Vixen and kit. It's challenging to look at something like this and not feel like you understand. The kit resting his arm across mom's back. Both with their eyes closed. There is affection here. There is something hauntingly familiar and beautiful and universal. That's also anthropomorphizing the animals. But does that matter? Photo by Jared Lloyd
Vixen and kit. It's challenging to look at something like this and not feel like you understand. The kit resting his arm across mom's back. Both with their eyes closed. There is affection here. There is something hauntingly familiar and beautiful and universal. That's also anthropomorphizing the animals. But does that matter? Photo by Jared Lloyd
And now for something completely different. . .
The ability to weave together both art and science is today something of a lost art. Yet, there was a time when the two were inextricable from each other. In the 1700s for instance, both scientific theory and treatises were written in poetic form, and poets such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, author of Faust, were often as deeply involved in the cutting-edge science of their day as the likes of Newton. In our modern worldview, however, the two pursuits sit worlds apart; one seeking to capture the wonder of nature in words and images and all the many expressions of creativity, inspiring the imagination to run wild like Lost Boys in Neverland; the other seeking to take a scalpel to it all, cutting it open, spilling its guts, and ordering its secrets.
I’m left pondering all of this as I scroll through the pages of this new issue of the magazine. What else is wildlife photography if not the marriage of art and science? Never mind, for a moment, our need to underst even the most basic notions of biology, ecology, and the ethology of the subjects we wish to photograph. Consider just the tools we carry with us.
Each time we step into the field, we do so upon the shoulders of geniuses who came before us with their invention of the camera obscura, with lenses fashioned after Hans Lippershey’s telescope that would lead to Galileo being branded as a heretic by the church. Johan Kepler’s discovery of the inverse square law of light governs concepts of exposure and the use of flash. Breakthroughs in our understanding of the biology of the human eye led to the creation of color photography. And today, we wield camera’s with more computational power than NASA had during the first Apollo Missions, containing microchips fashioned after the neural network of the human brain and employing Artificial Intelligence so a little box can bounce around inside our viewfinders tracking eyes and predicting where those eyes will move next.
Art and science.
In this edition of PhotoWILD, we bring some big questions regarding both art and science to bear with several different articles.
For starters, there’s the Art of Composition part 13. In this article, I begin to introduce the most foundational element of design: line. As animals with an evolutionary history of growing up wild and surviving the vicissitudes of life on Earth, we have evolved to see lines in everything and everywhere we look. Lines make meaning out of things, lead us down trails, and they reveal aspects of our environment that would otherwise prefer to remain hidden. Lines create the shapes of animals, they betray the backs of mammals from afar, they could be snakes, or lightning, or a leopard leaping at you in your peripheral vision. And so we give meaning to lines. Some create harmony and calm us, others quicken our heart rates; all of which can be measured by neuroscientists.
This, of course, begs a very big question.
If lines are so important to us, to how we process the information pouring through our visual field, if they can create both harmony and discordance, if simply noticing them has a measurable impact upon the human brain, then what impact do they have in wildlife photography?
This notion of line will transcend the Art of Composition in this issue. Turning to the next iteration of Mastering Birds in Flight, we begin looking at compositional strategies for photographing birds on the wing. This is the fun stuff. Finally moving away from the technical considerations, we begin to dive into how it all comes together in our photographs. And in this article, we look at creating vertical compositions of birds in flight and how that we use imaginary lines, such as Baroque lines, to order the picture space – what other artist call form.
Field Notes
What would it mean to live in a world where wild bison roamed free? Consider some basic facts about these animals. A mature bull bison weighs in at around 2,000 lbs, for instance. Meanwhile, females form herds with other females, calves, and teenagers that once numbered in the thousands.
When Europeans first began exploring the American West, an estimated 30-70 million bison roamed across the plains. Bison lived in the Appalachian Mountains. They lived in the boreal forests what is now the Yukon. So large and so numerous were bison across North America that they were both keystone species and ecological engineer.
Now imagine if 30 million of these animals once again lived in the West.
What would this mean for our road system? What would this mean for farms and ranches? What would this mean for civilization as we know it?
This is one of the big questions we face in the 21st century. Bison nearly went extinct thanks to us. But now they are back. Doing what bison do. And while we spent decades trying to recover the species, we never stopped to consider what recovery would look like. We never educated communities what bison recovery would look like. We never planned, or prepared for success. And as a result, bison are the one species of animal that is NOT ALLOWED to leave the confines of Yellowstone National Park. And each year we kill as many as 2-3,000 bison that dare to walk over the imaginary line in the sand.
In Nature's Ghosts, we take a look at the challenges we now face as we are confronted with actual success in conservation.
What would it mean to live in a world where wild bison roamed free? Consider some basic facts about these animals. A mature bull bison weighs in at around 2,000 lbs, for instance. Meanwhile, females form herds with other females, calves, and teenagers that once numbered in the thousands.
When Europeans first began exploring the American West, an estimated 30-70 million bison roamed across the plains. Bison lived in the Appalachian Mountains. They lived in the boreal forests what is now the Yukon. So large and so numerous were bison across North America that they were both keystone species and ecological engineer.
Now imagine if 30 million of these animals once again lived in the West.
What would this mean for our road system? What would this mean for farms and ranches? What would this mean for civilization as we know it?
This is one of the big questions we face in the 21st century. Bison nearly went extinct thanks to us. But now they are back. Doing what bison do. And while we spent decades trying to recover the species, we never stopped to consider what recovery would look like. We never educated communities what bison recovery would look like. We never planned, or prepared for success. And as a result, bison are the one species of animal that is NOT ALLOWED to leave the confines of Yellowstone National Park. And each year we kill as many as 2-3,000 bison that dare to walk over the imaginary line in the sand.
In Nature's Ghosts, we take a look at the challenges we now face as we are confronted with actual success in conservation.
Another article you will find in this edition of PhotoWILD Magazine that brings a heavy dose of science into our considerations as wildlife photographers, is Natures Ghosts. After a century of conservation efforts to desperately save what was left after the wholesale destruction of wild animals and wild places during the 19th century, we are finally beginning to see measurable success with some of of those species. Ground breaking legislation such as the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act are beginning to bear fruit. But there is one big problem with that: we never prepared for what conservation success would actually look like.
From Massachusetts to Montana, no one alive today has experienced the world before animals like bison or gray seals were not on the precipice of extinction or recovering from such. What does it mean to have 35,000 seals hanging around luring in white sharks to popular beaches? What does the world really look like great herds of wild bison can just wander onto a highway, walk through fences, or reclaim any part of their original home?
We have fought tooth and nail to protect animals over the last century, to save species from extinction, but what we have not done is plan for what that success would look like. And now, we find ourselves in the very same place we did in the late 19th century, with people demanding bounties be placed on seals, that bison should be be shot because they hamper civilization, that trophy hunting status should be placed on any predator that is removed from the Endangered Species List.
Field Notes
In Annalise Kaylor's article, The Myth of Objectivity, she introduces the concept of how and why the anthropomorphization of animals is a powerful tool for both conservation and making a connection with the natural world.
In this photograph of a black bear I titled simply, Thinking Bear, all of the beauty of an interest we find in this piece comes down to the "human-like" pose of the bear.
This is one of my most popular photographs, be it on the editorial market as well as fine art. Since creating this image, I have listened to countless people talk about it. And it usually comes down to the relatability. "The bear looks like he is smiling!" Of, "The bear really looks like he is thinking!"
As someone who has spent most of their life around wild animals, I have always found it fascinating that people have no problem attributing emotions and human-like traits to their dogs but not wildlife. We know when our dog is happy, sad, angry, and afraid. We all find it funny to watch dogs dream, kicking their paws, making little "woofs" in their sleep. We wonder out loud what our dogs must be dreaming about. We contemplate what they must be contemplating when we catch them staring off into space. So, why is it surprising to us to find a black bear sitting in a tree who appears to be deep in contemplation or a really good day dream?
We have spent the last hundred years being told we should not apply human emotions and human assumptions on the natural world. We are told that we know nothing about how animals think and feel, or if they even think or feel anything at all.
Yet, we all do it. We all attribute human emotions to dogs and cats and wild animals alike. And we always have.
The oldest known deities have all been animals, gods and goddesses who were also animals possessing human like traits we could relate to. We create countless parables in which we use animals to teach us something about ourselves. We craft stories for kids around animals acting in human ways to teach them the nuances of growing up.
There is nothing more human than anthropomorphisising animals, than seeing similarities between us, than understanding ourselves by looking at them.
In Annalise Kaylor's article, The Myth of Objectivity, she introduces the concept of how and why the anthropomorphization of animals is a powerful tool for both conservation and making a connection with the natural world.
In this photograph of a black bear I titled simply, Thinking Bear, all of the beauty of an interest we find in this piece comes down to the "human-like" pose of the bear.
This is one of my most popular photographs, be it on the editorial market as well as fine art. Since creating this image, I have listened to countless people talk about it. And it usually comes down to the relatability. "The bear looks like he is smiling!" Of, "The bear really looks like he is thinking!"
As someone who has spent most of their life around wild animals, I have always found it fascinating that people have no problem attributing emotions and human-like traits to their dogs but not wildlife. We know when our dog is happy, sad, angry, and afraid. We all find it funny to watch dogs dream, kicking their paws, making little "woofs" in their sleep. We wonder out loud what our dogs must be dreaming about. We contemplate what they must be contemplating when we catch them staring off into space. So, why is it surprising to us to find a black bear sitting in a tree who appears to be deep in contemplation or a really good day dream?
We have spent the last hundred years being told we should not apply human emotions and human assumptions on the natural world. We are told that we know nothing about how animals think and feel, or if they even think or feel anything at all.
Yet, we all do it. We all attribute human emotions to dogs and cats and wild animals alike. And we always have.
The oldest known deities have all been animals, gods and goddesses who were also animals possessing human like traits we could relate to. We create countless parables in which we use animals to teach us something about ourselves. We craft stories for kids around animals acting in human ways to teach them the nuances of growing up.
There is nothing more human than anthropomorphisising animals, than seeing similarities between us, than understanding ourselves by looking at them.
Perhaps chief among these articles that wrap science and nature together into the proverbial Gordian knot, is Annalise Kaylor’s The Myth of Objectivity | Why science needs art. The title says everything, doesn’t it? And in this article, Annalise takes a hard look at a very controversial topic in both science and art: anthropomorphism.
The need to remain wholly objective when looking at, thinking about, and considering animals has been a darling of the scientific community for the better part of the 20th century. But this has done very little for both our scientific understanding of the natural world as well as our connection to it – likely the biggest threat to every species on the planet today.
This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. It’s a favorite of mine to debate with friends and colleagues alike. And there is probably nothing more human than the tendency to try and make sense of the natural world through the lens of human emotions and experience.
As an artist, and especially as one with a background in biology, I have always been a huge proponent of anthropomorphizing my subjects. What good has come from trying to impose a sense of otherness on the rest of life? In fact, it’s this notion of objectivity that has long been used as a justification for doing whatever it is that we want to do to other animals. Consider Aristotle’s Hierarchy of nature for a moment, or what he called Scala Naturae. Ever heard terms like higher animals? What about lower life forms? You can think Aristotle for this type of thinking.
Aristotle believed that the world could be ordered like a ladder, with divinity (he was Greek) at the top of the ladder, humans just beneath, and then the rest of the living and non-living world falling on some rung of that ladder beneath us. In the language of hierarchical societies, those closer to the top of the hierarchy are all that is important; their needs, their whims, their hedonistic desires being all that matters. This, in turn, would later be used to justify notions of dominion over nature, the lesser life forms, who were placed here for our use and abuse. And unfortunately, the notion that there is no way of knowing what an animal thinks or feels has been used by western civilization ever since, to keep a pseudo-scientific detachment from the rest of life on the planet.
Luckily, we are beginning to find that there are only two groups of people who still consider anthropomorphism to be a cardinal sin: the old guard laboratory scientists who have little interaction with animals outside, and laymen who heard it was bad and never stopped to consider.
Today, most field researcher I know talk in terms of what animals are thinking and feeling. Emotions like happiness, sadness, anger, and revenge are readily applied to their interpretations of the natural world. Cutting edge science is revealing that we have far more in common with the rest of the animal kingdom than difference in this respect. Heck, we now know that even plants have personalities when observed within the context of plants and ecosystems; some individuals are bold and others think the the sky is always falling, some are altruistic and others selfish.
The problem with the general public’s understanding of science is that it’s usually about 50 years outdated. This makes a world of sense, of course. Researchers are researching. Scientists are sciencing. It’s not their job to teach Bob the plumber the meaning of their ground breaking work. Thus, it takes time. Time for people who are science communicators to rifle through the mountains of academic papers, to digest, to publish articles and books for general audiences. It takes time for new science to make its way even into university lecturers, time for the public to begin hearing about it, and time to cut through the impervious nature of people’s worldviews.
The importance of this conversation cannot be overstated. It’s only a little matter of how we see ourselves and conduct ourselves on this planet. And as artists, we wield the power to help connect people with both new science and, more importantly, the natural world as a whole.
This is a conversation we will likely return to again and again with PhotoWILD. And Annalise Kaylor’s article is a great place to start as she poses very important questions for us to consider about how we see and feel and think about wildlife and the planet we live on.
Have noticed something a little different with this “issue” of PhotoWILD Magazine.
Gone is the PDF.
Publishing in PDF form limited everything we can do with this. It wasn’t mobile friendly in an age when nearly everything read electronically is done so on a mobile device of sorts. It wasn’t interactive in an age when interactive media is now possible. There were problems with people being able to download the PDF, to read the PDF, with the way the PDF was compressed so it was small enough one could download and read it. The list went on.
As I began to consider all of this, I realized that none of my digital subscriptions to publications such as National Geographic, the Atlantic, or Smithsonian come in PDF form. Instead, they are published on platforms that make sense for the digital world. And with that, I suddenly felt like a dinosaur.
Thus, I bring you the new face of PhotoWILD.
Cheers,
Jared Lloyd
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