Three times a year, the Toronto Camera Club accepts submissions for its internal “Nature” competition. Members can submit under one of three categories: botany, zoology, and general. The general category is for nature-themed images where the main subject is neither plant nor animal e.g. a landscape, or seascape. There is one proviso: the submitted images cannot include any evidence of the “hand of man.” This isn’t an arcane proviso that a single club has imposed; it’s a requirement found in almost all nature-related competitions. Personally, I find the proviso annoying, not just because of the gendered language used to articulate it, but because it makes an assumption about our world that’s almost as quaint. The proviso assumes there is such a thing as a natural world. Experience suggests otherwise. For example, below is a shot taken from a rocky outcrop on the Finger Point Trail in Pigeon River. The birch trees are in bud, but the leaves haven’t come out yet, so it produces an interesting white against green effect. However, near the top, roughly a third of the way from the right side, there’s a slight break in the trees where you can see the road to the trail head.
Or how about the shot I took in Katherine Cove on the east shore of Lake Superior. Mid-May and there was still ice on the water. At first glance, the image seems to comply with the proviso. It looks perfectly natural. Until you start examining the colour of the ice. It’s covered in a layer of grime: a winter’s worth of airborne pollutants that circle the globe and gently settle back to the surface. Hand of man, indeed!
There are times when I just say: fuck it. What’s the point even pretending this is natural. Here, we have a lovely vista. In the foreground is a sign pointing the way to the place where we can best view the vista which, presumably, includes the sign. What a beautiful sign, and the background’s nice too.
Viewed as a pure abstraction, human elements can enhance the formal properties of a photograph that might otherwise count as a landscape. Here, it’s more of a highwayscape.
And what photo north of Superior would be complete without a discarded Timmies cup in the foreground.
