A BRIEF BIT ABOUT THIS PROJECT AND THE THOUGHT PROCESS BEHIND IT:
The issue I’m engaging in for this project is hunting as a means of conservation. The goal of my project was to make a case in favor of trophy hunting and hunting in general as highly effective means of wildlife conservation, so the exigence of my project was figuring out how to do so. The revenue generated by these activities almost entirely goes directly towards conservation programs and efforts, which cannot be said for the proposed alternative activities such as photo tourism. Personally, I’m not a fan of hunting, and definitely not a fan of trophy hunting; the idea of spending all that time and effort to kill an endangered animal makes me very uncomfortable. It just feels wrong. But, now that I’ve taken the time to study the topic in depth, I understand that if we wish to continue to view and experience beautiful animals such as lions and rhinos, we must allow and protect hunting and trophy hunting to continue worldwide.
When approaching this project, I really wanted to challenge myself by making an argument for a difficult topic. It’s been a really long time since I’ve had to do a project like this, so I treated it like an exercise in getting my mind to start thinking like a student again. So, in a way, my target audience is people like me: folks who may not know anything about trophy hunting beyond sensationalized headlines about how barbaric and selfish it is, folks who may be disgusted by hunting or trophy hunting, etc. because these feelings of disgust arise from a love for wildlife and nature, and it hurts to imagine something so beautiful being destroyed. This is an important audience because this is the audience that must be swayed in order to guarantee worldwide protections for these activities. My hope is to be able to force people to confront their potential misconceptions about hunting and trophy hunting, as well as confront their own ideas about how wildlife conservation should look. It’s really easy to say “I believe in wildlife conservation and I support wildlife conservation,” but it’s a lot harder to come up with reasonable ways to fund conservation.
The visual aspect of this project was one I initially struggled with. I have a great deal of experience writing argumentative essays, but very limited experience with manipulating imagery to make an argument. To be honest, I have very limited experience with manipulating imagery at all. I still have to ask my girlfriend for help when I want to make my own riff on whatever popular meme is circulating at the moment. I think for this topic, a photo essay made the most sense as a visual mode because it gave me ample room to speak about the topic and make an argument like I would in any other essay. This allowed me to utilize my strengths while also sharpening my weaknesses a bit. I used Fotor to manipulate a handful of copyright-free images I had downloaded from Pexels. Initially, I had about ten photos, but was able to narrow the list down to the five strongest images for my purposes. Balance in my work is important to me, and I was worried ten images would end up clogging up my project.
For the photos I manipulated, I wanted to juxtapose wildlife itself against conservation efforts funded by hunting and trophy hunting. Especially in trophy hunting, some of the species being hunted are critically endangered, so I really wanted to highlight that dire feeling. To accomplish that, for the pictures of actual animals I took all the warmth out of the photos by lowering the highlights, tone, and vibrance all the way down. For the photos representing conservation efforts, I tried to make them as warm and vibrant as possible, because I felt that the warmth carried a feeling of hope with it. I wanted these photos to feel positive alongside the negative animal-centered photos. I put a vignette on each photo because to me it represents a sort of tunnel vision, really highlighting how crucial the situation is. I also included text in some of the images to either give them a bit more context, or make a point about the endangered status of the animals.
I think the argument in my project works really well. I did my best to make it as linear and easy to understand as possible. I feel like I’ve done stronger work in the past, but I’m really proud at how this came out because it’s the first essay I’ve written in three years. It felt like a really great re-introduction. That said, I feel like next time I should begin with a focus on the visual aspects of my project rather than the argumentative aspects of my project. Once I was able to briefly speak to Professor Carvajal on the 21st of February, I had a much better idea of how to orient my project and how to use my photos in a meaningful way, but I should have had that better idea much sooner than that. I think I’d choose a topic more local to me and easier to engage with in the future.
If you’d like to know more about this topic, below you can find the sources that guided me through the creation of this photo essay:
O’Brian, Bill. “Hunters as Conservationists.” FWS.gov, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 11 Apr. 2022, https://www.fws.gov/story/hunters-conservationists.
Rott, Nathan. “Decline in Hunters Threatens How U.S. Pays for Conservation.” NPR, NPR, 20 Mar. 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/03/20/593001800/decline-in-hunters-threatens-how-u-s-pays-for-conservation.
Semcer, Catherine E. “Conservationists Should Support Trophy Hunting.” PERC, The Property and Environment Research Center, 1 Oct. 2019, https://www.perc.org/2019/09/06/conservationists-should-support-trophy-hunting/.
Abumrad, Jad. “The Rhino Hunter.” Radiolab, Simon Adler & Robert Krulwich, WNYC, 27 May 2021, radiolab.org, https://radiolab.org/episodes/rhino-hunter.