APOGEE PHOTO MAGAZINE: ETHICS IN THE LANDSCAPE - A PHOTOGRAPHER'S CHANGING ROLE

Apogee Photo Magazine

ETHICS IN THE LANDSCAPE - A PHOTOGRAPHER'S CHANGING ROLE

by Lee Watson

Turret Arch1.jpg (20047 bytes) Open the latest copy of any outdoor magazine, and your eyes will immediately fall upon a beautiful landscape photograph. Alpenglow paints the sky with brilliant crimson, gold, and purple shades as the last rays of a setting sun set fire to the landscape below. Seductive, isn't it? Makes you want to go there on vacation? The problem of ever-increasing hordes of people descending upon our National Parks and Monuments is only the tip of the iceberg the National Park Service now faces.

Destruction is the main topic. We're loving our parks to death! Don't even try to get in Yosemite or Yellowstone during the peak season. Three or four hour waits at the entrance gates will greet you, while traffic backs up two miles down the road! Yosemite made nationwide news recently when rangers closed the park due to capacity crowds.

Ease of access, multiple-use management philosophies, and a Disney-ish approach to marketing by the Park Service have all added to the problem. Visiting a National Park has never been easier or more comfortable than it is today. Environmentalists lose battles daily as new motels, roads, and concessions are built in our parks at the expense of what the founders of the park system considered an essential wilderness experience. The "wilderness experience" today consists of driving along paved roads, air conditioner blasting, while the kids in the back seat beg to visit the nearest McDonalds. You know the one. It's advertised on the billboard just outside the park as "Moab's other Arches!" (They’ve since taken down the billboard.)

Our collective environmental conscience has been betrayed by Madison Avenue hype. Aldo Leopold said it best. "Man always kills the thing he loves, and so we pioneers have killed our wilderness." Many would like us to believe over-use is the fault of the early photographers who popularized the parks. I don't think so! Standing before Half Dome as the fog lifted to reveal the sun-bathed monolith, Ansel Adams had no idea of the legacy which was about to unfold!

Analyzing the Issues

Fiery Furnace Fins.jpg (22943 bytes) What, then, are the issues? Do we, as nature photographers, share a common responsibility to preserve the natural world? You bet we do! The problems are more subtle, however, than they first appear. Overcrowding is one issue about which we can do little. The dilemma is in the hands of the Park Service for now. Secrecy is no longer an alternative. This is the information age. However, hiking guidebooks have done more harm than all of the collective wilderness photographs taken over the past several generations.

The challenge facing us is how to help preserve what's left of our pristine wilderness environment. Sensitive natural areas and archaeological sites are of paramount importance in this fight. Little known areas that are unique in their geological or biological diversity--areas that have remained hidden from view, tucked away from the photographer's lens or hiker's bootprints--still exist. If you know of such an area, keep it to yourself. The question we must ask is, "Should we photograph this area at all?" Published photographs offer an open invitation for people to visit. A pilgrimage will take place, so others, too, can worship at this shrine. You'll hear the rationalized retort, "If I don't photograph it, someone else will!" This is true, perhaps, but it's a cop-out, none-the-less. Stay true to your heart, and don't fall into the same stylized thinking that now paralyzes the National Park Service.

When you go into an area to photograph, keep in mind that someday, with a little luck, your images may grace the pages of a national magazine. It could be your photograph that entices members of a younger generation to visit these same special places. The role of the landscapist is a seductive one, indeed. By capturing provocative, decisive moments in time, we promote a larger-than-life concept of the wilderness--moments when nature is, perhaps, the best it has ever been!

We, as nature photographers, choose in which direction to point our cameras. We can portray a beautiful flower-filled meadow, or turn around and capture the bulldozer gearing up to plunder. The choice is ours--pretty picture, or harsh reality? Normally, pretty pictures win hands-down over shots of new developments going up within, or just outside, park borders. Beautiful landscapes triumph every time over photos of coyote massacres from helicopters, new road enhancements, or wilderness cherry-stemming for the sake of oil and gas development. Documentary, photo-journalistic images such as these are difficult to sell and even more difficult to accept as reality. What they provide is hard core evidence of the continual, rampant destruction of our natural world.

Photographs have the ability to change the collective environmental paradigms of our society and our political process. Had Eliot Porter started three years earlier, "The Place No One Knew," or Glen Canyon on the Colorado, might not be known as Lake Powell now. Wilderness photography has a profound impact on the way we view our planet. We have a moral and social obligation to use this power wisely, perhaps by acting as guardians and orators for the landscape that, unfortunately, stands as a deaf mute, unable to protest or pass verbal judgement.

By each of us making a small contribution--giving back to the land a modicum of the solace it has given us--our collective efforts can have a profound effect on the way society views abstract concepts such as "multiple-use management philosophy" and "wildlife management." Our recognition of this role is the first step we can take to assure that wilderness will exist for future generations to enjoy. The late Wallace Stegner recognized this need in his famous "Wilderness Letter," written in 1960 and directed to an audience that appears now, as it did then, to stand deaf to his cries. "We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope."

Establishing Guidelines for Ethical Behavior

In October of 1993, a forum of renowned nature photographers gathered at the Roger Tory Petersen Institute in Jamestown, New York, to discuss many of the issues presented above. This was the first time such a group had assembled to share their views on what has become a national issue. Although each participant presented his or her own personal interpretation, the consensus pointed towards a need for a set of ethical standards to guide photographers engaged in capturing our natural world on film. In order to have personal meaning, these standards must be developed on an individual basis, with each photographer setting his or her own boundaries within the limits established as environmentally sound, prudent behavior.

I had the opportunity of discussing many of these concepts on the phone with Helen Longest-Slaughter, Photo Editor of Nature Photographer magazine, shortly after the forum. Helen said her slide presentation was important for the slides that were not shown; the visual absence of those special moments when she chose not to photograph a scene in order to avoid disrupting or overly stressing wildlife. It's important to remember why you're out there in the first place. Chances are, your love of nature and the outdoors preceded your interest in photography. In all of our photographic pursuits, this same passion should provide a personal mentor, an environmental conscience, to rule our conduct while we're in the field. _____________

"Lee Watson is a professional nature photographer, writer and wilderness activist who spends much of his time hiking and photographing the red rock country of the Colorado Plateau. Lee's writing and photography have appeared in calendars, textbooks, commercial advertising, editorial columns, and magazines including: Outdoor Photographer, Outdoor & Travel Photography, Nature Photographer, Earthtreks Digest, Unity, Woman's World, and Frontier Airlines' Spirit of the West. For advanced photographers, Lee leads personalized, custom workshops to areas of their interest. For the aspiring nature photographer, Lee offers "Portfolio Reviews" and a "Workshops Over The Mail" series. For further information on any of these programs, contact Lee at (303) 730-0744 or email: leewatson@sprynet.com"

Technical detail for the photos follows:

Turret Arch thru the North Window: Nikkor 24mm lens @ f22, exposure unrecorded, metered off the direct sunlit rocks.

Fiery Furnace Fins, Arches NP - Nikkor 20mm lens @ f16, exposure unrecorded. Metered from the medium blue storm sky, then confirmed exposure range by metering off the direct sunlit rock fins.