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02/01/2006 02:48:51 AM · #1 |
Now that the Wildlife challenge is done, I'm interested to know others thoughts on an issue...
In voting I was inclined to bump my scores slightly for a shot that was obviously taken in the 'wild' vs a shot taken in a zoo etc.
What do others think? Does a technically perfect shot of an exotic animal taken from the comfort of a zoo viewing platform merit a higher score than a less perfect shot a local animal taken whilst hanging from a tree by your toenails??
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02/01/2006 02:52:13 AM · #2 |
| I was with you. My opinion was that if it is in a Zoo it is not truly wild. Its probably not domesticated but its not exactly going out and getting its own food is it. I fely like an obvious Zoo shot was almost DNMC. |
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02/01/2006 02:57:29 AM · #3 |
Originally posted by Qiki:
Does a technically perfect shot of an exotic animal taken from the comfort of a zoo viewing platform merit a higher score than a less perfect shot a local animal taken whilst hanging from a tree by your toenails??
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That is a pretty hard question. But I will tell you that if it is being represented as "wildlife" it should be shot in the wild as a matter of ethics. For one, animals in a zoo or enclosure will act and look different then their counterparts in the wild and anyone who would suggest to their audience that one of these shots was an actual wild shot (as has been done by more then a few in this last challenge) is perpertrating an indelible fraud.
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02/01/2006 02:58:14 AM · #4 |
| I'd agree. An obvious zoo shot would have gotten no better than a 6 from me for an outstanding shot. But if there were no obvious signs, I would assume (or pretend) it was in the wild and vote accordingly. |
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02/01/2006 02:59:40 AM · #5 |
Originally posted by nsbca7:
That is a pretty hard question. But I will tell you that if it is being represented as "wildlife" it should be shot in the wild as a matter of ethics. For one, animals in a zoo or enclosure will act and look different then their counterparts in the wild and anyone who would suggest to their audience that one of these shots was an actual wild shot (as has been done by more then a few in this last challenge) is perpertrating an indelible fraud. |
To that I just say baloney. or "bologna". Take your pic. :) |
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02/01/2006 03:09:14 AM · #6 |
Seems I'm not the only one who's thought about this.
I guess it opens the bigger question of how much weight do you give to the ease/difficulty of obtaining any image in any challenge when scoring? To go use this challenge as an example again, a shot of a duck on a local pond is pretty easy to acheive, even though the duck is 'wild'.
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02/01/2006 03:20:21 AM · #7 |
The specification was non-domesticated whatevers, living in a natural environment. Living in the wild was not a pre-requisite. As long as the creature was non-domesticated and the environment looked natural, my voting was based on good photography and nothing else.
However, as an aside I believe my own score may have suffered due to voters believing my capture had to be captive.
There were two camel shots in this challenge. One is evidently in an enclosure. The other - Camelus dromedarius, the 'one-hump' dromedary, also known as the Arabian camel (yes, mine) - was one of a herd living wild at the Al Areen Wildlife Park in Bahrain - in the Arabian Gulf.
Sadly for me too, the enclosed creature scored higher, but then perhaps it was considered a better image all round.
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02/01/2006 03:20:24 AM · #8 |
Originally posted by Qiki:
Seems I'm not the only one who's thought about this.
I guess it opens the bigger question of how much weight do you give to the ease/difficulty of obtaining any image in any challenge when scoring? To go use this challenge as an example again, a shot of a duck on a local pond is pretty easy to acheive, even though the duck is 'wild'.
Q. |
But is a duck wild? Without people feeding the ducks at our local park they would not be there.
My shot was at a wildlife sanctuary, but I would not had said it was an "easy" shot. The challenge was not including any ditches or wires that were about and since the "enclosure" was huge the animal was free to go where it wanted but I could not follow it.
Maybe because I do not live in the USA I see a different meaning to the challenge wording, it said in "a" natural enviroment not "its" natural enviroment. I had several comments that indicated both were one in the same? To me they are very different.
My 2c worth. |
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02/01/2006 03:21:45 AM · #9 |
Steve,
I think you and I are coming at this from the same point of view.
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02/01/2006 03:29:41 AM · #10 |
| Mine was taken at a pond at the zoo. However, the goose was free to fly off to anywhere he pleased. I was under the impression that zoo shots were ok, as long as they looked like a natural environment. Wasn't this why it was upgraded to advanced editing? So that obvious zoo items could be cloned out. |
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02/01/2006 03:33:25 AM · #11 |
Originally posted by lepidus:
Mine was taken at a pond at the zoo. However, the goose was free to fly off to anywhere he pleased. I was under the impression that zoo shots were ok, as long as they looked like a natural environment. Wasn't this why it was upgraded to advanced editing? So that obvious zoo items could be cloned out. |
Well, lepidus, that's kinda how I interpreted it, but some might go so far as to say you are "perpertrating an indelible fraud". ;-) |
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02/01/2006 03:34:34 AM · #12 |
Originally posted by Art Roflmao:
Well, lepidus, that's kinda how I interpreted it, but some might go so far as to say you are "perpertrating an indelible fraud". ;-) |
Uh oh! |
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02/01/2006 03:34:43 AM · #13 |
My image was taken in a wildlife park,
the park spend there money on everything to recreate the natural environment of the species. Therefor i decided that i was going to use my image of the red panda as it recreates exactly how they live in the wild.
therefore i submitted the image , as to me it met the challenge.
on the other hand there is some shots that didnt really meet the challenge, i.e. cage bars were a bit of a give away, all being said, it was a great challenge and i would like to congratulate the top 3 as they were all stunning images.
It really was a hard one to call this |
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02/01/2006 03:36:23 AM · #14 |
Thanks All for the feedback.
I didn't pose the question as a way of having a go at any person/pic in this challenge and didn't want to be pedantic over it ('wild' vs 'natural' etc). I just wondered how others felt about scoring 'easy' shots vs 'difficult' shots (if you can even tell the difference just by looking at them during voting).
For what it's worth, my entry in this challenge was taken in the 'wild' and was a mediocre photo that got just what it deserved...a mediocre score. And fair enough too.
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02/01/2006 03:38:21 AM · #15 |
Originally posted by temba:
However, as an aside I believe my own score may have suffered due to voters believing my capture had to be captive.
There were two camel shots in this challenge. One is evidently in an enclosure. The other - Camelus dromedarius, the 'one-hump' dromedary, also known as the Arabian camel (yes, mine) - was one of a herd living wild at the Al Areen Wildlife Park in Bahrain - in the Arabian Gulf.
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I am puzzled by the differnce in domesticity between an animal which is kept in a zoo and one kept in a wildlife park. In the first people walk past caged animals, in the second a bus full of people are driven around a multi-acre cage. Both animals are fed by zoo keepers, seen by vets, and their every action is overseen by paid professionals. Yours is not the only shot taken in an animal park, and they are as a group much nicer than those taken of animals that do not associate people with food and tend to run away from them, since you can be sure of where you will find the animals, so you can wait for the perfect light or the telling action. |
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02/01/2006 04:19:06 AM · #16 |
Originally posted by lepidus:
Wasn't this why it was upgraded to advanced editing? So that obvious zoo items could be cloned out. |
Actually it was upgraded because of it's sister challenge Tribute. I requested (rightly in my opinion) that the Tribute challenge be changed to Advanced so that we could truly emulate a master photographer. The powers that be (bowing down to the almighty D/L) decided that it wouldn't be right to have one open challenge advanced and one basic... |
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02/01/2006 04:43:09 AM · #17 |
Here is my take on the the Wildlife II challenge as per the challenge description.
A zoo is a man-made environment. I don`t care if it looks like a natural environment... it isn't. Could the animals fend for themselves if the keepers weren't around? No. Therefore it's not a natural environment. The challenge descriptor clearly states "living in a natural environment".
This coming from a guy who studied as a field ecologist and who worked for Canada's national parks system. I think I may have an idea what I'm talking about here. |
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02/01/2006 04:50:07 AM · #18 |
Originally posted by Art Roflmao:
Originally posted by nsbca7:
That is a pretty hard question. But I will tell you that if it is being represented as "wildlife" it should be shot in the wild as a matter of ethics. For one, animals in a zoo or enclosure will act and look different then their counterparts in the wild and anyone who would suggest to their audience that one of these shots was an actual wild shot (as has been done by more then a few in this last challenge) is perpertrating an indelible fraud. |
To that I just say baloney. or "bologna". Take your pic. :) |
By reading a few of your later comments I take it that "indelible fraud" is what you have a problem with.
"Fraud" in this instance is representing something for what it is not and "indelible" is what the viewers have etched in their minds as "reality" when in fact they have been lied to. Certain animals act and look much different when in the wild then they do while in captivity.
If an animal is enclosed in a zoo and eats his own feces by way of mental distress or mineral deficiency and a photograph of this is taken and presented to an audience as haveing been shot in the wild, then the veiwers have been mis-informed and decieved. There are of course much subtler examples such as condition of coat at a certain time of year or even the expression on the animal's face.
I may seem alone with this view in this thread, but in the world of professional wildlife photography that view is virtually unanimous.
If a wildlife photographer were to present a zoo picture as a wild shot to a magazine like National Geographic or Smithsonian and be found out it would literally end their career.
I see nothing wrong with zoo images, for they are capable of great aesthetic value, as long as the location is acknowledged in an appropriate caption, or at least there is no claim that the shot is "wild".
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02/01/2006 04:50:43 AM · #19 |
| If you believed that the shot was taken of wildlife than the photographer lived up to his obligation... |
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02/01/2006 05:00:23 AM · #20 |
Originally posted by TooCool:
If you believed that the shot was taken of wildlife than the photographer lived up to his obligation... |
Where? That is like saying if you believe the paste the jeweler sold you was a real diamond then the jeweler lived up to his obligation.
The description in the challenge states "natural environment". So if the image was not shot in a natural environment the photographer has fallen short of his or her ethical responsibility to this site and it's members to stay within the guidelines of the challenge. .
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02/01/2006 05:36:44 AM · #21 |
Could the animals fend for themselves if the keepers weren't around? No. Therefore it's not a natural environment. The challenge descriptor clearly states "living in a natural environment".
Therefore it's not a natural environment
This coming from a guy who studied as a field ecologist and who worked for Canada's national parks system. I think I may have an idea what I'm talking about here.text
Beagleboy, I don't doubt your credentials as far as Canadian, and possibly North American wildlife is concerned - but surely, the only reason these animals can't feed themselves is due to the confines of fences imposed by man? In a world where man is destroying so many of the native natural habitats of wild creatures, I believe there is a role for wildlife parks which replicate those habitats but add confining controls to PROTECT those species within them.
Have you visited East Africa? Even areas of the big national parks for example the Masai Mara, Serengeti, Lake Navaisha and Lake Nakuru have fences as wild African animals have now to be kept away from human settlements ..... does that make them no longer natural habitats? Of course not.
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02/01/2006 06:13:48 AM · #22 |
Originally posted by temba:
Even areas of the big national parks for example the Masai Mara, Serengeti, Lake Navaisha and Lake Nakuru have fences as wild African animals have now to be kept away from human settlements ..... does that make them no longer natural habitats? |
Ah, but your forget my statement where I am asking if the animals are capable of fending for themselves.
In the large nature parks / preserves that you mention, my guess is that the animals, even though fenced in from too much outside human influence, are pretty much free to roam inside the park and are most likely not fed by the keepers. Predator / prey interactions, population dynamics, disease and pest conditions are probably running their course in a very similar manner to what you'd find in the absence of man. The conditions under which they live represent pretty much the natural state of things. A highway running through a large national park doesn't mean that a large mammal can no longer inhabit said national park. For the most part, the animal can still continue to find all the resources it needs to navigate through its life cycle. The highway may slightly increase chances of mortality, but the animal can still survive quite well.
However, animals living in small sanctuaries, zoos and cages are not living in their natural environment. They are existing only because of the will of man. If their keepers would cease to exist and their fate to continue in such settings, the animals would die because the environment they are in could not sustain their existence without the input of man.
This is the logic I used behind my interpretation of the Wildlife II challenge descriptor. I'm not saying that it's the end all of interpretations. Just that it's my own based on my experience and knowledge and that it affected the way I voted. Some of the images that scored high in the challenge scored lower in my book. |
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