, and your damned if you don't"!

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When I'm really concerned, my post get longer, because I'm a moral sociopath!

I have less sensitivity for others annoyance than I should, in matters of social conscience, because I want to get across a point that is not merely interesting, rather IMHO, vital. Never on a point of religion, but on protection of people and ecosystems we need strong attitudes.

Not quite as strident as the street preacher, who screams for your salvation and blocks the high street (Michael Tapes' B&W picture when it cycles to vision on the very front page). Still I know it can be tough for a) the already convinced and b) the stubbornly anti-science folk!

Hopeully the post is not so long as to throw off the guys in between!

Asher

Anybody else read through the June issue of National Geographic Magazine? In the back is a nice pastiche drom the photographer of the pelican story: he used a fake pelican to get close to the birds. when some motorboaters saw him they sped up to him telling him off because he was frightening away the pelicans ...

It's those who haven't a clue not those educated - e.g. by our photos - giving us a bad name. And making rubbish dumps out of nice places.

Dierk, in your colorful example, they all had good values but the bikers may not have been doing much good. OTOH, perhaps those "bikers" were naturalists measuring droppings or counting breeding pairs and tracted creatures from afar.

As long as they don't come and rip up the terrain and bring garbage for creatures to eat, I'd give them a little slack. I just don't like a lot of them. We can wander quite extensively as long as the extent of our presence doesnt alter the systems we penetrate.

Asher

P.S. Did National Geographic get their shots?

Yes, the NGM of June features a nice photo story on American Whites. BTW, the "bikers" were boaters.

The problem is - as I tried to point out with my first post in this thread - that nobody can claim a superior right to nature. Why should a photographer, may he even work for the NGS or WWF, have more rights to be in a more or less pristine place of nature than anyone else. And why should such places be closed off at all?

I know that this is an issue especially in the USA and some European countries: Nature doesn't have a place in a commercial world if it cannot bring in money. And it can only bring in money if you open the place; but if you do so it may not be of interest any longer, partly because it is not hip anymore, partly because it loses it's pristine state.

Curiously people have no trouble telling others, far away, how to preserve their places but will not let themselves be told. Case in point: Currently the Austrian-German border is roamed by a bear, who regularly kills of livestock. Neither Austria nor Germany has any bear population in the wild, this is actually the first one in Germany for over 170 years. The same people telling the folks of Rwanda, Tanzania or Kenya they shouldn't shoot elephants are now ardently advocating to shoot the "grizzly menace to human live and economy". Go figure.

We have the exact same problems with wolves on the north-eastern border of Germany; those beasts are coming back from Poland! What about so-called 'non-native' species, should they be exterminated just because some nature friend sees them as a danger to the local ecosystem? We have a flock of wild ostriches (or emus?) in Mecklenburg-Western Pommerania [don't ask].

Ecosystems are much more complex and difficult than many of us are aware. Species have always been replaced, wandered into other systems, or died out. This is not an argument to just go on as Junior in Washington wants, to hell with global warming and all. We should just be aware that Change is only natural and not necessarily a bad thing.

Let me cite again my old friend: Whatever you do - it's the wrong decision.

"Species have always been replaced, wandered into other systems, or died out."

Fine when that is the part of Nature not tragedies we cause.

Case in point, rats imported to isolated islands can wipe many unique species yet yield no genetic benefit. It's man undoing tens of millions of years of Nature!

It is, I believe our responsibility to prevent species eradication that we cause! If that or Gloabal warming, (brought about by gravitational pull of the moon or whatever). should cause extinctions, there's all the more reason for us not to add to the tragedy. We are on the march to further massive loss of species just through our ruining of habitat and introduction of foreign species.

We need all the species poossible to maintain a cycle of life. The more, the greater chance that some species will again survive to fill empty niches and produce new variants ready for the next disaster. With no diversity, we will get down to bacteria and fungi once more!

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

With no diversity, we will get down to bacteria and fungi once more!

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I am all for diversity, and I love that humans are capable of using their brains for protecting species and environments. We just have to recall that we may be wrong. Other than you I don't think Earth will go back to bacteria and fungi only. Actually - and that has always been my reason for environmental protection - the only species threatened is Homo sapiens.

Estimates show that roughly 99% of all species ever have vanished. Some of them of natural causes others, well, of equally natural causes. A meteor hitting Earth, vast volcano activity, melting of ice caps, building of ice caps - all natural. What about man? It may be as inconvenient a truth as the one the documentary featuring Al Gore propounds but it is, nevertheless, a truth: Homo sapiens is part of nature. As are other members of the genus Homo, Australopithecus, Ramapithecus and several other still to be classified anew.

When neanderthals and early sapiens helped diminishing loads of species, i.e. the wooly mammoth, it was a natural act. When current sapiens killed off the dodo for good, wasn't that equally a natural act?

Setting us apart is that after WW2 we learned a lot and gained insight into ecosystems. Our philosophy changed, we now rely on ourselves and our own minds instead of others to decide what's right and wrong. We also learned that every species, every habitat lost impoverishes ourselves. This realisation is important; at the same time it is - as is so often with truth - deeply unsettling and painful.

A quarter of a century ago I was against nuclear power plants. Now I see them as an important part in our energy politics. The operative here is 'part'; I think they are necessary ATM to overcome the idiotic burning of non-renewable fossils like oil and coal. I am not so much concerned about carbon dioxide set free, I just ask myself, why the heck we are just burning up a precious resource like oil? There's so many things we can do with it, already do with it. Virtually every plastic we use is made from oil - and we just burn it up in gallons and megatons in minutes?

When I grew up children could and would go into forests, parks, to rivers etc. and see for themselves what the world around them is like. Although I have never lived in the countryside, only in big cities, I knew what my steak looked like before it landed on my plate*. I learned that from my parents and in school, in a subject called "Sachkunde" (general knowledge; a hodgepodge of biology, physics, chemistry and geography in primary school).

One of the reasons poeple don't care much anymore is the black and white stance that developed over the past 30 years. Environmentalists shocked us with The-end-is-nigh scenarios, they showed us the killing machines in slaughterhouses, they successively took everything from us as "bad for the environment". their counterparts were equally moronic, trying to persuade us that carbon dioxide is life, that God wanted us to kill off everything (and everyone) in order to make us Master of the World.

Sorry, folks, that's not how life works. For every species lost (in a local environment) we gain another (wandering in). As we now know, the dinosaurs did not vanish, some of them evolved into birds. This will happen over and over again since life and evolution is much more wondrous than many of us want to imagine.

You may now ask, what is my position towards the original question. Photographers have to show the beauty of the world and the ugliness in all their glory [ambiguity intended]. We should follow the simple and intuitive rules you, Asher, wrote up above. We should also alwayd be aware that we have an impact on other people and on the ecosystem we are taking photos off. Our observing and documenting changes the observed. This holds true in a completely different sense that Heisenberg originally intended on the macrosphere.


*Just read over the week-end that the German fast food chain Wienerwald (our homely version of KFC) retired their old logo since it showed a domestic fowl. The reason behind it: "People, particularly children, want to eat meat but not know where it comes from."

Hi Dierk,

*Just read over the week-end that the German fast food chain Wienerwald (our homely version of KFC) retired their old logo since it showed a domestic fowl. The reason behind it: "People, particularly children, want to eat meat but not know where it comes from."

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That is the fundamental problem, as always. Large, greedy, companies and folk being 'dumbed down' I feel my cage being rattled, but I will resist...

Absolutely no point in any individual going on a 'wilderness trip'. unless they walk - barefoot.

Best wishes,

Ray

When I go in the wilderness, which I do weekly literally, it is to take photographs and praise its beauty, not to drill for oil or conduct other destructive activities. In the case of sensitive or fragile areas, I keep the locations private.

I also purchase wilderness areas to protect them. So far I own 160 US acres in Arizona. I know that those won't be destroyed because I make the rules about how they are to be used. They also make great places to camp ;-)

This is a difficult one....

In the age we live, we have to creae a "worth" for our natural assets.
If they are basically worthless in the minds of the masses they are doomed.
Photographing them brings awareness.
Schooling children in their worth brings long term behaviour change.
Tourism is one way of sharing the worth with the local communities, responsible government promotes this.
The more remote, the greater the danger IMO.
I saw a terrible report from India where a park which was the landing point for a myriad of migratory birds was now dry, therefore no birds..... Why? The local farmers saw no value in it, so the dammed the river and took all the water.
Many cultures have attitudes towards natural assets that date back for millenia, when there were not so many people. It's a global effort to turn it around.
In New Zealand, many people are doing what Alan has done to save the Kiwi.
Great efforts get great rewards......
I try to photograph these places so people may remember them. The Okavango is a great example, it could be gone in 10-20 years. If we get enough interest in the place, the correct pressures on the governments will come.

The list goes on....

Bottom line, visit them, encourage others. Make them valuable enough to keep, and to look after.

Rob

Rob.Martin said:

In the age we live, we have to creae a "worth" for our natural assets.
If they are basically worthless in the minds of the masses they are doomed.
Photographing them brings awareness.
Schooling children in their worth brings long term behaviour change.
Tourism is one way of sharing the worth with the local communities, responsible government promotes this.
The more remote, the greater the danger IMO.
I saw a terrible report from India where a park which was the landing point for a myriad of migratory birds was now dry, therefore no birds..... Why? The local farmers saw no value in it, so the dammed the river and took all the water.
Many cultures have attitudes towards natural assets that date back for millenia, when there were not so many people. It's a global effort to turn it around.
In New Zealand, many people are doing what Alan has done to save the Kiwi.
Great efforts get great rewards......
I try to photograph these places so people may remember them. The Okavango is a great example, it could be gone in 10-20 years. If we get enough interest in the place, the correct pressures on the governments will come.
The list goes on....
Bottom line, visit them, encourage others. Make them valuable enough to keep, and to look after.
Rob

Click to expand...

On RG you would be banned for posting such provocative thoughts ;-) Just kidding of course.

No matter which way you look at it, you are either being selfish if you don't want others to visit/view your little corner of the wilderness, or destructive if you do invite others (perhaps by showing your beautiful photographs). The real problem is to many people with to much money. And I'm as guilty as the next guy. If I had more money I'd go to more places, which no matter how hard you try not to, you will have some impact. But my long term view is that the human race will eventually kill itself off and mother nature will re-populate the world with something. The people who think we are killing off evrything with oil drilling, building roads evrywhere are not really looking around. If you leave a paved road alone, within about 50 years it will be coverd with trees. Ghost towns only survive 100-200 years in the west where it is dry before they disapear forever. In New Guinea blobs of oil drift down streams from oil that percolates from the ground, with no apparent harm to the local flora.
But even with all that I agree with pretty much what evryone else has said, but I don't think we need to worry to much about nature, we need to worry about ourselves.
John Edwards

"I don't think we need to worry to much about nature, we need to worry about ourselves."
John Edwards

I think we are bound together.

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

"I don't think we need to worry to much about nature, we need to worry about ourselves."
John Edwards
I think we are bound together.
Asher

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Indeed. What happens in nature impacts us. Just look at natural disasters. I think we should worry about nature, and for good reasons. It's the environment in which we live!

Just to get that straight: Homo sapiens is part of Nature, we are on small species in the animal kingdom.

This is not some high-minded philosophical concept but a simple fact of life - whatever [and here comes the provocative part] hardcore religious zealots tell you.

Dierk Haasis said:

Just to get that straight: Homo sapiens is part of Nature, we are on small species in the animal kingdom.

This is not some high-minded philosophical concept but a simple fact of life - whatever [and here comes the provocative part] hardcore religious zealots tell you.

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Last year, 30% of birds that migrate from Africa didn't arrive. The earttworms in England which account for the lands fertility, are being devastated by a carnivorous worm. Amphibians and birds are in the largest extinction wave in probably 50,000 years, perhaps even 1 million years.

These events mean that something drastic is changing in our ecosystems. So ignoring all this and leaving concern to the "tree huggers" is to me at least more than foolish.

Asher

It is important to realize that our efforts are important. Personally, I purchase land parcels to protect them and for their photogenic qualities. So far I own 160 acres, four 40 acres parcel. In relationship to the planet's size it may be small. But in relationship to owning an appartment in Paris it is huge. Everything is relative. And, most impotanly, it is something I can do, right now. There are worst ways to spend your money, and many destructive to the environment. It is important to realize each of us has an effect, positive or negative, no matter how small.

Asher, to clear up a misunderstanding: I am all for ecological conservation. I do have some problems with what you call "tree huggers", mainly because I was one myself and know them quite well. For sure they are often misguided - but so is them thinking we don't have to protect the world we live in.

My comment about us being part of nature is actually an expression of exactly the concern that not doing something to protect other species and habitats which are not profitable will eventually kill us off. Neither Life not Earth and Evolution are particularly interested in any individual species - there will be something after Homo sapiens is gone.

David Doubilet (putting it in the mouth of Peter Benchley) has lucidly written it in his obit to PB in the July issue of the NGM: "We have [...] no choice, for we cannot survive without healthy seas." Let's extend that to all the other habitats.

I think that all efforts, small or large, are important. Each of us has an effect, no matter how small or large. It all starts with developing an awareness of our impact on the environment, and then taking a few steps --or even one single step-- to reduce this impact.

IMHO the wild environment is best served by redressing - where it applies - any imbalances that we have already created - and for the rest - co-exist by leaving the bloody thing alone.

A healthy and 'informed' interest in the natural environment is a fine thing but of late a great deal of it is well intentioned but hopelessly misinformed. Growing public awareness of the environment fuelled by Natural History television also has its downside.

I am minded of the orcas that very occasionally visit the estuary where I live. In the past, no-one took a blind bit of notice of them and in a week or two they went off about their business. On their last visit, after an absence of twenty years or so, they were relentlessly pursued by flotillas of boats packed with clowns with cameras and camcorders to the point where one of the disoriented orcas ended up grounded and injured. To my mind the uninformed pursuing whales in confined waters with cameras is only marginally less offensive than pursuing them with a harpoon.

I am also minded of a small and shallow trout lake a few miles from here that some local environmental bright spark decided recently should be designated as a bird sanctuary. This was done with no thought given to the balance between the population of birds, the population of fish and the physical size of the lake. The end result is a lake containing many hundreds of water birds where formerly there was a balanced few dozen. The new -and growing - population is fed by the public from the lakeside main road complete with parking facilities. Where there was once a year-round crystal clear lake there is now a green cesspit with illustrated notice boards telling me what a duck looks like.

Here's what I think is a good example of positive use of photography re eco matters.
http://www.worldviewofglobalwarming.org/

- DL

Steve-

Your pro-active approach to preserving/conserving/healing our home can only do more good than bad.

Godspeed.

Melting glaciers are a huge problem, and one of the most visual examples of global warming, whatever the cause of it might be.