{"id":602,"date":"2010-04-06T12:35:08","date_gmt":"2010-04-06T19:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/?p=602"},"modified":"2010-06-16T12:09:39","modified_gmt":"2010-06-16T19:09:39","slug":"shooting-ones-self-in-the-foot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/2010\/04\/shooting-ones-self-in-the-foot\/","title":{"rendered":"Shooting One’s Self in the Foot"},"content":{"rendered":"

This year in California the wildflowers have been particularly prolific.\u00a0 It has brought photographers out in massive numbers all looking to capture that unique wildflower photo.\u00a0 On the one hand it is nice to see people out communing with the natural world.\u00a0 The problem is that they have no clue how to behave while out there.<\/p>\n

The open range land where most of the wildflowers bloom is private land.\u00a0 Some of it is fenced and some of it is just open range land.\u00a0 Private property is private property and it should be respected, wildflower heaven or not.\u00a0 For as long as I can remember fellow photographer and workshop leader, Carol Leigh and her\u00a0wonderful Wildflower Hotsheet <\/a>has been an Internet resource for wildflower hunters.\u00a0 It was user driven with reports coming in almost daily once the blooms started.\u00a0 This year however, due to incredulous bad behavior of photographers in one particular canyon in the south-central part of the state that is private open range land, one of the land owners made a post on the hotsheet asking photographers to stop coming onto their land, to stop tramping all over the place, tearing up flowers, and warning that if the behavior did not stop further legal actions would be taken!\u00a0 That was last week.\u00a0 Well all of a sudden Carol takes down the hotsheet and leaves the notice that is there now.\u00a0 Not only did the bad behavior anger the owners of the land, it has resulted in losing a fabulous resource that was of benefit to so many.\u00a0 This passed weekend, I heard reports that the county sheriff was patrolling that canyon now, making sure private property rights are observed.<\/p>\n

I have photographed in that canyon before, and yes it is a special place, but come on, you don’t have to trespass to photograph there, and you certainly do not have to tear out flowers once you have photographed them or picnic right on top of them, roll around in them or whatever other nonsense people dream up.<\/p>\n

Mother Earth has rights as well.\u00a0 It is always a difficult proposition trying to photograph the wildflowers.\u00a0 In the process, some flowers are trampled on.\u00a0 But we must learn how to tread lightly on the earth.\u00a0 Even though the Earth seems like a resilient rock, its ecosystem is very fragile.\u00a0 Even more fragile are the flowers themselves.\u00a0 They rely on pollination to generate the seeds for coming years.\u00a0 Trample them, or pull them out before they can secure pollination and there will be no more flowers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I do my best to stay on trails or on roadside when photographing the flowers.\u00a0 However I must admit I do love sitting in the middle of them all, sampling their intoxicating spicy fragrance and vibrant over-the-top color.\u00a0 When I do, I stay put in one place, I follow my own foot steps back out and when at all possible, I step on bare ground where no flower is growing.\u00a0 And I encourage all my readers to practice the same when you visit the wildflowers this year.\u00a0 And please do go out and visit them and be grateful for the bounty that Mother Earth and our Creator\u00a0are giving us this year, just be nice, so that we don’t want to “shoot our selves in the foot” and never get to see the flowers again.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Poppies<\/a>

Bed Of Poppies<\/p><\/div>\n

Peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mother Earth has rights as well. It is always a difficult proposition trying to photograph the wildflowers. In the process, some flowers are trampled on. But we must learn how to tread lightly on the earth. Even though the Earth seems like a resilient rock, its ecosystem is very fragile. Even more fragile are the flowers themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[264,10],"tags":[80,49,114,30],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":679,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions\/679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}