When it was time for Lucrecia Di Bussolo move out of Midland, she left a token of her appreciation to the city behind.
The photographer and Argentina native moved back to her home country in December after living in Midland for six years.
Recently, Bussolo published a Midland-themed photo book, “Pictures of Midland, Michigan” full of images of the scenery she found around the city.
Bussolo developed a love of photography as a child. She was gifted her mom’s SLR camera after high school.
When attending school for architecture, she took a black and white photography course that built the foundations of her skills. She loved photography, taking her camera equipment everywhere with her during her travels. However, Bussolo chose to focus on developing her architecture career and put aside her passion for photography.
Bussolo is from Buenos Aires, the metropolitan capital of Argentina, which does not provide a lot of opportunities for nature or four-season photography.
This was something she grew to appreciate when living in Midland.
She moved to Midland with her husband and two daughters about six years ago when he got a promotion at Dow. When she was unable to find a job as an architect in Midland, Bussolo began taking care of the children at home and found herself with a lot of free time. With this free time, she reconnected with her passion of photography and was astonished by the nature in the city.
“In the beginning, I just wanted to be with myself to find peace and details in nature,” Bussolo said. “Finding beauty in just a leaf of a tree can be an amazing photo.”
She focused on taking photos of nature scenes around Midland, moments of people in public spaces and even tried astrophotography as well. Looking through pages of the book can find shot from Dow Gardens, the Tridge, and local wildlife.
When Bussolo’s husband switched job positions with Dow, the family started the process of moving. As she was preparing to move from the city, she put together a small photo book about Midland to give to the friends she made here. After thinking the book over, she thought to share it with the rest of Midland.
After fleshing it out, Bussolo released the book in late January. She said it could make a good souvenir for those coming through Midland.
“I was just enjoying photography and the real reason for this was to leave my footprint in Midland,” Bussolo said. “I wanted to share my experience of photos in Midland with my friends and the community.”
Her book can be purchased at the Barnes and Noble in the Midland Mall, on Amazon and on the publisher’s website. Her photography can be viewed on her Instagram page, lucedala.
Digital art has existed for several decades, but it has only recently become accessible to the general population of artists. Because more and more digital artworks are being created in today’s landscape, some art enthusiasts wonder whether one art form has more value than the other. To reach a fair conclusion, we need to examine both art types.
What Is Traditional Art?
Traditional art refers to a form of expression that uses physical, non-digital mediums to produce the product displayed. For example, a piece of traditional art might be one in which an image is painted on canvas with acrylic paint or formed from a lump of clay. This type of art has existed for centuries, if not millennia (if you count cave drawings as art), and as of today, there are seven traditional forms of art:
1. Sculptures 2. Paintings 3. Literature 4. Music 5. Theater 6. Cinema 7. Architecture
Each art form includes an array of styles, a body of famous artists, and examples of the finest pieces displayed in galleries, museums, archives, libraries, and even in live performances.
A rush of clear water races down from the forbidden peaks of a range of misty mountains. Along the rocky banks, flashes of gold announce the arrival of autumn to the high places. Fine Art Limited Edition of 50.
What Is Digital Art?
Unlike traditional art, digital art makes use of electronic devices and computer codes. Digital artists might use specialty tablets to create their works whereas traditional artists use pencils, canvas, or written words.
Like traditional art, there are several forms of digital art that creators use to display emotions, ideas, and commentary on current events. These forms include:
1. Animation 2. Digital Paintings/Drawings 3. Video/Cinema Content 4. Digital Photography
You may notice some overlap between the forms of traditional art and digital art, such as animation and cinema. At one time, animated films were created using traditional mediums, where animators painstakingly drew pictures displaying a series of character movements on paper. Videography and cinematography as well can record subjects on classic cameras or digital recording devices.
Additionally, many novelists, poets, and literary professionals make use of computers to organize story notes, outline a series of events, draft their manuscripts, and edit their pieces before submitting them for professional review.
Yet, these works of art are still categorized under the umbrella of traditional art. Despite the ways technology has evolved to bring the creation of art to new levels, some technological implementations have been unfairly viewed as a “lesser” form of art while other implementations are welcomed with open arms as an essential tool of the trade.
So, what’s the difference between digital art and traditional art? Let’s explore.
Waves pulverize the living rock in Garrapata State Park, along California’s central coast. The ruddy hues of ice plant beds create an illusion of imaginary fall as evening falls across the far West. Fine Art Limited Edition of 50.
Key Differences Between Traditional and Digital Art
As mentioned above, there are several similarities and overlaps that exist between digital and traditional art, both as a process and in terms of the end results created. This is expected being that one art form came before the other; one art form influenced the development of the other. However, there are a few important distinctions between the two art forms as well.
Creation
When creating traditional art using physical tools, viewers are often able to see the artist’s movements within the piece. For example, certain brushstrokes can hint at a shaky hand and particularly deep lines might indicate strong emotion during that part of the creative process.
Digital work, on the other hand, usually appears more fluid and uniform because the artist is using an electronic device to draw or paint with. This form may be more forgiving to artists who live with disabilities or chronic conditions that would otherwise interfere with the creative process.
Creating a piece of traditional art, in some forms, can be ruined or significantly altered if the artist makes a mistake. A simple unnecessary brush stroke or splash of paint is incredibly difficult to clean from a canvas, but on a screen, digital artists can simply undo mistakes by returning to their previous save point.
A wildfire sunset climbs up the forgotten walkways of the emerald temple of Kirkjufellsfoss in Iceland. Shrouds of whitewater trickle past jeweled gardens of moss on their way to the frigid plain of the open ocean. Fine Art Limited Edition of 50.
Sale & Delivery
Selling and delivering pieces from each art type differs significantly as well. When a traditional artist finishes a commissioned piece, he or she needs to package the item and send it to a physical location. Delivery takes time in this situation and during transit, any number of things can happen to the piece (damage, loss, etc.). Delivering a digital piece is as easy as attaching a file to an email and having it reach its destination within minutes.
Reproduction
A beautiful piece of artwork can be in very high demand. Art enthusiasts all over the world want a chance to display unique pieces in their homes, offices, or collections. Unfortunately, this isn’t always possible when some works of art are exceedingly rare. Some pieces are only ever created once, while others only have a few official copies in circulation.
Of course, creating prints of famous works of art can make pieces more accessible for display purposes, but the value isn’t always the same. Additionally, individuals who want to purchase original works or authentic copies need to be wary of forgeries and frauds in the art community.
When it comes to the reproduction of digital art, mass production is much easier. The artist decides how many copies they choose to make available, but it’s not as difficult for unauthorized parties to create and sell copies of a copy they purchased.
That said, the ability to reproduce a piece doesn’t necessarily mean that the work is any more or less valuable than a more exclusive piece.
The desert sun shines down through an iridescent portal in one of Antelope Canyon’s famous slot canyons. Over the eons, the solid rock has begun to take on the shape of the wild rivers which have carved their way through it. Fine Art Limited Edition of 50.
Traditional Vs Digital | Is One Better Than The Other?
It would be irresponsible to make sweeping generalizations about one form of art being inherently “better” than another. Both traditional art and digital art require skill and artistic thought. Asking whether one type is better than another is like asking whether literature is better than cinema. The completely arbitrary confines of “better” and “worse” is no way to look at art.
Being emotionally moved by a piece of art shouldn’t be dependent upon the type of art or the form it takes. When the message reaches you and makes you feel something significant, the art has done what it set out to do. Does it really matter which steps the artist took or which tools the artist used to produce the piece that reached you?
A book written by hand is no better than a book written on a typewriter, and a book written on a typewriter is no better than a book written on a computer if we’re only looking at the method of creation. The substance, the idea, and the result are what’s important.
Towering Aspen and Silver Birch trees intertwine to create a wall of autumn splendor on Last Dollar Road between Telluride and Ridgway in Colorado. Fine Art Limited Edition of 50.
Samsung has teamed up with Adobe to exclusively use its Lightroom software to handle RAW images on Galaxy S23 phones. This partnership makes the new Galaxy flagships the ideal tool for advanced smartphone photography enthusiasts and pros.
Most of us usually capture photos in JPEG format on our smartphones. They work fine for preserving our memories, and social media uploads. But professionals like RAW photos better. These image files are stored in the Digital Negative (DNG) format invented by Adobe back in 2006. They offer better quality and give more flexibility when editing. You get better control over parameters like exposure, color balance, sharpness, and more.
But smartphones capture JPEG photos by default because RAW files are a pain to handle. Most photo viewers and editing apps aren’t comfortable with RAW files, including Google Photos. To ease these difficulties, Samsung is integrating Adobe’s Lightroom into the Galaxy S23 series. Adobe photography marketing chief Stephen Baloglu told CNET that Galaxy S23 users will be able to open RAW photos directly in Lightroom after capturing through the Expert RAW app.
Samsung isn’t shipping the phones pre-installed with the Lightroom software, though. But users will be prompted to install it when they use Expert RAW. Lightroom will then be the default RAW photo editor. As the new report notes, the phone version of Lightroom is available for free. However, a $10 per month Premium subscription unlocks plenty of additional features, including laptop sync. The Galaxy S23 trio will offer two months of free Premium trial.
Galaxy S23 phones take smartphone photography to a new level
Smartphone cameras have come a long way over the years. Industry experts say smartphones will soon replace traditional cameras as there’s hardly a gap in image quality now. But the slim and compact nature of smartphones doesn’t give much space for larger image sensors. As such, they use computational photography techniques — merging multiple frames into one photo — for better image quality and dynamic range. Capturing RAW photos is a way for professionals to replace their traditional cameras with smartphones.
Samsung already allows Galaxy users to capture RAW photos with its Expert RAW app, which is available for most of its recent flagship models. By adding Adobe’s Lightroom software into the mix on the Galaxy S23 series, the company is now taking smartphone photography to a new level. Baloglu said Lightroom will enable users to correct optical problems like distortion with specific lenses. Adobe and Samsung have worked together to bring lens corrections for all cameras on the Galaxy S23 series, including the front camera.
“We’re excited to see the continuous innovation from Samsung to deliver impressive photography experiences,” Baloglu said about the photography prowess of Galaxy S23 phones. Stay tuned for our reviews of the new Samsung flagships.
The post Galaxy S23 phones use Lightroom as default RAW photo editor appeared first on Android Headlines.
SINGAPORE: The news that Member of Parliament (MP) Tin Pei Ling has joined tech giant Grab in a full-time role as director of public affairs and policy at Grab Singapore has been widely reported in the local and international media, and lit up the Internet.
In Singapore, many MPs have other full-time or part-time roles.
Prior to joining Grab, Ms Tin was CEO of Business China, a non-profit organisation that had the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew as its founding patron, with five current ministers as advisers, and a board of directors that includes several senior ministers of state and civil servants.
Before joining Business China in May 2018, the People’s Action Party MP – who was first elected to Parliament in 2011 – was group director of corporate strategy at Singapore firm Jing King Tech Group.
There was no online or media frenzy on those occasions.
However, this time the reaction has been vastly different. In her LinkedIn and Facebook posts responding to concerns of conflict of interest, she said:
“The company has established clear rules of engagement to ensure that any possible conflict of interest will be properly declared and avoided. Likewise, the People’s Action Party has a published set of Rules of Prudence, as well as mechanisms in place for declarations of interest and the avoidance of conflicting interests.”
She added: “I am absolutely clear that when I am discharging my duties as an MP, my constituents and Singapore come first. When I am working on behalf of Grab, I will have to ensure that Grab’s interests are safeguarded.”
Gilbert, Arizona is home to several historic structures and is a center stage for art with multiple live theaters, galleries, and exhibitions in the city. Gilbert’s Heritage District has century-old buildings, and The Gilbert Rotary Centennial Observatory provides an opportunity to view the moon, Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and the rings of Saturn through telescopes. One of the must-visit sites in the city is the Riparian Preserve which has a man-made lake that attracts several species of migratory birds. Also, for kid-friendly adventures, the Freestone Park is a perfect spot that offers a miniature train, a skate park, a carousel, a mini Ferris wheel, and waterless wave runners. The city is one of the best destinations for camping trips and self-guided outdoor adventures.
In Gilbert you will find some beautiful attractions that you just cannot miss! Places like Cathedral Rock Trail, Vertuccio Farms, and Gilbert Arizona Temple and many more. Continue reading to know more.
Cathedral Rock Trail, located in Arizona, is perfect for those who love the great outdoors and admire the beauty of nature. Visitors will love the Cathedral Rock Trail as it is 6.1 miles long where they can hike and stroll around while taking in the beautiful and stunning sights of nature.
Vertuccio Farms, located in Arizona, is a must-visit destination as it offers a unique and fun farm experience for the family.Throughout the year, the farm hosts various exciting events with different themes. One of which is that during Halloween, the farm is famous for its pumpkin patches where visitors could carve their pumpkins.
The design of this religious structure blows the mind and uplifts the soul with its beauty and spiritual aura. The spire design features a gold leaf and is crowned by the Angel Moroni statue. The building also features art glass windows and artistically-crafted bronze doors. Overall, this spiritual place unifies into one architectural mold both urban and old-school designs.
Arizona Railway Museum, located in Arizona, is the best place to know more about the railway history of the country. Visitors who would love to see trains should definitely check out the museum as it features restored trains from various eras. Additionally, the museum resembles an early railroad depot which makes it feel as if visitors are transported back in time where the railway industry started booming.
Freestone Park, located in Arizona, is one of the best places to pass time. It offers wonderful views of nature as well as places for playing basketball and other sports. The park also has a lake where visitors could relax and take in the beauty of nature. Also, kids and kids at heart will surely not get bored as the park also has some mini rides waiting for them such as the Ferris wheel.
Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch is a great preserve that combines water resources, wildlife habitat, recreational opportunities, and educational programs. This is a great place for bird watching and a house of insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals. This preserve has an urban fishing lake with shallow ponds.
Veterans Oasis Park-Environmental Education Center, located in Arizona, is the perfect place for those seeking exciting activities to do. The center is dedicated to providing recreation and leisure activities. Visitors would surely love fishing on its lake, going on horseback riding, enjoying the hiking trails. Truly there is a lot to do at this center which also offers beautiful views of nature.
Gilbert Historical Museum, located in Arizona, provides a fun and educational experience where visitors could learn more about Gilbert’s rich history. The museum houses several informative and engaging exhibits which ensures that guests would certainly not have a dull time.
The Wurlitzer theatre organ was built for the Denver Theater in 1927. The pipe organ can be found at Organ Stop Pizza in Mesa, Arizona. This store was owned by the pizza chain. The Organ Stop accommodates over 700 people, making it more a theater than a restaurant. A great destination for families where both good food and nice music can be enjoyed. This place offers the most affordable pizzas in town.
JPs Comedy Club, located in Arizona, is one of a kind attraction as it offers a haven for its visitors. It showcases a variety of Arizona comedians and even national famous entertainers. Visitors would surely have a great time laughing and just having fun as the comedians are really funny.
St. Anne’s Roman Catholic Church is located in Gilbert, Arizona. It is a multicultural community of disciples who are committed to stewardship through prayer, respect, and service. The interiors of the church are marvelous with a beautiful sanctuary.
This year marks 50 years since Susan Sontag’s essay Photography was published in the New York Review of Books. Slightly edited and renamed In Plato’s Cave, it would become the first essay in her collection On Photography, which has never been out of print.
The breadth of Photography is immense. It ranges over artistic, commercial, photojournalistic, and popular uses of photography; and it discusses the photograph’s role in both sensitising and desensitising us to other people’s suffering – a theme Sontag reconsidered 30 years later in her final book, Regarding the Pain of Others.
But perhaps nowhere is Sontag’s enduring relevance as a critic clearer than in the essay’s analysis of photography as both a symptom and a source of our pathological relationship to reality.
Sontag described photography as “a defense against anxiety”. She saw that it had become a coping mechanism. Confronted with the chaotic surfeit of sensation, we retreat behind the protection of the camera, whose one-eyed, one-sensed perspective makes the world seem maniable.
Sontag claimed that we photograph most when we feel most insecure, particularly when we are in an unfamiliar place where we don’t know how to react or what is expected of us. Taking a photograph becomes a way of attenuating the otherness of a place, holding it at a distance.
Tourists use their cameras as shields between themselves and whatever they encounter. According to Sontag, photography gives the tourist’s experience a definite structure: “stop, take a photograph, and move on.”
Having taken a photograph, we think of its subject as our captive: it’s there now, on the film, in the camera’s memory. This can make us inept observers. There is no need to experience something now, as we can always review it later. So we grab and run.
Even if we compose carefully, if we “make” rather than “take” a photograph, we are likely to feel the release of the shutter as the release of a bond, as if we now can (or must) move on – to other photographs.
I was there
Photography is a way of testifying I saw this, I was there.
Kodak’s marketing through the early 20th century testifies to this urge. “Take a Kodak with you” was one of the company’s earliest slogans. By 1903, they were announcing that “a vacation without a Kodak is a vacation wasted”.
Sontag wrote:
A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it – by converting experience into an image, a souvenir. Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs.
Duke University Library/Public Domain
Through photography, Sontag argued, we sooner or later become tourists in our own reality. Sontag thought this happened mainly to the photojournalist, the person on constant lookout for their next subject. But it is true of most of us today. We have become discontents on the perpetual lookout for content. Photographic promiscuity is now one of our mores. It’s what we do: we shoot everything, not least ourselves.
In the revised version of the essay, Sontag says that “taking photographs has set up a chronic voyeuristic relation to the world.” Her claim is that photography has reframed the way we see the world and our place in it.
What we see is mediated by technology. When we look through the eye of the camera, everything is revealed as a possible photograph. This has an atomising effect: people and experiences appear discrete, the sort of thing suitable for collection in the miscellany of memory.
One way of approaching Sontag’s deeper point here is through her discussion of this Leica advertisement:
The people in the advertisement evince fear and shock, but the man behind his viewfinder is self-possessed. The promise is that the camera will make you the master of all situations. The Soviets crushing the Prague Spring, the Woodstock festival, the war in Vietnam, the winter games in Sapporo, the Troubles in Northern Ireland – all of these are “equalized by the camera”. They are reduced to the status of the “Event”: something that is “worth seeing – and therefore worth photographing.”
Read more:
Richard Avedon, Truman Capote and the brutality of photography
An accessible world
Sontag was critical of a reduction that takes place in the lives of the viewing public (itself an extraordinarily telling phrase). She wrote that photographs have the effect of “making us feel that the world is more available than it really is”.
We see photographs of people and events that are remote in space and time. This may seem to bring them closer, but the sense in which they are made available is a highly mitigated one. Elsewhere in On Photography, Sontag speaks of a “proximity which creates all the more distance”. She argues that “it is not reality that photographs make immediately accessible, but images”.
Flicking through a photo magazine, we encounter a disorienting welter of subjects: the horrific, the erotic, the mundane. Everything jostles for our attention as tokens of one all-engrossing category: “the interesting”. This confusion is the ordinary condition of today’s compulsive screen-stroker.
Drawing of Søren Kierkegaard (c.1845). Frederiksborg Museum
Sontag’s complaint about the “levelling” effect of media is nothing new. It goes back at least to the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in the 1840s. At that time, new telegraph networks and faster printing presses meant that each morning more eyes were focussed on news about elsewhere. Kierkegaard thought that as we become more curious about distant events, our lives lose intensity. We cease to see ourselves as concrete individuals and become members of that abstraction “the public”, whose solitary duty is to be informed, to be conversant with the topics of the day.
Like Kierkegaard, Sontag’s purpose was, broadly speaking, ethical. She was concerned with our sense of ourselves and our place in the world. She thought that photographs were displacing us. What is furthest in space and time now reaches us as quickly as what is closest. It is not that the far has drawn nearer, but that everything is held at an equal distance. Our sense of situatedness has been upset. We are simultaneously everywhere and nowhere – an all-seeing, incorporeal eye. Our sense of orientation, our sense of what is relevant to us, has diminished.
This may give a false impression of Sontag’s argument. Her political commitment is beyond question (just read about her 1968 visit to North Vietnam, or her 1993 staging of Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo). She was certainly not trying to justify inattention or insularity.
Sontag’s objection is primarily to the way we are transformed into, as she writes elsewhere, “customers or tourists of reality”. Our responsibility becomes perpetual consumption of what is served up by the media. We relate to the world beyond the media as if it were media, as if it were content.
Sontag’s criticism of “mediation” is, in part, about a loss of intensity. But more to the point, it is about (to use one of her key terms) a loss of complexity.
Susan Sontag at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2003. Michael Probst/AP
Reality?
Contact demands more than an image hitting the eye. It requires immersion, it requires physicality, it requires understanding. Sontag envisages a responsibility beyond that of the so-called “concerned spectator”, whose attention she describes elsewhere as “proximity without risk”.
In a late interview, Sontag said that she was for “complexity and the respect for reality.” But what exactly does she mean by reality? Photography begins:
We linger unregenerately in Plato’s cave, still reveling, our age-old habit, in mere image of the truth.
For Plato, reality is a world of abstract ideas hidden behind sensory experience. His cave-dwellers are prisoners forced to watch flickering, evanescent images cast on the wall. Knowledge alone can loosen our bonds, allow us to discover the source of the illusion that we mistake for reality.
Sontag’s cave is a different proposition. It is the cave of the Cyclops and the Gorgon, where all that moves becomes ossified before that one enframing eye. What Sontag sought were not the truths of static facts, but those of lived experience. In the worn existentialist jargon, she was after authenticity in the relationship of the individual to themselves and to their society. She was also after presence, an immersion in the moment, so long as we do not assume this means the non-discursive presence advocated by her contemporaries in slogans such as “Be Here Now”.
Sontag was interested above all in enriching the sorts of stories which we tell ourselves and others. She was interested in “consciousness”, not in the narrow sense of the mind as opposed to body, but in the novelist’s sense of the narratives of embodied subjects. Understanding, for Sontag, is not a matter of taking things at face value, but a matter of interpretation. “Only that which narrates can make us understand,” she writes.
Sontag has a strong sense of the the interpenetration of mind and world. Her conception of consciousness is not Platonic but Proustian. How we look at things profoundly influences what we see. We are not extricable from what happens to us. Our present is pregnant with our past. The world is not a composite of objects out there, which can be put in our pockets. Our experiences are not objects in here, which can be filed away in the mind’s albums.
The psychological distance required to record an experience does not leave that experience unchanged. Not only that, but those recordings can come to dominate and displace our narratives, our memories.
Read more:
Friday essay: my brush with Susan Sontag and other tales from the gay ‘golden age’
Memories in flux
In the last of the On Photography essays, Sontag writes that photographs are “not so much an instrument of memory as an invention of it or a replacement”.
Our memories are in flux, our narratives are forever being rewritten. The photograph becomes iconic: as a tangible document to which we can return, it eclipses the subtle and always equivocal texture of multisensory association. That is what Aunt Léonie looked like. This is what happened on that trip to Combray.
Kodak knew this, too: humans forget, they said, but “snapshots remember”. To have a Kodak with you is to be able to capture the moment, to possess it. “They All Remembered the Kodak” – but perhaps it is all they remembered.
Our history thus begins to present itself as a set of snapshots, static events. Our memories are made readily available to us by the camera as things. But for Sontag, our memories are not possessions. Our memories possess us, haunt us.
Of course, photographs can haunt us too. In her last book, Sontag argued that we should let certain images do so. But her sense of the danger of what we might call a photographic relationship to reality is not only relevant today; it is liable to seem positively prescient.
The two decades since Sontag’s death in 2004 have seen the greatest changes in popular photographic practice since the Brownie brought photography to the masses a century earlier.
In 1973, Sontag spoke of the “omnipresence of cameras”. How does one trump a claim to ubiquity? When Sontag wrote that, only the most earnest shutterbug took their camera with them everywhere. But since her death cameras have become not only smaller but also indiscrete. The camera is no longer something one decides to pocket; it piggybacks on the presence of the smartphone.
The coupling of camera and internet has changed the nature of photography. Kodak tells us in a 2010 campaign that “the real Kodak moment happens when you share”. This marks an important shift in emphasis away from the experience one tried to capture and towards the experience of publicity.
We no longer have to wait to show others what we have seen. But more importantly, those others have changed. Not only can we show photos to more people, but the viewer no longer needs to be selected at all. Our audience has become vague: it is (that abstraction again) “the public”.
We now have a compulsion not only to record, but to share. And for what? Sontag said that everything exists to end in a photograph. Today everything exists to be scrolled past in a feed.
Smile-for-the-Camera, Finalist Invertebrate Portrait category: A young female white-legged damselfly … [+] Austria.
Photo: Rafael-Steinlesberger – CUPOTY
Celebrating the details most people overlook, the Close-up Photographer of the Year (CUPOTY) competition, devoted to macro and micro photography, has selected this year’s winners from more than 9,000 entries from 54 countries.
Close-up Photographer of the Year, founded in 2018 by photojournalists Tracy and Dan Calder, is an annual competition organized in association with Affinity Photo to encourage photographers to slow down, enjoy their craft, and make long-lasting connections with the world around them.
Canadian photographer Samantha Stephens has been awarded the title Close-up Photographer of the Year, with her striking image of a pair of salamanders being consumed by a carnivorous pitcher plant in Algonquin Provincial Park, Canada.
Nature’s Pitfall, Overall Winner
Photo: Samantha Stephens – Close-up Photographer of the Year
‘Northern Pitcher Plants normally feast on moths and flies but researchers at the Algonquin Wildlife Research Station recently discovered a surprising new item on the plant’s menu: juvenile Spotted Salamanders,’ says Stephens. “While following researchers on their daily surveys, I saw a pitcher with two salamanders floating at the surface of the pitcher’s fluid, both at the same stage of decay. I knew it was a special and fleeting moment. The next day, both salamanders had sunk to the bottom of the pitcher.”
This population of Northern Pitcher Plants in Algonquin Provincial Park is the first to be found regularly consuming a vertebrate prey. For a plant that’s accustomed to capturing tiny invertebrate, a juvenile Spotted Salamander is a hefty feast.
The overall winner photographer was awarded a $3,000 cash prize and the Close-up Photographer of the Year (CUPOTY) trophy.
MORE FROM FORBESClose-Up Photographer Of The Year: 22 Striking, Winning ImagesBy Cecilia Rodriguez
The competition also selected winners in 11 categories: Animals, Insects, Plants, Fungi, Intimate Landscape, Underwater, Butterflies & Insects, Invertebrate Portrait, Manmade, Micro (for images created using a microscope) and Young Close-up Photographer of the Year (for entrants aged 17 or under.)
“Countless times, looking at the Top 100 pictures, I have sat in astonishment at the skill and curiosity of the entrants in capturing the incredible wonder of the world,” says CUPOTY co-founder Tracy Calder.
Hemitrichia Calyculata , Winner Young category.
Photo: Nathan Benstead – Close-up Photographer of the Year 04
The 17-year-old British photographer Nathan Benstead was crowned Young Close-up Photographer of the Year with his picture of slime molds. “I was walking through my local woodland when I came across a log covered in slime mold fruiting bodies,” he recalls. “I set up my camera gear and focused on a cluster amongst the moss.”
Following is a selection of winning images from each category:
Animals
Angry-Bird, Finalist Animals
Photo: Alex Pansier – Close-up Photographer of the Year
“Last July, I was on a trip to a small island above Germany, known for its gannet colony,” Pansier said. “The wind was blowing very hard and the birds had difficulty landing on the huge cliff. A number of birds sat on their nests and watched the bystanders intently, just like this one. It seemed to be saying, “Don’t come any closer!” I took this photo from a distance and the bird’s angry appearance immediately appealed to me.”
Photo: Jason Gilbody – Close-up Photographer of the Year
Explains the photographer: “After seeing a great blue heron hunting in a field, I witnessed it strike one vole after another. I sat down along the path beside the field, and it kept inching closer and closer as it hunted until it was within 10 meters from me. Due to its close proximity, I was able to capture all of the details of its scarred and blood soaked bill, the clump of dirt at the end of the bill from striking the vole on the ground, and the details of the vole in all of its agony.”
The Footprint Friend, Winner second place, Animals castegory.
Photo: Juan Jesus Gonzalez Ahumada – Close-up Photographer of the Year
“As this pond near Monda, Spain,dried up,” Gonzalez explained, “hundreds of miniature toads, barely a centimeter in size, began to wander around seeking refuge. A pair of them found safety in the huge paw print of a mastiff that was left in the mud when it came to quench its thirst at the water’s edge.”
All Winners and Finalists of Animals category are here.
Insects
Intruder, Winner, Insects category.
Photo: Anirban Dutta – Close-up Photographer of the Year
“This is the story of termites and a clever drongo,” Dutta explains. “We all know some species of termites swar-fly in the afternoon and early evening. Like most nocturnal insects, they are drawn to light sources. One day, I saw these near a petrol pump. But the rare thing was one black drongo bird among them. Drongos are very clever in snatching prey. As the termites flew around the light, the drongo kept catching them for close to 20 minutes, until all vanished and the drongo disappeared.
Little naughty draw circle, Winner third place, Insects category.
Photo: Yuan Minghui – Close-up Photographer of the Year
‘The beetle Aplosonyx nigriceps has developed a clever tactic to be able to eat the Alocasia macrorrhiza leaves and avoid the toxic alkalis that the plant secretes,” says Minghui. “It nibbles a three-centimeter circle on the leaves to cut off the toxin transmission before feasting inside the circle free of poison.”
This beetle was photographed in Nonggang National Reserve, Guangxi Province, China.’
Aerial-assassin, Finalist, Insects category.
Photo: Rory Wills – Close-up Photographer of the Year
A small robber fly with a small beetle it has claimed as prey. “Robber flies are incredible predators,” explains Wills. ”Armed with a sharp proboscis, immobilizing venom, large compound eyes to locate prey and wings to maneuver through the air. I was amazed at this small fly’s ability to pierce right through the hard protective elytra of the beetle.
While the macro lens may make these subjects look massive, the fly was only about 10mm long. This scene highlights some of the incredible arthropod biodiversity that can be where you least expect it, such as an overgrown fence line in the suburbs of a city.”
All Insects winners and finalists are here
Plants
Next-to-my-Tree, Winner Plants category.
Photo: Sébastien Blomme – Close-up Photographer of the Year
Sébastien Blomme won the highly competitive Plants category with his photograph of a delicate Snake’s-head fritillary framed by the distant shape of a tree.
Says Blomme: “Snake’s-head fritillary is one of my favourite flowers. This one was taken in the city of Toulouse, France. It usually grows on wet meadows but can also be found in forests. In this image, I wanted to introduce some context, but keep the flower as the center of interest. I managed to get a tree in the background and decided to keep it out of focus so that its shape is only suggested.’
Clematis polish spirit, finalist Plants category.
Photo: Andy Leonard – Close-up Photographer of the Year
“This clematis flower was grown in my garden in Ellon, Scotland,” says Leonard. “It was pressed and dried in a microwave, placed on an LED light panel and lit with LED stand lights to balance the lighting.
This was my first attempt at this sort of flower photography. It took some experimentation with various types of paper sandwiching the flower in the microwave – but tissue paper surrounded by kitchen paper seemed to work well.”
Sun-Worshippers, Winner, third place, Plants category.
Photo: Henrik Spranz – CUPOTY
“Three greater pasque flowers right after sunrise in early spring near Vienna – with Sahara dust in the air,” Spranz recalls. “It’s a rare occasion and always gives an unreal light condition.”
Plants category winners and finalists here
Fungi
Ice-Encrusted-Comatricha, Winner Fungi category.
Photo: Barry Webb – CUPOTY
“In January last year, following two days of freezing fog and sub-zero temperatures, I found some mature Comatricha growing on an old fence post lying on a pile of discarded, rotting timber,” recalls Webb. “I was attracted to the way the ice had encased the slime mold, creating strange, windswept, leaf-like shapes. The tallest one was only three millimeters high, including the ice.”
Scarlet waxcap or Slime-Mould-Didymium-squamulosum-on-Holly-Leaf, Winner third place, Fungi … [+] category.
Photo: Jeremy Lintott – CUPOTY
An orange Ebernoe cricket pitch fungus at dawn with dew is lassoed by spider webs.
“Many happy hours in winter can be spent crawling around under a holly tree searching for slime molds,” Jeremy says. “This tiny slime mold, around one millimeter tall, often grows in leaf litter. This one was growing along the edge of a holly leaf in a Hertfordshire woodland.”
The challenge photographing slime molds is their tiny size.
Linnerhei-Fly, Finalist Fungi category.
Photo: Erik Nevels – CUPOTY
“Last autumn, I went to one of my local spots called the Linnerheide, where I knew there were amethyst deceiver mushrooms,” says Nevels. “I wanted to photograph them in the backlight of the setting sun against the trees on the edge of the forest. In addition, I wanted to apply a special technique where you place the lens right in front of a small mushroom so that it is reflected in the light in the background. In the photo, you can see this reflection on the left while the two mushrooms on the right are about 10 centimeters from the lens, which I initially focused on.
I was just about to make the photo when a fly landed on the mushroom. This was an opportunity. Still kneeling on the forest floor, with the camera on the ground, I quickly shifted my focus point to the fly, focused and pressed the shutter button. Fortunately, the fly stayed in place so I could take multiple photos”
The winners and finalists of the Fungi category here.
Underwater
Little Predator, Winner Underwater category.
Photo: Viktor Lyagushkin – CUPOTY
A tiny jellyfish that appears to walk on its “hands” by Viktor Lyagushkin is the Underwater winner.
“This is a Lucernaria quadricornis (Stauromedusae), a stalked jellyfish, photographed beneath the ice of the White Sea in Russia – the only freezing sea in Europe,” says Lyagushkin. “The green colour of the water is a sign of spring as algae grows.
The “leg” of the jellyfish helps it to attach to a stone or seaweed. Its tentacles project up or down, waiting for prey. If its hunt is successful, it catches the prey and collapses its tentacles into a fist. If the hunting site is no good, Lucernaria walks away on its “leg” or sometimes its ‘hands’.”
Beauty-and-the-Beast, Winner second place, Underwater category.
Photo: Kate Jonker – CUPOTY
“As I was shallowing up after a 25-meter dive at Steenbras Deep in the center of False Bay, South Africa, I came across a small patch of Mediterranean mussels,” says Jonker. “This invasive species, brought to the waters off Cape Town in the bilge of passing ships in the 1980s, is replacing the colourful marine life on shallower sections of some reefs with dark patches.
Whilst I was investigating the impact these mussels were having on this particular section of reef, I found a beautiful Bluespotted klipfish perched amongst the mussel shells. He peered up at me cautiously, watching my attempts to battle the surge whilst photographing him with a shallow depth of field. My aim was to capture his beauty whilst softening the sharp edges of the mussels.”
A spider that mimics bird poo by Jamie Hall won the Invertebrate Portrait category.
“This Triangular Spider species is an ambush predator, not a web-based hunter like most,” Hall explains. “To hunt its prey, it sits compact and curled up on a leaf, mimicking bird poo or other bio-debris.
Balanced abdomen-side down, eyes up, it looks to the sky and watches for an unsuspecting fly or other insect to wander onto the leaf. The abdomen on this species has some very pronounced and interesting markings, which reminded me of the Mayan carvings on rocks and stone. This individual was photographed in a conservation park in Brisbane, Australia.”
‘This image is a 12-shot handheld stack of a male Polyphemus moth,” says Salb. “I photographed it in the fall after it emerged from a cocoon.
Several hours after emerging, I placed a piece of broken bark in front of him and he slowly worked his way on to it and posed in the manner seen in the image. He flew away in the hopes of finding a mate.”
Wim Vooijs cleverly reduced a damselfly to a series of shimmering light circles to win the Butterflies & Dragonflies category.
“I found this dew-covered male Banded Demoiselle on a reed stem among the streams near my hometown, Ede, in the Netherlands,” says Voojis. “Banded Demoiselles are easy to approach as they rest and dry in the early morning. I tried to find an angle that would produce bokeh bubbles in the warm light, creating the atmosphere that I desired in the picture.
I like to emphasize the beauty of these insects by showing their strength and vulnerability — maybe this is due to my background as a portrait photographer.”
Atlas+Moth, Winner Second place, Butterflies & Dragonflies category.
Photo: Hegde Uday – CUPOTY
‘This beautiful Atlas moth was found during my daily walk in our areca nut plantation in Sirsi, India,” says Uday.
“As our plantation is surrounded by evergreen forestm a lot of frogs, snakes, insects and butterflies take shelter there. These huge moths often have a wingspan that extends beyond nine inches. I wanted to show the moth in its habitat, so I decided to shoot this picture with a wide-angle macro lens.”
Common Winter Damsel, Winner Third place, Butterflies & Dragonflies category.
Photo: Kai Rosler – CUPOTY
‘This picture was taken in July, in a small nature reserve close to the town of Fribourg, Switzerland. The damselfly was sitting on a blade of grass, but flew away when I slowly approached, eventually placing itself on the tip of these grass spikelets.
I managed to take some shots, trying to align my camera with the body of the damselfly. The constant moving of the grass caused by the wind and the insect’s movements made things tricky, but after a few seconds, I had my shot.”
All Butterflies and Dragonflies winners here.
Manmade
Oil-&-Water, Winner Manmade category.
Photo: Matt Vacca – CUPOTY
Matt Vacca captured the moment two blobs of oil separated to create a human-like portrait, winning this category.
‘This picture was captured as two drops of oil were merging,” he recalls. “I’m intrigued by polarity and experimenting with oil and water has become a rich source of abstract expression. The symbiotic relationship that evolves from naturally opposing elements has become metaphoric for me as I watch and continue to be fascinated by the dance that plays out through a macro lens.”
Sunflower-Dreams, Finalist, Manmade category.
Photo: Don Komarechka – CUPOTY
This image shows a dandelion seed refracting the image of a sunflower through water drops.
All Manmade category’s shortlisted photos are here.
Intimate Landscape
Frequency, Winner Intimate Landscape category
Photo: Mike Curry – CUPOTY
After two hours, Mike Curry finally got a picture of a building reflected in the water at Canary Wharf that satisfied his high standards, gaining him first place in the Intimate Landscape category.
“‘This is a reflection of a building at Canary Wharf in London taken in November,” he says. “The water was moving in a very fluid way. I was struggling to get it to focus on the water’s surface, but after about two hours of failed attempts it suddenly worked, and the results were amazing.”
Sea-in-Fan, Winner Third place, Intimate Landscape category.
Photo: Angelo Richardson – CUPOTY
“This sea fan had washed up on the rugged and wild northeast coast of Aruba,” says Richardson. “I dipped the sea fan in the sea water and photographed the rugged coast and the sea through it. The photo was taken on April 28, 2022.
Intimate Landscape winners and finalists are here.
Micro Photography
Batrachospermum Red Algae , Winner Micro Category.
Photo: Marek Miś – CUPOTY
‘I took a sample of Batrachospermum (a kind of red algae) from a small river in Wigry National Park, Poland,” says Miś. “Although it has natural beauty, it doesn’t look great using bright-field illumination. However, by combining polarized light and darkfield techniques, I managed to get a colorful and interesting picture.”
Schistidium Capsule, Winner Third place Micro category.
Photo: Harald Cederlund – CUPOTY
Says Cederlund: “I am fascinated by the Schistidium mosses. The intricate capsules look like tiny flowers when viewed up close.
With the peristome teeth extended, the capsule is only about 1 millimeter wide, yet from afar the mosses often give a drab blackish impression. They thrive on exposed surfaces such as rocks on the shoreline or forest edges and persist unnoticed on concrete slabs in city locations. I picked this one up from a concrete foundation close to where I live in Ulleråker, Sweden, and shot it in my living room.
All Winners and Finalists of Micro category are here.
Young photographers
Doner-and-pizza, Winner Third place, Young category
Photo: Anton Trexler – CUPOTY
‘In Berlin, there is a lot of urban wildlife, such as this population of starlings living at Alexanderplatz,” says Trexler. “When trying some creative photography with a photographer friend, we noticed the birds eating the leftovers from humans.
I positioned my wide-angle lens on the table and triggered the camera wireless when the starlings came close to it. With this picture I want to show the coexistence between human and nature and how interesting and diverse this relationship can be.”
Feather-Care, Finalist Young category.
Photo: Luca Lorenz – CUPOIY
‘Ever since I started photographing wildlife, kingfishers have been one of my favorite birds and I always look out for them,” says Lorenz.
I watched this kingfisher for many days, to know exactly where it would land and catch fish from. Once I knew its favorite fishing spot, I set my camouflage tent up in shallow water. My legs were wet as I waited. After many mornings at the lake, I finally got lucky and the kingfisher started cleaning its feathers and stretching out its wings right in front of me while the light and conditions were good.”
Readers will be well aware that I have not been shy in highlighting that the development of the UK Government’s ‘flagship’ Environmental Land Management schemes — designed to replace payments to farmers previously linked to our membership of the EU — have lacked ambition, transparency and urgency. — Writes Erin McDaid, Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust
Last week, Defra finally set out much-needed details about what activities farmers will get paid for in 2023.
New support encouraging farmers to improve hedgerow management are a step in the right direction cpt 2020VISION (62192461)
This included bringing forward new payments to incentivise farmers to reduce the use of damaging pesticides and be more efficient with fertiliser use.
Farmers improving the management of hedgerows and providing habitat for birds and pollinators will also be rewarded.
The latest announcement represents a more rounded programme of rewards for farmers who choose to take action for nature.
This is hugely welcome, and we very much hope it will encourage increased numbers of farmers to take up ELM schemes this year.
New payments will encourage farmers to provide habitat for pollinators. Photo: Al Greer
News of a further round of investment in the Landscape Recovery scheme, which was heavily oversubscribed in its first round, is also pleasing.
This has real potential to unlock enormous benefits for nature as well as for rural communities.
Getting the approach to these schemes right will be critical to tackling the climate and ecological crises, which must be addressed to ensure long-term food security.
While we are always happy to give credit where credit is due, the announcement was not all good news. As the saying goes, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating, but the fundamental ‘nuts and bolts’ of a positive delivery mechanism do now seem to be in place.
For farm payments to make a real contribution to restoring nature we need a step change on the level of ambition and investment in the years to come. Photo: Andy Jamieson
However, several of Defra’s decisions could undermine the schemes’ effectiveness when it comes to restoring nature and improving our environment.
The introduction of the management payment for the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), for example, could see more than £60m paid out in administration payments.
Defra has also failed to put in place any safeguards to ensure management payments of up to £1,000 a year are only paid where substantive environmental actions will be delivered.
As things stand, the payment will apply to applications where one or two simple actions are included.This could considerably reduce the budget available for rewarding those farmers who commit to much more ambitious actions.
How Defra will build on the new offer is also unclear.
A yellow hammer. Photo John Smith (62192465)
While the SFI supports farmers choosing to take action for nature, we have reservations about the ‘free-choice’ approach planned.
Experience suggests that this approach comes with an inherent risk of poor outcomes.
We are therefore urging Defra to layout a clear route for encouraging and rewarding farmers to go further — delivering win-wins for both farming and nature.
Time and time again farmers tell us that confusion about the support on offer is a real barrier, so by setting out clear standards and offering a simple, standardised options, Defra can help ensure greater outcomes from uptake of the scheme.
We still need much more detail about how Defra plans to develop the Countryside Stewardship scheme and it will be essential that the right positive actions are targeted in the right place.
Land managers must also be supported to deliver actions suited to their local area. They also need access to trusted advice.
For farm payments to make a real contribution to restoring nature we need a step change on the level of ambition and investment in the years to come. Photo: Andy Jamieson
For Countryside Stewardship to deliver the ambition set by the Local Nature Recovery scheme, and make a significant contribution to nature’s recovery, there must be a step change in ambition for the scheme in the years ahead.
In addition to understanding how the proactive funding schemes will protect the environment and enhance biodiversity, we also need clarity on the future regulatory framework for farming. The current scheme, Cross Compliance, is designed to provide basic protections from the worst farming practices but only runs to 2024. Whilst far from perfect, it at least has clear baselines. Defra has so far provided no detail on how it will be replaced.
Defra is unquestionably at a crossroads in terms of the development of ELM, but the latest announcement represents a welcome, positive step in the right direction.
Together with partners such as the National Trust and RSPB, we look forward to working with Government to ensure that the future of ELM helps deliver the legally binding long-term targets for nature and climate and a sustainable, resilient future for farming.
Two Chester County residents received awards in the Pennsylvania Parks and Forests Foundation’s Annual Photo Contest.
The 2022 photo contest’s theme was “Clean Water and Forested Ecosystems” with categories selected to highlight the value of clean water and the role forests play in watershed health, such as Water is Life, Caught in the Rain, Raindrop to River, Reflections, Forests, as well as a Young Photographers category.
With nearly 600 photo entries in the 2022 Photo Contest, the Pennsylvania Parks and Forests Foundation announced that there was stiff competition for the 20 prize awards.
“The passion people have for their state parks and forests is evident in the volume and quality of images received,” said Marci Mowery, president of the Pennsylvania Parks and Forests Foundation, in the release. “Photography is one of many ways that people enjoy these special places.”
Mark Lucas of Elverson traveled a distance to capture the magic of Penn’s Woods in his winning photo from Gallitzin State Forest which consists of two separate areas of state forest land located in northern Bedford, Cambria, Indiana, and northern Somerset counties.
Mark won the Judge’s Choice Award in the Forests category.
A native of Windber, Gallitzin State Forest is his “home turf.” Mark has walked its trails many times throughout his life, cherishing the forest’s calm nature and history-rich trails.
He especially appreciates the quiet that Gallitzin’s extensive remote trail network provides.
“This solitude enables me to walk slowly on the trails looking for potential photographic opportunities, take the time to think about a shot, build the photograph in my mind and set up with the proper equipment to capture what I’m seeing and feeling without any kind of disruption,” he said in the release.
His winning shot truly captures that magical calm that one finds in nature.
He was walking the 12-mile loop of the John P. Saylor Trail when he chanced upon morning sunbeams coming through the tree cover and illuminating the bright green moss speckled with tiny orange mushrooms at the base of the decaying tree.
“I decided that I needed to try to tell the story of the once magnificent tree being reclaimed by the forest floor. With the young trees in the background looking on, the scene seemed to portray the forest’s circle of life,” he said in the release.
He lowered himself to capture a shot of growth and decay, science and magic. A shot that brings fairy tales to mind.
Marsh Creek State Park in north central Chester County provided the People’s Choice Young Photographer winner Lilly Zhang from Chester County with her photo of a heron waiting in the mist.
“It was a crisp autumn morning, and I went to Marsh Creek State Park, hoping to see the mist suspended on the water with the fall colors reflecting on the surface. To my surprise, I also saw a great heron perched on a rock by the shore,” she said in the release.
Lilly Zhang from Chester County won People’s Choice Young Photographer in the Pennsylvania Parks and Forests Foundation’s 2022 Photo Contest for her photo of a heron waiting in the mist at Marsh Creek State Park. (Submitted photo)
Lilly loves Marsh Creek for all its recreational activities — kayaking, boating, fishing, picnicking, trails, and playground areas — and for its wildlife and serene beauty. It holds a special place in her heart.
“I have a lot of fond memories of gatherings, early mornings, and paddle boarding there with family and friends,” she reflected.
View the winners and all the 2022 Clean Water and Forested Ecosystem Photo Contest submissions on Pennsylvania Parks and Forests Foundation’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/PennsylvaniaParksAndForestsFoundation/photos_albums.
The 2023 Photo Contest is officially open. The categories for 2023 are related to Pennsylvania Parks and Forests Foundation’s 2023 theme of “Reflections” and are a direct outgrowth of 2022’s photo contest. To participate, visit https://paparksandforests.org/our-work/recreation/photo-contest/.
With a mission to inspire stewardship of Pennsylvania’s state parks and forests, the Pennsylvania Parks and Forests Foundation supports 124 state parks and 2.2 million acres of forest by coordinating volunteers, activities, and donations through its 48 chapters. To learn more about the foundation, visit https://paparksandforests.org/.
The young bull bedded down after a birch twig breakfast in January 2023. (Photo by Steve Meyer)
“What’s up, young fella?” I asked the young bull moose that stood by the stairs near the front door of our house as I stepped out of the shop one recent morning.
Snowflakes swirled from the sky, and piled up on his well-insulated back as he looked at me. The young moose walked toward me, and when he was close, I lifted my hand out for him to sniff. He snorted and turned sideways from me, and I saw how gaunt his body appeared. His skin draped like kids wearing their parent’s clothes.
The look on his face seemed to be saying, “a little help here,” as the little bull slowly walked back down the driveway where he had entered the yard.
The next day I came across another young moose that had starved to death. It is an all-too-common occurrence when prowling around in winter, but the starved animals typically don’t appear until early in March. It was Jan. 7 when I found ravens and eagles scavenging the young carcass.
When I got home, I told Christine I would have to cut some birch trees for the moose. She commented on how early it was and asked if I was sure it was time. I hadn’t told her about the one that had already died, sparing her heartbreak for the moment.
The area where I grew up had fierce winters, wildlife struggled, and finding dead or dying animals became a part of growing up. But, in severe winters, people were allowed to put out feed for a short time to get them “over the hump.”
Some of my best memories are of driving around the country with a pickup full of food, and stopping in key places to put it out. Sometimes my dad and I would load it into sleds and haul it to spots where deer herded up, or out to shelterbelts where pheasants congregated. Watching those critters dive into the feed left for them made me feel awfully good.
It wasn’t until later in life that I became aware of the “let nature take its course” concept. The way I was raised, if you came across an animal in trouble, you helped it if you could. Domestic or wild, didn’t matter. Sometimes that meant ending the animal’s suffering. More often it was recognizing a problem and doing what you could to assist.
Letting nature take its course in places where civilization has encroached doesn’t seem plausible. Is it natural for a moose, while moving through ancestral land, to stop at the light before crossing the road? Is it nature when a deer gets wrapped up in a barbed wire fence or when a bird flies into a windmill or a window? I wonder.
If we have created unnatural obstructions for animals, a natural route no longer exists for them to follow.
It seems like when people choose to “manage” wildlife, nature is often circumvented. If humans are removed from the equation, wildlife wouldn’t need management. Wildlife management is sort of an oxymoron. Ever tried to tell a wild animal what to do? How’d that work out for you?
For nearly 60 years, I’ve been studying and memorizing hunting and fishing regulations. In all of that time, I’ve yet to see a law that does anything but regulate the behavior of hunters and fishermen. Animals live by instinct. At best, they can only be manipulated, not governed, by human-created circumstances.
It is the same for regulations on our public lands. They attempt to manage the behavior of people accessing the country, to minimize the destruction that seems to follow in the wake of unmanaged human impacts on nature.
Perhaps most importantly, once the management of flora and fauna of our world is accepted, there comes an enormous responsibility for the welfare of the managed. When the managed becomes a prized source of sustenance as it is in hunting, fishing, photography and wildlife viewing, the responsibility of those who benefit is magnified.
In my younger years, I thought being a game biologist would be a great way to make my way in the world. Now, I shudder to think about what these folks go through trying to appease a demanding public while ensuring healthy wild places for future generations to enjoy.
When I read the story about the fellow who initiated a rescue of the moose that broke through the ice on an Anchorage lake, which no doubt saved the moose’s life, I thought what a wonderful experience that had to have been for the folks involved and hats off to those folks. It was the right thing to do. And I thought, what an awful position for a wildlife manager or enforcement officer to be in.
I’ve known these folks all my life, and I’ve never met one who didn’t genuinely care about the animals involved. When a call comes for a situation like the struggling moose, it has to be a nightmare when they can’t respond. Even worse, in today’s litigious society, they had no choice but to tell the folks so desperately wanting to save the animal, to stand down and “let nature take its course.”
Imagine the headline if things went bad.
“Man killed in moose rescue attempt after Fish & Game told him to go ahead.”
It is a Catch-22 situation, damned if you do, damned if you don’t. This story is an example of how, in a society that often relies on government to answer situations, there are ways that we can help wildlife that do not cause harm and allow us to live with ourselves.
The property where we live was once a horse pasture. Fortunately for the moose and us, the land grew up in birch trees when the horses were gone. Moose seem to love feeding on the tops of them when they are cut. Or maybe they don’t love them, but they sure eat them.
The day after finding the young moose dead, we went out to a place out of sight of the dogs and cut down a bunch of them, felling the tops into a nice pile.
It never takes moose long to find fresh-cut birch. Two days later, I called Christine at work to report that the young bull had found the birch and was making a pig of himself on them.
Early the next morning, while giving Rascal the rabbit his morning carrot, the dogs went a bit crazy, and I looked up to see the little bull walking up the driveway. He stopped about 50 feet away. His big nose quivered as he slowly approached. At about 10 feet, he stopped, looked at me for a few moments, snorted, and turned around to follow his footsteps back to the little feedlot we had created for him.
Perhaps we forget that our own nature, human nature, tells us to help animals that are suffering and nothing will change that. It was the right thing to do.
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