ku # 673 ~ idiots, one and all - pt. II

Nature is chaotic ~ in the Adirondack PARK, NY • click to embiggenAnd, once again, I quote:

... Nature is chaotic. Nothing seems to happen with any order or reason. Most scenes are a jumble of elements, competing with each other for attention ...

OK then, I'll grant that the nature photography "expert" in question - the author must be an expert because he was also one of the authors of The Ultimate Guide to Digital Nature Photography - is engaged in "selling soap" and that creating a sense of chaos relative to the problem that his particular brand of soap solves is an honored tradition in the fine art of huckstering, but, come on .... everything in nature happens for a reason even if we humans don't understand or know what the reason is. And, just because we may not know / understand the process doesn't mean that there is not any order to the process.

Sure enough, the author of the preceding statement used the phrase, "seems to happen" as a qualifier of sorts, but, once again, come on .... we know that all that stuff happens for a reason and with some form of natural world order. Simply stated, there is no "seems" about it. If you think there is, then you're an uniformed / uneducated idiot.

So, it just seems to me that the statement is a very bogus starting point relative to looking at the natural world with the intent of picturing it. The statement is very akin to how centerfold / fashion picturing is undertaken. Forget the reality, make a fantasy. Forget the truth. Tell a lie. And then, when questioned about your motives / methods, pass it all off as a harmless "interpretation". After all, everyone knows that it is not real, right?

As for the bit in the statement about "scenes are a jumble of elements, competing with each other for attention" - elements of the natural world are not competing with anything for attention. They are just going about their business of surviving. Even granting that the statement's author meant that a lot of the various elements in a scene capture our attention, isn't that part nature's elemental character?

Why dismiss it? Why work to eliminate it your pictures? Isn't that missing the "point" - the idea that for us to survive, we must embrace, appreciate, and respect the natural world with all of its complexity and, to some extent, its mystery? As opposed to, as our master of the WOW! picture would have us do, embracing and appreciating just the parts that we "understand", aka - the parts that conform to a humankind sense of "order" and "reason". Or, in other words, all of the pretty parts and screw (consume and destroy) the rest.