Contextual Photography

The documentation of our field conditions is a forest versus trees problem. We tend to focus our attention on the details ("trees"). The result is that our photographs highlight the flowers, people, structures and other specific attributes of our study sites. We rarely step back and document the larger context in which these details are found. New photographic devices and software are providing relatively straight forward ways to capture the "forest" view. We need to explore these alternatives from the perspectives of better documenting the context of our research, how this affects our research protocols, and the concerns for preserving and dispersing this new kind of information.