something is happening: the beauty of nature

 

Close-up of a plant that caught my eye on my walk.

For this project I decided to capture the largely unnoticed beauty of the nature around us here on campus. I went on a walk down Lawe Street under the bridge, and took these photos along my journey using my own Canon EOS Rebel T5i camera. I took pictures of whatever seemed to catch my eye, especially trying to get some nice close ups of the plants, trees, and sky (as shown in the photo above). The weather for most of the time was fairly grey and gloomy, so the lighting in my photos reflects this. I enhanced this a little bit in Photoshop afterwards. It even started to drizzle at one point, and I had to quickly get my camera undercover. After selecting and editing my twenty images, I uploaded them to flickr. I ordered them how I wanted, placing some of my favorite photos at the end. McLuhan says,"the amateur can afford to lose" (93). There's a great feeling to being able to take photos at your own leisure and pleasure. As an amateur photographer, you can do just this. Unlike a professional, who has expectations and requirements for their images, you can experiment and capture whatever sparks your attention. 

From Bob Dylan's Ballad of a Thin Man quoted in McLuhan, "because something is happening, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mister Jones?" (105) As Mister Jones seems to represent the larger environment of mainstream society, I sought to capture images outside of the mainstream. While one might think that simple nature photos are pretty basic, I would argue that in today's technology-filled society, nature has been forgotten and even ignored. Everyone walks around looking down at their phones the entire time, never once looking up to see what's around them. My photos seek to capture the beauty all around us, if we only look up to see it.