A Walk In The Park
By Melika Carr
16 July 2008
This essay is based on a book I compiled "once upon a time", though once upon a time was not so very long ago. I was just discovering my interest in photography and I guess going through the motions of photographing what often are points of interest for photographers: architecture, people, and then nature. I decided to make a book with an original poem documenting some nature photos I took in a local park.
My inspiration for the story was, as I've said, a local park which is right by my house where I've often gone to walk, play, exercise, or just admire. The park is huge and contains a seemingly tiny creek which actually runs through much of the city. The creek is known as Herring Run.
My original idea was just to photograph the area... the typical nature photographs which I would now (and possibly then too) find to be extremely boring subject matter. I remember originally going out with my manual film SLR camera, just scoping the area. I came back probably a year later (with my first point and shoot digital camera) to actually complete my project. What eventually caught my eye about the area, as I searched for interesting compositions, was a sign warning visitors that the water was polluted. It was something I hadn't noticed for years. I am still unsure if this is because the sign was absent until recently or if I just had never paid much attention to it. This changed the project into something much less light-hearted and exploratory into something much more serious. Going to the park, I had wanted to capture it's beauty. Instead, I was confronted with a very ugly reality.
I was born and raised in Baltimore city and have had the unique experience of attending a school which frequently hosted clean-ups of the surrounding area and of the water. I've been involved in groups and organizations dedicated to educating people on, as well as helping to conserve, the environment. So I knew from a young age that the area was polluted. I did not, however, recognize the extent of the damage until I saw that sign.
And maybe that's what we need to be confronted with to realize the truth. Sure, we all say that we care about pollution and the environment... but do we really grasp the reality? Maybe if we were forced outside of our comfortable realms of education and what we think we understand, we could actually discover more. Maybe we ALL just need to go for a simple walk to see how we as humans can effect our world for good or for bad.
"And a sign becomes visible through the trees, with a warning of what a simple walk in the park now means."
Thanks for letting us know!
Thanks for voicing your concerns. Rest assured, we take it seriously. We'll look into it and take any appropriate action.
