© 2024 Aspen Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Conservation Photographers Aim For More Than Pretty Pictures

Jeremy Swanson / jeremyswansonphoto.com/

There’s no shortage of opportunities to take beautiful photos in the Roaring Fork Valley.  But as arts and culture reporter Christin Kay found, some local photographers don’t settle for just capturing pretty pictures. Conservation photographers want their images to tell an honest story about the changing environment around us.

 

Jeremy Swanson has been a photographer for the Aspen Skiing Company for the past ten years.  But on a recent summer morning, he wasn't shooting people skiing through trees in waist-deep powder.

“So we’re in Snowmass up on top of the Rim Trail, looking towards the classic view of Daly, Capital Peak off in the distance. Just getting some shots,” Swanson said.

It certainly wasn't the kind of picture-perfect day you would see on a Colorado postcard. The gray peaks in the distance were nearly camouflaged by the smoky air, and that’s why Swanson was there.

 

“Today is a great day to take photos because it’s not perfect," he said. "We have a bunch of haze, probably due to the wildfires, whether it's Lake Christine or the fires in California. So it’s different. But it’s honest.”

For Swanson, these kinds of honest photos of the environment around us are powerful because of their immediacy.  

“It’s easy enough to go to the Pitkin County website and find out what the particulate matter was for that day, or what the air quality looked like, but if you see a picture, it becomes instantly vivid that the wildfires that are happening around us, that the changes that are happening in our environment, in our climate, have a concrete impact even for those who aren’t directly in their line,” he said.

Any photographer wants to capture beauty.  But Susan Norton, the executive director of the International League of Conservation Photographers, says that conservation photography looks to tell a more complete story.

“We try to show things within their universe,” said Norton.

She said that the label “conservation photography” really started being used about 15 years ago.

“The term started being used to mean that you were devoting your work to not just taking images of wildlife or landscapes, but then the work was being used for outreach and education,” she said.

If conservation photography is going to educate or even inspire action, Norton said, it’s not enough to just take the photo.  The written word becomes important, too.

“If a photographer provides a detailed caption that tells you where they took it, why they took this image, what the conservation message is, we find that there’s so much more engagement,” she said.

 

Increasing engagement is a huge issue for conservation photographers. We’re saturated with pictures every time we open our phones.  How do you make an image stand out?

Swanson said it’s something he wrestles with in his work.

"You’re gonna have a lot less traction on the shot that doesn’t show kind of the beautiful postcard view, but it’s still important to try and make sure I get those photos, so that it’s not just that sort of rose-colored glasses view,” he said

Photojournalist Pete McBride lives in the Roaring Fork Valley and has documented environmental threats to the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon. He said that what sets a photo apart in this sea of imagery is an important story.  

“First, you have to find a story you believe in, and then you partner it with an image,” he said.

McBride pointed out that, while we’re seeing more and more photos every day, we're getting talked at more, too. So he aims to show, not tell.

 

“You take them on a journey and you let the images do the heavy lifting," he said. "You can actually make people feel like they see it and they experience on their own terms instead of being told what to think.”

Even when he’s documenting drastic, worrisome environmental changes, McBride is still trying to get the most beautiful image he can.

“If it’s the end of the Colorado River and it’s a cracked wasteland, I still want to make a beautiful image of it to stop people, to make ‘em pause and look at it, and then, if that pause enables them to read the caption and learn that the Colorado River runs dry, which few people realize, then I think that the photograph is doing its job,” he said.

Swanson hopes the education that conservation photography can provide will inspire people to take action.

“In the end, we will only conserve what we love, we will only love what we understand and we will only understand what we are taught. Baba Dioum said that, who is a Senegalese conservationist,” he said.

The photos he took on that hazy morning might not be shown on a website trying to attract visitors to the Roaring Fork Valley. They look to tell a more complex story about the changing wilderness around us.

 

 

 

Contributor Christin Kay is passionate about the rich variety of arts, cultural experiences and stories in the Roaring Fork Valley. She has been a devotee of public radio her whole life. Christin is a veteran of Aspen Public Radio, serving as producer, reporter and interim news director.
Related Content