Ethics of Nature & Wildlife Photography

Part I

Landscapes

“No photo is worth more than the well-being of your subject” -Brad Hill

One of the very first photos I captured with my first DSLR was of a black bear. I was backpacking deep in the Wind River Range of Wyoming. After setting up camp near a lake, I settled down for an afternoon nap. While sitting in my tent, my little brother yelled “BEAR!”

I was startled and ran out of the tent, expecting a grizzly bear. To my surprise it was a young black bear. Still on edge, but not necessarily frightened, my brother and I stood up and yelled at it, “Hey bear! Go away, bear!”

It was certainly curious about our camp, and was probably hoping for an easy meal. It didn’t bolt away, but it did back off and keep its distance after a few minutes of us firmly urging it to move on. Over the next half hour or so, it would come closer and then back away after we kept insisting it leave our camp alone. It wasn’t aggressive or threatening, but rather curious and playful. At some point I got comfortable enough that I remembered I had packed in my Nikon DSLR and my 55-200mm kit lens. Not knowing much about cameras yet except how to activate the shutter, I pointed my lens at the bear and began to fire off shots on an automatic mode, and absolutely missed focus on every shot. I didn’t know it then, but this was a defining moment for me as a photographer. It suddenly dawned on me that I was capable of capturing and sharing my experiences in nature.

Even in this early experience as a photographer, I was applying my own moral framework in order to decide how to capture this photograph. I was more concerned about the wellbeing of myself, my brother, and this bear upon my encounter, than if I should even attempt to photograph this bear. If your instincts as a photographer are to always chase a shot, you may risk the wellbeing of yourself, your subjects, and the environments you find yourself in. That early moment taught me that photography in wild places carries responsibility, a lesson that would keep resurfacing later as I began taking landscape photography more seriously.

While it would be a fair number of years before I started pursuing wildlife photography, I had soon begun an avid pursuit of landscape and adventure photography. When I started, Instagram was as popular as it had ever been. It was an incredible tool for aspiring photographers. For me, it was an enormous well of influence and inspiration for much of my early attempts at landscape photography.

As I started taking photos of mountains and landscapes that endlessly fascinated me, I would go to great lengths to get certain shots. A lot of the time, I would find locations made popular by Instagram and try to get the same types of shots that were making the rounds on the platform. As I started engaging in this type of practice, I began to notice that my behavior was at times at odds with the morals I grew up with surrounding nature. I would arrive at trailheads, sometimes packed to the brim, just to get one shot. Sometimes the trails and areas along them were literally trashed. Fragile alpine and riparian areas were being trampled by dozens or hundreds of people casually trying to get to that famous Instagram spot.

I too was engaging in behavior that was damaging these fragile natural areas that I loved. I would often hike off trails onto fragile slopes or plants, just to get a shot. Although I was always careful not to damage anything, I certainly was impacting the soil and plant life to get my photos. I eventually began to become more conscious of my behavior and activities on the landscape.

I get most of my ethics from my Dad, who spent much of his career as a forester with the US Forest Service as well as other land management agencies. He also grew up an outdoorsman who practiced hunting, fishing, and trapping. My dad had given me a baseline framework surrounding wilderness and wildlife conservation that I would try and apply to my photography. We were avid fly fishermen, and practiced almost entirely catch and release. We spent most of our free weekends and holidays backpacking, flyfishing, and snowboarding. Much of my upbringing was in wild and mountainous settings. We never pursued hunting, although we didn’t have problems with sustenance hunting. I was taught that nature is both fragile and full of life. My dad instructed me to both protect and preserve nature. These principles have always stayed with me and informed how I behave in nature.

The way I practice photography today is much more in line with my land use ethics than it was when I first began. I still go out to popular trails and areas. Many of them are in fragile environments such as alpine tundra or riparian habitats. However, I believe I am much better at assessing my impact on the landscapes I am trying to capture than when I first started. It is critical that all of us, whether we are just causally hiking, or are professional photographers, take into consideration our impacts on the environments we are visiting. I sincerely believe that most people who visit these areas have good intentions, and would like to conserve them for future visitors. However, not everyone, including many people like myself who have spent tons of time in these settings, are always completely aware of the negative impacts we are incurring upon them.

As my own approach to photography changed, I developed a few guiding principles that I think can help others:

• Leave No Trace principles. Familiarize yourself with them by visiting: https://www.nps.gov/articles/leave-no-trace-seven-principles.htm

• Consider not taking certain photos

  • Will walking off trail significantly damage the soil and plant life?

  • Will taking this photo encourage others to violate Leave No Trace principles?

  • WIll taking this photo endanger wildlife or other people?

• Don’t geotag precise locations. Geo-tagging may help you go viral, but it may also spark and perpetuate overuse trends.

• Don’t overpark/overvisit trails. Overcrowding can negatively impact trails and the surrounding landscape when there are too many people on not enough land.

  • Consider visiting earlier or on less busy days.

  • Relocate to another less busy trail if possible.

In Part II, I’ll shift from landscapes to wildlife, where ethical considerations become even more critical.