I’ve just come back to the UK after a freezing cold week in the Gargano staying at Monte Sant’ Angelo. Quite apart from the number and diversity of the orchids (and other plants) we saw, the one thing that stays in our minds is the quantity of litter everywhere we went. The ubiquitous beer bottle could be found at every location we visited! I shall be writing to the Gargano National Park authority to raise the issue with them and would suggest that others (especially tour operators who are bringing substantial economic benefit to the area) who are similarly offended by this desecration of such a natural jewel should write in a similar vein.

PS, I’m another ex-NCC/EN/NE employee…

Congrulations for the article, althoug as you can imagine I have some troubles to understand some parts.

Thanks to spend a little to read my article. Your reply is very interesting and I agree with you about the dilemma between photography as passion or a way to pay the bills, to earn a living. You know , I don`t trust it . I mean a prefer to think in photography as a passion, not just an instrument to “earn a living”. As the spanish writer Alex Rovira says our life has been won since the very first moment when we were born.

There’s another thing very annoying for me around art and photography. Who decides what is art? When a photography, a painting or a sculpture is really a piece of art? I think it has to be with emotions and feellings, not to the amount of money someone has decided to pay for.

My best wishes.

I greatly enjoyed your post for your thoughts and emotion are clear – I tackle my photography in the same way and think about it, too, perhaps too much at times.

The matters you raise are things we should and must think about – just occasionally it is good to know why we do what we do and what drives us and, indeed, how it changes with time.

The dilemma we all face when turning a ‘hobby/passion” into an income source is how to retain the freshness when there is the small matter of survival and maybe other mouths to feed…

I am a Humanist, though at the same time despairing of humans as a species with capacity for thought, abstraction and…destruction. My prime reason for taking photographs is the same as yours and one for which I do not apologise. I love doing so, it concentrates the mind on small slice of nature and captures the sheer joy experienced. And if I do it well I can relive that experience months, even years later. If others like that image, fine, but that should not be the driving force. Early on, I evolved a modus vivendi that involved taking the images I wanted and then, maybe, dropping the camera angle so that enough of a space was created for the magazine title… pragmatism!

That statement of Emerson’s (regarding our mental blindness) is depressing in some ways, though I feel we have to go beyond the words chosen in the light of what Emerson did and the way he thought. He was, in many ways, a polymath, a trained medic and also an artist. I have noted that when one comes from any form of scientific background there is inevitably a search for ‘realism’. I only encountered Emerson after struggling with similar personal dilemmas – his contemporaries wanted front to back sharpness but that does not mirror the way we see, for we view by focusing on elements within a frame. Emerson also tried completely unfocused images and abandoned them – I see some room for such things in nature photography but not when subjects are unfamiliar. It is that business of compromise.

The totally soft, blurred images of nature tell me little and the art is in selecting what element within the frame must be sharp. Ideas, like fashions, will change with time. Not every blurred photograph is ‘ art’, though to read the rubbish in some magazines you would think it is…mainly because too many people are not capable of taking a sharp photo in the first place and do not want to spend time to acquire a skill.

Thank you for raising these points José it helps to show that the phrase ‘thinking photographer’ is not a contradiction in terms.

Edwin Kats

My life is affected by two – there were three but the one I liked, died: he was a large Tom, slightly arthritic and short tempered… a kindred spirit! I would not wish harm on the two females we have BUT I feel real anguish that, as a naturalist, I have to endure the slaughter of small creatures that I find infinitely more attractive.

I could pose an ultimatum but I have a lot of books and stuff that I would have to carry away should I say it is them or me…I have made my feelings known: I do NOT like animals jumping on the bed or anywhere near that room. My protests are met with sympathy but nothing happens… three is company and, as the fourth, I make it a crowd.

One of the cats has few teeth left but can give mice a fatal suck….the other a small tabby is a n agile animal able to negotiate horizontal or vertical surfaces with equal ease. Two years ago she scaled a 25m oak next to the house and caught a small red squirrel. As celebration she awarded herself the ears – with rodents it is the head that goes and the legs and body are left.

Joking aside I hate this and get very angry when a cat-crazy neighbour (another female) says it is nature and proceeds to feed the birds and the cats feed on them…

These animals are killers and here in Italy they simply release them into the countryside where the damage they do is immense. Bizarre, it may seem, but it goes against some innate Catholic contraceptive sensibilities to have cats sterilised…they keep them for a few months then take them for a ride in the care to release them near the abode of some crazy English female whom the cats know is a sucker…if they purr and rub against the legs they get fed.

Bloody cats.

The pleasure was all mine. I’m looking forward to our trip in May.

Erwin