Look Beyond

The power of photography

- Pete Oxford

In 2005, with Cristina Mittermeier leading the charge, a group of some 50 professional wildlife photographers congregated in Alaska. We became Founder Fellows of the International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP). The idea was simple – to use photography as a tool for conservation.

Why photography?

The old adage tells us that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’. It can be true, but there is more to it than that. Particularly in today’s world of shortening attention spans, an image gets its message across instantly. The right image, the more powerful that message. Images also transcend barriers of gender, age, culture, language and literacy. We can write until we are blue in the face, but text has only a focused audience and must be adjusted to reach different minds. Images will haunt the psyche and cannot be ‘unseen’.

Professional wildlife photography is currently a struggling industry. It seems that everyone now has a photography website. More images are seen today than ever before, but fewer and fewer are being bought and then for scant financial returns, so professional wildlife photographers are finding it harder to make a living from editorial image sales. Recent camera technology is phenomenal and keen amateur photographers are coming away with spectacular images that they are more than happy to give free to magazines simply to see their work published, thus adding to the downward spiral. As ‘amateurs’ are now swelling the ranks and professional wildlife and conservation photographers are having to reinvent themselves to make a living, then I believe the ‘amateurs’ have an obligation to also use their images for the betterment of the species and ecosystems they photograph.