There is Grandure in this view of life

A common claim by wildlife filmmakers and photographers is that their work forwards public awareness of conservation by sharing the artist's view of the natural world, but what view is it that they are actually forwarding?

Over the past 150 years, scientists have revolutionised our view of the natural world. Where before it was God's flight of fancy, Adam and Eve's playground, now it is a cold and unfeeling place. Brothers fight brothers, all creatures are hungry, and the majority die childless, afraid, and in pain in the jaws of a predator.

Our view of individual species has changed too. Our medieval ancestors readily attributed human traits and supernatural powers to the creatures around them. Each species reflected an aspect of the divine mind and was a part of God's greater purpose: to help us achieve salvation through studying his creation.

Each species was an allegory; a Hoopoe cares for its elders to show us to do the same, an owl is a dirty bird to show us what happens when we shun the light of Christ, and a virgin oyster produces pearls to show that virgin births are possible. Gods work was written throughout creation in the very human language of anthropomorphism.

Now scientists look to other species for lessons not of God but evolution. Every adaptation in every species has a history that tells us something about evolutionary processes; the origin of species. Species are not allegories but evolution's best attempt of adapting their forebears for their environment and it is written all over them.

Does this fit with how the media portrays organisms? It depends upon the species. Oddly, the more endangered a species the more we seem to see it in evolutionary terms. A Polar Bear is an unfortunate creature perfectly adapted for a rapidly disappearing environment; so are the Ethiopian Wolf and Orangutan. Conversely, the the Puffin is still a comical man in a suit while the Robin is the gardener's best friend.

In reality, any individual Puffin or Robin has to fight just as hard to survive and reproduce as any Polar Bear: Puffins must run a daily gauntlet of predatory seagulls when returning to their burrow to feed their chicks while Robins frequently kill each other in territorial disputes. Their worlds are no less brutal either: arctic gales batter Puffins cliff-top homes while harsh frosts freeze Robins to death as they sleep.

Is the reason this view is not always shown because it is not media friendly? I do not think so. The piece of television I believe most successfully portrayed every species' struggle in a harsh environment is the BBC's Planet Earth. While sometimes shocking and moving, the series contained moments of great beauty made even more so by the knowledge of their unlikely context and the unfeeling forces that created them. The series is an international commercial and critical success, having been sold to 130 countries.

Did Planet Earth's view of the world further a conservation agenda? Undoubtedly: humans love nothing more than unlikely beauty and conserve nothing more fervently than that which they love. Furthermore, the series contained just enough anthropomorphism to help the audience emphasise with its characters.

I am as guilty as anyone, many of my images seek to portray an ideal version of my subjects, but perhaps photographers and filmmakers should move with scientists and portray our world less as a twee, idyllic paradise and more as the interconnected, cutthroat, and yet still beautiful world it is. As Darwin said, "there is grandeur in this view of life".

Does a picture say the right thousand words?

Time to spout an old cliché. If you have heard it once you have heard it a thousand times. An image really does say a thousand words.

There is though a problem with this cliché. If I were to show the image above - which shows the River Severn on its way to freezing in central Worcester for the first time in at least 30 years - to a group of people it would undoubtedly say different things to each of them.

Imagine the group contained Jill, the archetypal climate change activist, and Jeremy, a supercar-driving climate change skeptic. (Jeremy's personality and name, you understand, lends nothing to any famous climate change skeptics you may be thinking of)

Jill, through daisy-woven dreadlocks and a haze of scented candle smoke, might stare tearfully at the image before reaching to her guitar and improvising a ditty lamenting the rarity of true winters in our warming world.

Jeremy, meanwhile, would scoff. Ice, he might add, boastfully, as if stumbling upon a profound yet original thought, only forms when it is cold! When Peter took this image it was minus ten every night for a week! How can the world be warming, ridiculous?!?

Our prejudices inform how we interpret images. A two million year old South African hominid would look at an image of an eagle with fear. Eagles, after all, preyed upon their children.

If we fast forward to the 13th Century, the eagle has become the king of birds, fear has been transformed to reverence. Eagles are able to rejuvenate themselves by flying directly into the sun before rising, phoenix-like, from the flames.

Now eagles are pests or conservation symbols, a product of evolution or one of god's mightiest creations. Viewpoint is everything.

This eagle though is not wild, and neither was the one in the previous photograph. He is owned and flown daily by a man who cares deeply for it. Suddenly, just with a few words, the eagle has become a beloved pet or a cruelly-held captive animal.

Whereas, though, most dog walkers simply walk, feed, care for, and love their pets, this eagle has a further purpose. The owner hunts with the eagle, flying it at wild hares. Sometimes it kills, sometimes it does not.

Now, to some people, the eagle is the sinister tool of a bloodsport; to others it is a rare opportunity to view a predator in action at close quarters; to yet more it is a pest control agent. Again, this has changed all with the application of just a few more words.

Where then does this leave conservation photography and natural history film-making if people tend to see their own prejudices in images and film? How do we know if the thousand words an image says are the ones we mean it to? Are conservation and educational images redundant, powerless to change people's perceptions?

Not at all, far from it. A carefully chosen image, a skillfully applied sentence, or (on film) a well chosen soundtrack, can bypass prejudice and bring out new emotions, making people laugh and cry on cue, sharing the emotions of the artist.

The challenge is to understand the perceptions of others and to chose those images, words, and sounds that affect your target audience in the same way they affect you, getting your message across as strongly as possible. The only real way to test this though is to show someone the final product and to ask them to explain, in a thousand words, what it means to them.

Note: The proof is in the pudding. Straight after this post I logged onto facebook, finding a link to this article showing that The Cove, a powerful conservation film, is starting to influence a modest but growing protest movement in Japan:

http://savejapandolphins.org/blog/post/some-good-news-a-demonstration-by-japanese-in-taiji-against-the-dolphin-sla

Climbing Mount Improbable

The title of this blog post comes a 1996 Richard Dawkins popular science book and is, like many of his titles, an extended metaphor whose theme is extended throughout the book.

Think of Dawkins what you will but he is undoubtedly a master of metaphor and climbing mount improbable is one of his best. It counters the well known creationist metaphor of Paley's watch. Namely, that life, much like an intricate pocket watch, is too complex to have come about by chance. Life, like the watch, Paley argued, necessitates a designer.

One metaphor for evolution is of an N-dimensional adaptive landscape. Any mutation moves a species through the landscape. If a mutation improves a individuals' competitive ability it will rise higher. If it decreases its competitive ability, it will fall lower. Over time, those individuals 'higher' up the landscape and therefore better adapted are favoured by evolution - perhaps imagine a flood drowning those lower down - until, millions of years later, every surviving species towers over the landscape upon its own mount improbable.

Paley viewed the ascent of mount improbable as impossible without the conscious hand of a designer, God, placing each species on the top. Evolution ignores the height and cliffs of mount improbable, simply, slowly, and blindly climbing around the back.

Evolution does not have a goal - it is a mindless algorithm favouring better adapted individuals - but I do. Sometimes, becoming a wildlife photographer seems as remote a possibility as climbing my own mount improbable. My adaptive landscape contains peaks dominated by the giants of the business and each seems very remote.

My challenge, like anyone else's, is to doggedly fight my way around the landscape rejecting less successful ventures and accepting more profitable ones. It is not to waste time finding a non-existent magic bullet ride to the top nor to follow someone successful else up their peak. Hopefully, in this way, I will eventually find myself blinking in the light on a deserted peak with a view to die for.

Oh and, in case you had not guessed, one of my new years resolutions is to blog more frequently.