Beth Teller

I was struggling for the past year trying to figure out what I want to shoot for senior show. I wanted to make sure that I started collecting images as soon as I could. I was stumped from the get go. Greta suggested that I just start shooting, then look back through the images to see what catches my eye and what connects together. I've shot, evaluated, created a theme and then, reshot, reevaluate and restructured my theme over the past year.

Everyone that knows me, knows that I absolutely love nature. I love to take my son and go hiking, so this was what I mostly shot. When I started looking back at the images I noticed there were a lot of traditional landscape shots, along with images that show carvings, cairns (man made stacked rocks), trash, clothes and so forth. This led me to my first idea, a play on "leave no trace behind," which is a very common phrase amongst nature lovers. I stress this phrase to my son and our way to help is to go around and pick up trash on the trails. The idea was to document all of the objects left behind in our parks. The first two images below are few from that specific idea.

After shooting more and revisiting all of the images many times I began question them. While leaving no trace behind is of course best, there is still a strange beauty that comes from it. Would images 3-6 be interesting to look at if the carvings and cairns were not there? In image 7, I caught a family and not wanting to draw attention to taking their photo, I shot from the hip and sent up a little prayer. I'm not too sure if the image is salvageable, but I figured I would add it.

While we live in a time of  hashtags, Instagram and Facebook check ins, which allows people to show their friends and family places they are visiting, people still feel the need to literally, as opposed to virtually, put their stamp on nature. Could image 8 become the new landscape image as opposed to image 9, a more "traditional" one?  Is there an appropriate way to leave something behind saying that you were there? What is the point of stating that you "were here" to strangers?