The Essential Thing to Carry When You Photograph Nature

There's a scene in an old episode of "Mad Men" in which Don and Betty Draper are having a picnic in the park with their children--enjoying the outdoors, the gentle breeze ruffling their hair, the kids running around in a game of tag. A "typical" family (well, a very good-looking version of a typical family!), spending an afternoon on the outskirts of suburbia. And then, Don glances at his wristwatch and they sigh: It's time to go home. So, Betty shakes out the picnic blanket, sending all of their food scraps and garbage flying out onto the grass, and carefully folds up their blanket in her fashionable tote, while Don crumples up his beer can and pitches it into the woods. The scene had a certain shock value to it, this blatant and thoughtless littering waaaaaaay back in the 1960's, because we all know that nobody litters anymore--we're all too enlightened now. Right...?

I don't know why it continues to catch me off-guard, but whenever I'm out shooting nature scenes like the ones in this post, more likely than not, if I turn the camera in the other direction, I'll see a plastic bag tangled in a bush, or an empty water bottle along the path, or a candy wrapper fluttering away. Yesterday, when I was shooting the scene at the top, I was listening to the brook burbling and some ducks quacking up a storm on the other side of the bridge, out of view. But right behind me was a little mound of crunched-up Bud Light cans on the ground. Annoyed, I took them with me back to the car. I would have been even more annoyed if I'd left them there. The nagging feeling would have stayed with me all day: I don't want any other people to start mistaking the countryside for the dump, and littering has a cumulative effect. (Also--obviously--I feel sorry for the wildlife.)

I was going to include my own list of possible reasons why people litter, but then I googled "Why do people litter?" and I found that the very first source tidily summed it all up for me! Here's a little experiment: Before you click on the following link, think up all of the reasons you can for why people might litter, and then, click to see how many of your reasons made this list: Why Do People Litter? (Did they leave out anything?)

So, what's the essential thing to bring with you when you're photographing nature? It's an extra bag, to pick up after the modern-day Drapers.

*****************************************************************************************************************

Did you enjoy this post? Get more like it by subscribing to Joyfully Green via email or RSS reader: just click here.