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Wildlife Photographer of the Year and the Temporalities of Wildlife Photography
Abstract
This chapter examines the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition and exhibition through the lens of temporality. It explores the effects of changing conceptions of nature brought about by the climate emergency on the genre of wildlife photography. In its classical formulation, wildlife photography has been taken to provide access to a natural world in which humans are not present. In contrast, the climate emergency denies the possibility of nature unaffected by human activity. This chapter examines the competition as a proxy for examining the effects of changes in concepts of nature on wildlife photography as a practice. Examining the genre through four temporal lenses, historical, productive, diegetic, and lexical, I argue the emergence of new journalistic competition categories indicate that the genre is changing in response to changed understandings of the category of nature.
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This article explores “the play element in photography”, to adapt a key phrase from Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens (1938). The context for this exploration is the melancholic paradigm that dominates much of contemporary writing and thinking about vernacular or popular photography, a paradigm that emphasises memory, death and mourning, at the expense of other practices and dispositions, not least the ludic. It notes that the existing literature on photography and play concentrates almost entirely on humorous images: optical jokes, trick photography, and a wide variety of distorted pictures. But play is an activity, a practice, as much as it is a product or an outcome. In other words, the ludic in photography is not just a quality of the object photographed, but of a photographic doing. Following this principle, the article shows the ways in which key modes of play such as competition, chance, make-believe and vertigo, are at work in photographic practices old and new, including in the aerostatic photography of Félix Nadar, with which it begins and ends.
Wildlife photography is one of the most popular genres in photography. Although the history of wildlife photography goes back more than 100 years, until recently there was no internationally accepted definition for it. Since 2015, a number of leading photography organizations around the world have filled this gap, establishing the wildlife photography genre as a more consistent subject area, subject to a common international definition. The main purpose of this article is to identify the exact shape of the wildlife photography genre by considering the specific newly introduced definition with referring to existing sources.
Wildlife photography or filming is associating with nature and wild animals capturing them in their natural habitat. When dealing with nature and animals, photographers have to be circumspect about themselves as well as the knowledge of flora fauna and their environment. They should support to conserve and protect the nature and its wildlife. Therefore, establishment of practical ethical model for wildlife image capturing processes has been an important necessity. The model would be related to Sri Lanka and it is a basic ethical approach for the inland wildlife image capturing processes, which suggests and developed some standards and framework under suitable equipment, disturbance limits, responsibilities, and many various analyses. It is consisted with suggestions and solutions to prevent unethical wildlife photography practices as well. So as the wildlife photographers can utilize the model as a guide to their works.
In the current economic climate where state subsidies for the arts have been steadily eroded, there is a consensus in support of the good of corporate sponsorship for cultural institutions. This article seeks to problematize this consensus by critiquing the strategies that corporations employ in their sponsorship agreements with public cultural institutions and opening up a discussion around the ethical issues this poses for their recipients. It then examines how a coalition of subversive arts collectives, that come together under the banner ‘Art Not Oil’, have begun to successfully shatter this consensus through a sustained campaign of unauthorized live art interventions enacted inside cultural institutions. It argues that the unique strategy of resistance they employ operates at an interstitial distance to the public cultural institutions they target, from where they open up spaces of resistance ultimately capable of rewriting the cultural sectors’ corporatized value system.
Key Words: Corporate sponsorship, Public cultural sector, Liberate Tate, Simon Critchley, Interstitial distance
I consider how photographic image manipulation and deception influence both interpretation and evaluation of photographs. First I distinguish between image manipulation and deception by clarifying that image manipulation does not necessarily lead to deception in terms of forming false beliefs. I also argue that image manipulation is not the only way of using photographs deceptively, and I provide examples for photographic deception that do not rely on image manipulation. Then I examine what role the readability of photographic properties (including if and how they have been manipulated) plays in their interpretation. I introduce the concept of photographic illocutionary acts to account for the interpretation of photographic images, and I argue that the default interpretation of photographs is always based on our knowledge of the specific ontological and epistemic status of photographs in general, and which distinguishes them from non-photographic images. I conclude that our knowledge about the ease and frequency of analogue or digital image manipulation does not alter our default interpretation with which we approach photographs.
Attention focused on pangolins (Pholidota) and the threats posed to their survival and welfare by international trade (for use in Chinese Traditional Medicine and the Asian wild meat market) has skyrocketed across all digital information platforms over the last decade. Previously obscure and often referred to as the ‘mammal you’ve never heard of’, pangolins are now widely recognised as an icon of the illegal wildlife trade. We document the events that led to the pangolins’ ‘rise to fame’, culminating in its Appendix I listing by CITES in September 2016 and a global commercial trade ban and explore temporal co-occurrence between events and peaks in media activity and public interest with the aim of identifying events (or types of events) that may have been influential in terms of awareness-raising. More broadly, our objective was to highlight lessons in public communication that might be applied to awareness campaigns for other lesser-known threatened species. We found no evidence that any particular type of event was more likely to generate a significant media/public response than any other, but peaks in public interest co-occurred with reports of pangolin seizures, highlighting the importance of news coverage of these incidents. Further, although neither editorial nor social media peaks were strongly correlated with the timing of events, they sometimes co-occurred with different events and each differed in their coverage of different types of events, suggesting that editorial and social media have independent and distinct roles to play in conservation communication. However, despite their iconic status, public interest in pangolins is still not equivalent to that directed at, for example, tigers, elephants or lions, so efforts need to be sustained. Finally, we note that, although attention can help to generate funds and influence policy, this alone will not be enough to achieve a favourable conservation status for pangolins – on-going and future work need to ensure that public enthusiasm for this species is translated into effective protection.
This paper investigates impacts of digital technologies on photographic post-production and image manipulation in information photography. An attempt is made to assess the extent to which ethical codes and conventions are being modified concerning the digital treatment of photographic images. We sought to assess whether one can identify, in the rules of photographic competitions, an embryonic process of establishment of new boundaries as to what constitutes content manipulation and what is acceptable as technical adjustments. We observed that, in a large proportion of cases, competition rules consist of very generic guidelines regarding the acceptable procedures for photo editing, without clear distinctions between technical adjustment and manipulation. Despite such limitations, we conclude that the analysis of photographic competitions can lead to identification of observable regularities that may act as ethical standards in relation to post-production images.
This research examines the genre of conservation photography as a legitimate and highly relevant pedagogical enterprise well poised amid the proliferation of digital media and environmental crises. This small-scale qualitative study closely follows the work of four professional photojournalists. This research asserts that the professional conservation photographers are highly qualified educators and among the most progressive of our environmental pedagogues. The study orients to the educational potential of photographs, recommends visual literacy training for teachers and suggests strategies for the discursive use of photographs in environmental education. Conservation photographers offer models for increased eco-visual-scientific literacy, superb resources for student engagement and new paths for community-based ecological education and research. The paper concludes with a working definition of the conservation photographer as educator.
Pictures of animals are now ubiquitous, but the ability to capture animals on film was a significant challenge in the early era of photography. This book takes us back to the time when Americans started taking pictures of the animal kingdom, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the moment when photography became a mass medium and wildlife photography an increasingly popular genre. The book investigates the way photography changed our perception of animals. It analyzes how photographers created new ideas about animals as they moved from taking pictures of taxidermic specimens in so-called natural settings to the emergence of practices such as camera hunting, which made it possible to capture images of creatures in the wild. By combining approaches in visual cultural studies and the history of photography, the book goes further to argue that photography has been essential not only to the understanding of wildlife but also to the conceptual separation of humans and animals.
From television news bulletins, newspapers and magazines, documentaries and films, social media memes and cartooning, to protest and art ‐ even to the images that spontaneously come into our minds ‐ polar bears are now ubiquitously associated with climate change. Indeed, polar bear visuals now often mean nothing but climate change. Why do polar bear images, as a particular type of climate change imagery, continue to thrive and to circulate – and indeed, to haunt – our imaginings of climate change? This paper seeks to understand the tangled social, cultural, political and scientific histories of polar bear visuals through defining a new concept, a ‘visual metonym’. This concept is worked through using a longitudinal analysis of visual evidence arising from political, social, scientific and cultural domains; and using a hauntological approach which is sensitive to the spectre‐like nature of polar bear imagery. This reveals three periods in which the work that polar bear visuals has undertaken has changed: polar bear (1990s‐mid 2000s), political bear (mid 2000s), and climate bear (mid 2000s‐on). By the time of the ‘climate bear’ period, polar bear images had become entrenched and irreducible from (i.e. they haunt) climate change. As polar bear images came to stand‐in for much wider debates ‐ of climate scepticism and political (in)action ‐ they became a visual metonym. The paper concludes by presenting the visual metonym concept as a way to explore and understand how particular image types gain power, agency and meaning; and how they come to act as signalling devices representing complex engagements with contemporary issues. The visual metonym concept can be used to understand, interrogate and critique naturalised and pervasive issue‐led imagery.
Purpose
This paper provides an introduction to research in the field of image forensics and asks whether advances in the field of algorithm development and digital forensics will facilitate the examination of images in the scientific publication process in the near future.
Design/methodology/approach
This study looks at the status quo of image analysis in the peer review process and evaluates selected articles from the field of Digital Image and Signal Processing that have addressed the discovery of copy-move, cut-paste and erase-fill manipulations.
Findings
The article focuses on forensic research and shows that, despite numerous efforts, there is still no applicable tool for the automated detection of image manipulation. Nonetheless, the status quo for examining images in scientific publications remains visual inspection and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future. This study summarizes aspects that make automated detection of image manipulation difficult from a forensic research perspective.
Research limitations/implications
Results of this study underscore the need for a conceptual reconsideration of the problems involving image manipulation with a view toward the need for interdisciplinary collaboration in conjunction with library and information science (LIS) expertise on information integrity.
Practical implications
This study not only identifies a number of conceptual challenges but also suggests areas of action that the scientific community can address in the future.
Originality/value
Image manipulation is often discussed in isolation as a technical challenge. This study takes a more holistic view of the topic and demonstrates the necessity for a multidisciplinary approach.
The study of the museum visitor has undergone radical transformation. Each author here has asked unfamiliar questions and responded with fresh answers. Some of these questions involve the visitor's identity, what she brings to her museum experience. Can we gain entry into this experience? Does more technology really increase access to the objects themselves? Others probe the very nature of museum going and exhibition making, demanding that we reexamine the traditional exhibition to reposition the visitor and her meaning-making at the centre. The volume provokes imaginative research and encourages new conclusions.
‘Shifting Baseline Syndrome’ is highly apparent in the context of generational shifts in work and life patterns that reduce interaction with and knowledge of the natural world, and therefore expectations of it. This is exacerbated by changes in the natural world itself due to climate change, biodiversity decline and a range of anthropogenic factors. Distributed and accessible technologies, and grass roots approaches provide fresh opportunities for interactions, which enable active engagement in ecological scenarios. The My NatureWatch project uses digital devices to collect visual content about UK wildlife, promoting ‘active engagements with nature’. The project embodies Inclusive Design in the Digital Age, as the activity; engages a wide demographic community, can be used by all, provided user led agency and produced methodological design lessons.
This article focuses on greening cultural policy within a sustainable development context. We examine shortcomings of major public-policy responses to the ecological crisis, linking this to the ambivalent philosophical heritage of anthropocentric worldviews that underpin ideas about the relation of culture to non-human nature. This ambivalence is reflected by weak environmentalism in the cultural policy arena, exemplified by surprisingly non-green cultural platforms espoused by green political parties. Green thinking is further hampered by the widespread adoption of digitisation within cultural organizations, which we contextualise in the broader political economy of digital capitalism and the attendant myth that high-tech culture is a low emissions business. Green cultural policy necessitates intensive self-examination of cultural institutions’ environmental impact, at the same time these institutions deploy art, education, entertainment, sports, and news to raise awareness of ecological crisis and alternative models of economic activity. We cite the efforts of activist artists’ resistance against fossil fuel corporations’ sponsorship of arts and cultural organizations as a welcome provocation for greening cultural policy within cultural organizations and green political parties alike.
Photography and the modern wildlife conservation movement became entwined soon after their shared emergence in the middle of the 19th century. This article analyzes how photography, film, video, and digital imaging have shaped the movement and continue to exert influence. Images often
dictate our knowledge of animal species in the wild, but they can be deceptive, and they have hindered as well as helped conservation efforts. The profusion of wildlife conservation imagery and continued politicized debates over appropriate strategies make it important to investigate the conflicted
alliance between mechanical reproduction and the conservation movement.
Essays on photography and the medium's history and evolving identity.
In Each Wild Idea, Geoffrey Batchen explores a wide range of photographic subjects, from the timing of the medium's invention to the various implications of cyberculture. Along the way, he reflects on contemporary art photography, the role of the vernacular in photography's history, and the Australianness of Australian photography. The essays all focus on a consideration of specific photographs—from a humble combination of baby photos and bronzed booties to a masterwork by Alfred Stieglitz. Although Batchen views each photograph within the context of broader social and political forces, he also engages its own distinctive formal attributes. In short, he sees photography as something that is simultaneously material and cultural. In an effort to evoke the lived experience of history, he frequently relies on sheer description as the mode of analysis, insisting that we look right at—rather than beyond—the photograph being discussed. A constant theme throughout the book is the question of photography's past, present, and future identity.
This paper investigates some of the immediate impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 on the environment using graphical means. The exploration focuses on the effects of the oil discharge on wildlife, the chemical pollution in the area following the spill, and salinity levels in the aftermath of the spill. Thousands of animals including birds, turtles, dolphins, and whales were found dead along the beaches and in the Gulf of Mexico in the months after the oil discharge. Levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons were found to be at dangerous levels along the coast line, making conditions for wildlife highly unfavorable. Salinity measurements, which can be used to determine currents and oil movement, are examined over time as well as geographically.
This article examines the circulation of George Shiras 3rd's Midnight Series of deer photographs. The photographs were taken in 1896 as part of Shiras's experiments with night‐time flash photography and were part of the North American practice of camera hunting. The article traces the photograph's circulation from their display at the 1900 Paris Exposition through their publication in National Geographic Magazine. It argues that the meaning of the images shifted as the moved through these different contexts, ultimately helping to frame the genre of wildlife photography.
This essay addresses the subject of animal representation via an historical account of the place of the animal in visual culture. It emphasizes the relationship between the animal as a visual image and the technology that produces this image. It explores three examples in a period covering c. 1895 to the 1930s, in Britain, that analyze the relations between animal representation, technology, and the public domain. These are film, zoo display, and slaughterhouse practice. The overall goal of the essay is to move away from emphasis on the textual, metaphorical animal, which reduces the animal to a mere icon, to achieve a more integrated view of the effects of the presence of the animals and the power of its imagery in human history. "[s]i l'animal a le temps, s'il est «constitué» par un «temps»" ["[w]hether the animal has time, whether the animal is 'constituted' by a 'time.'"] (Derrida, 1999, p. 273)
This article is a close reading of John Berger's highly influential essay "Why look at animals?" and its implications for thinking about animals in modernity. Berger analyses the alienation of human and animal as a consequence of nineteenth-century capitalism, and contrasts it with an earlier period when human-animal relations were more integrated. Despite the power and simplicity of Berger's argument, which has been taken up uncritically by a number of writers, both his historical analysis and his conception of human-animal relations in modernity are highly problematic and need substantial revision. Furthermore, the consequences of his thesis paradoxically reinforce the very processes he is criticising. Inadequate notions of the place of animals in public visual culture, and a more general bias against visual imagery in favour of text-based notions of the animal, create obstacles to theorising human-animal relations and welfare related issues in the contemporary world. The article suggests other perspectives for understanding what it means to look at animals.
This essay examines the relationship between the display of non-human animal trophies and masculinity through an analysis of progressive-era American wildlife photography. In the 1890s, North American animal photographers began circulating their images in sporting journals and describing their practice as a form of hunting. These camera hunters exhibited their photographs as proof of sportsmanship, virility, and hunting prowess.
On January 7, 1892, Forest
and
Stream – the magazine of “true
sportsmen” – featured a photograph of wild mule deer taken by Fred
Baker, a hunter from Wyoming. A doe and her two fawns rest peacefully
in front of a patch of sagebrush, as the midday sun casts a bright light.
“Here, by a piece of good fortune which might not come to a man once
in a lifetime,” the editor George Bird Grinnell explained, “Mr. Baker
discovered the deer, and creeping up to the edge of the ravine focussed
his camera on them without disturbing their siesta.” Grinnell emphasized
to readers the accuracy and details portrayed in the image – the large
mule-like ears of the deer and the black tips of fur that marked their tails.
But he also drew a moral message from this scene of tranquility. “The
flesh of the mule deer is excellent eating,” Grinnell wrote, “far better in
the estimation of some people than that of the Virginia deer; but we think
a man would have to be pretty hungry or quite without soul who would
be willing to disturb the charming family group which is shown in our
illustration. As we grow older we incline more and more to the opinion
that a camera is sometimes a more satisfactory implement to hunt with
than a gun.”
Etienne-Jules Marey was an inventor whose methods of recording movement revolutionized our way of visualizing time and motion. Best remembered for his chronophotography, Marey constructed a single-camera system that led the way to cinematography. Picturing Time, the first complete survey of Marey's work, investigates the far reaching effects of Marey's inventions on stream-of-consciousness literature, psychoanalysis, Bergsonian philosophy, and the art of cubists and futurists. Braun offers a fascinating look at how Marey's chronophotography was used to express the profound transformation in understanding and experiencing time that occurred in the late nineteenth century. Featuring 335 illustrations, Picturing Time includes many unpublished examples of Marey's chronophotographs and cinematic work. It also contains a complete bibliography of his writings and the first catalog of his films, photographic prints, and recently discovered negatives.
Photographic Manipulation and Photographic Deception. Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell
- Zsolt Batori
Creating a Virtuous Circle Between a Museum's On-line and Physical Spaces. Museums and the Web
- Ailsa Barry
Barry, Ailsa. 2006. Creating a Virtuous Circle Between a Museum's On-line and Physical
Spaces. Museums and the Web. https://www.archimuse.com/mw2006/papers/barry/barry.html.
Accessed: 20.02.2023.
La chambre claire. Note sur la photographie. Paris: Le Seuil
- Roland Barthes
Barthes, Roland. 1980. La chambre claire. Note sur la photographie. Paris: Le Seuil. English
Edition: Barthes, Roland. 1982. Camera Lucida. Transl. Richard Howard. New York: Hill and
Wang.
English Version: Benjamin, Walter. 1968. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
- Walter Benjamin
Wildlife Photographer of the Year Stripped of His Award. The Guardian
- Robert Booth
Keeping the Wild in Wildlife Photography. Authentic nature photography that helps-rather than harms-wildlife conservation. The National Wildlife
- Melissa Groo