Outdoor and Environmental Studies

In my past work with environmental organizations, I developed and led educational programs, nature walks, nature photography workshops for all ages with a particular focus on noticing and seeing processes in nature in the forms that are encountered in the outdoors. In these programs, my interest has been in what kinds of insights are gained by naive observers of nature through a Goethean Science lens. Here is an overview of that process (I have no relationship with the University of Lancaster and this is the work of others). I also organized school field trips to do the reverse. Use data loggers to gather samples from nature (numbers only for parameters such as temperature, humidity, light, and sound) over 24 hours, then create data stories based on the values and trends in the data over time, only able to extrapolate from what they know about the environment from their field trips (which only lasted a few hours) and the numerical data gathered automatically from the data loggers. This enabled the participants to focus on and reason about their observations, to notice; only now, within the austere realm of pure numbers that they could only read, graph, and superimpose. 

 

I used a similar technique when leading nature photography talks. I myself have logged thousands of hours in the wilderness using photography as a tool for deep noticing and capturing patterns from the geologic to the biologic, from the micro- to the macro-. Not always the fare of coffee table books or framed images in a gallery, they are tools for asking questions of, and seeking knowledge from nature. Once the images are extracted from their context (the rest of nature), while sometimes pretty in their own right, they are no longer connected to nature and become lifeless objects. There is a small sampling of photographs on my flickr page. 

 

Also, go to the Sustainability and Ocean pages for more work about education, and conservation efforts.

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More to come.