Three by John Shaw
In any field, there are authors who are inspirational. For me, in outdoor and nature photography, one of those is John Shaw. Three of his books that have influenced me are “John Shaw’s Landscape Photography” (1994), “John Shaw’s business of Nature Photography” (1996), and “John Shaw’s Nature Photography Field Guide” (2000).
Those of us who have experienced first hand the blur of information in technological developments (and if you think about it, this is *all* of us), understand that any of our written works is a “slice in time” that represents the conditions at a given time, and in a given culture. Even with this limitation, there are some universal truths that transcend the times in which we capture them. John Shaw has been very successful at capturing those truths.
Without going into detail about any of the books (there are plenty of book reviews), I want to state that there are enduring qualities about all of them, at a time when both the business and the technology of photography are changing rapidly. Photographers still use cameras of various types; light is still captured through lenses, and lens quality is critical. While human technology and business are changing rapidly, the underlying *pattern* of nature is, in many ways, changing less rapidly. (Do not get me wrong. I believe the scientific evidence concerning global warming, and I understand some of the effects of heat on biological [and chemical] systems. I know about the microorganisms with generation times of minutes, rather than years, making them some of the most highly evolved species on the planet, for the environments in which they find themselves. I also believe that we must act quickly on the evidence of global warming, since biological systems are generally nicely balanced, but those systems can be pushed severely out of balance, and will attempt to establish a new equilibrium, different from the old equilibrium.)
I often think about George Carlin’s comments on “Save the Earth” in which he describes the earth as a big dog and the human race as fleas inhabiting the dog. Carlin talked of the dog shaking off those inhabiting fleas, and urged us to “Save Ourselves”. His simple analogy is quite profound.
Back to photography, John Shaw’s nature photography in particular…. One of the enduring qualities of John Shaw’s writing and photography is the underlying respect for life and the environment that shines through virtually every paragraph and every photo. His writing style is easy for me to read. His writing is inspirational, and it reflects the thoughts of a man who has spent his life with the photographic subjects that he loves.
See if his writing is readable and inspirational for you as well.
–Bill at Cheshire Cat Photo
