"natural world" has no meaning. There is no unnatural world...well, maybe Las Vegas.
Landscapes have included people and buildings and cities since someone started painting them...and photographing them.
If humans are natural, then everything we do is natural. Just ask Mr. Natural!
If., by natural world, a landscape (used as a geographical technical term, rather than an artistic one) untouched by humans simply never existed. The landscape of the Americas was not pristine before colonists made settlements. The American Indians, while living a Stone Age existence, practiced slash and burn agriculture, created well established routes of communication, built tombs for dead, etc. Their hunting methods, by today’s standards, was inefficient and wasteful. The primary reason for devastating forest fires is the belief that not removing fallen trees and branches is “natural”, forgetting that Indians foraged forest floor for raw materials and fuel.
I doubt if there is a single inch of land in Western Europe or China that has not been stepped on by man. As Vaughn pointed out, man is part of the natural world.
My only complaint with man made objects in landscape photography is beer cans!
If., by natural world, a landscape (used as a geographical technical term, rather than an artistic one) untouched by humans simply never existed. The landscape of the Americas was not pristine before colonists made settlements. The American Indians, while living a Stone Age existence, practiced slash and burn agriculture, created well established routes of communication, built tombs for dead, etc. Their hunting methods, by today’s standards, was inefficient and wasteful. The primary reason for devastating forest fires is the belief that not removing fallen trees and branches is “natural”, forgetting that Indians foraged forest floor for raw materials and fuel.
I doubt if there is a single inch of land in Western Europe or China that has not been stepped on by man. As Vaughn pointed out, man is part of the natural world.
My only complaint with man made objects in landscape photography is beer cans!
It's detectable:More to the point, there are still landscapes to be found where the influence of humans is so light as to be undetectable... one of those places, that I have personally experienced, is the Northwest Territories in Canada. These places are certianly the exception not the rule.
No one? Let's not get too species-specific about who will 'see' the landscapes of the far future.Not to worry. Eventually, nature will erase every trace of human interference. Then there will be beautiful landscapes and no one to see them.
No one? Let's not get too species-specific about who will 'see' the landscapes of the far future.
Eventually, no one.
Too homocentric for me... eventually no human, I agree, but there will most likely organisms to see how things have evolved.
I agree that there are places were the hand of man is difficult to see, but there is no place on earth, from the deepest ocean trench to the highest peak that is untouched by human activity.
The natural world is the world without human activity. Yes, humans are a naturally occurring thing in the world. But the majority of human activity is at least indirectly dedicated to abating nature. Nature, after all, is out to kill us.
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