One of the blogs we follow here at the Almanack is Mark Hobson’s The Landscapist in AuSable Forks. His blog is described as “intended to showcase the landscape photography of photographers who have moved beyond the pretty picture and for whom photography is more than entertainment.”

His latest post touches on just those points when he takes a fellow photographer to task for their fluffy, feel good, approach to nature photography. The unnamed photographer wrote:

I chose nature photography as a way of capturing and sharing the beauty, power, and fragility of wild places and the life that inhabits them, so that those who have become mired in the man-made chaos may open their eyes to the real world.

Hobson’s response was scathing.

What a bunch of unadulterated sentimental, romanticized, escapist crap – just like the pictures that pour from cameras in the hands of those who subscribe to such bunk…

The idea that the human race is “wasting the precious gift of thought and inspiration” by concerning themselves with “politics, economics, religious squabbles” and that those so-called “squabbles” constitute “man-made chaos” really is a notion that is thoroughly out of touch with the “real world.”

The entire piece is worth a read and necessary to really get where Hobson is going, but it sums with this gem:

IMO, making pretty pictures as a means to effect sound thinking regarding sustainability is akin to penning catchy popular ditties about the joys of firefighting as a means of effecting the dousing of the flames that are burning down the house.

WOW.

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