Comments on Nature Photography
by Doug Spowart

Why photograph the wilderness? All people experience the world differently; visual perception and literacy varies immensely from individual to individual. Basic is the ability to 'look' but what is 'seen', comprehended or understood or is far more complex. Photographers are gifted with the ability of being able to 'look', 'see' and 'recognize' the cryptic character of small areas of space and time isolated from the total environment. In doing this they capture this essence of their subject in an image. The perceptive skills, acquired from birth, perhaps by training, or even more strangely by instinct, makes it possible for them to be interpreters of the world and their work becomes a medium through which others may 'see' the world.

The role then of photographers, through their images, is to convey in the condensed content of a picture, information through which the viewer may come to recognise and understand the inner meaning of things. Few places on earth match the natural world for a variety of visual information. Some aspects of this environment such as beauty, are commonly understood, yet many may contain visual elements that are part of man¹s unconscious psyche. Within us all is a closeness to the natural world for which we yearn, this urge has been indelibly coded in ravelled DNA for eons, but now is dulled by the trappings of a few millennia of civilisation.

Taking time in untouched wilderness, or time appreciating nature photographs that move us, reaffirms our association with the primitive experience of the past still encoded within us. For the photographer the natural world provides a puzzle in the form of an unordered collection of forms, shapes, outlines, colors and textures. All are expressed under the ever changing light of the sun and atmospheric conditions.

To produce meaningful communication through images the photographers task is to make order from disorder, simplicity from confusion and clarity from paradox. And by creatively resolving the complexities of the photographic process, create impressions of the fleeting moments of carefully chosen, cherished environments on film. At every click of the shutter the image-maker anticipates that the resulting image will portray the quintessence of the subject and its inner meaning.

To share with others these visions is the perhaps the paramount objective of the photographer; not just to show their mastery of technique and situation but to put the viewer in touch with the experience portrayed and their own roots in the antiquity of the human species.

Doug Spowart © 1993