Topic: Conservation

I've been thinking of ways to tie the topic of conservation more strongly into my work. I think the most important thing is going to be research. Simply portraying beautiful environments and examples of pollution is not often enough. I'm going to need to do a lot of research on both local and global problems and incorporate these into my work. Captions might be needed with each piece to get these across.

One of the benefits of collage work is that I can tie different images taken at different times together into one piece, giving it more effect. Back in my first digital photography class a couple years ago I had a professor that really stressed conceptual work, so I did a piece on conservation then, shown below.

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Here I was able to photograph deer under the factory lights on an entirely different side of the factory from which I shot the rest of the piece, as well as a number of hours earlier in the night. With this process I was able to piece the deer in and increase their numbers. I'd like to do more of this this semester.

Even with that piece however, I was really just an observer. The factory affected me personally, as it was built a number of years ago next to my grandparent's farm in Suffolk, Virginia. Many of my weekends and holidays were spent there, and still are, and the chemical plant has been a loud, bright addition to the area ever since it was built. I really don't know how much or what sort of waste it creates though, and what effect it has had on the surrounding environment other than that of its physical presence. The piece I did was therefore essentially just an observation, and the deer shown in juxtaposition of the factory really just a symbol. Deer thrive in that area, probably more so than they did before people came and plowed farms full of food for them and drove out predators. So I really wasn't making a case for them in the piece, as they probably still get along just fine with the factory there. It was very strange and unnatural to be able to photograph deer without a flash at night under those factory lights though.

My point is that if I'm going to promote change I need to find and focus my work around things that need, for good reason, to be changed. Simply observing man's interaction with and encroachment on nature isn't going to be effective enough.