3 Things I Learned in Grad School ~ Jan 13 2017

Below are the three things I learned this week. They are Tilden's 6 Principles of Interpretation, HDR for photography, and Hume's Naturalistic Fallacy.

Tilden’s 6 Principles of Interpretation
I have a certificate in Informal Science Education, a certificate in Museum Interpretation, was a docent for two different museums (soon to be three!), an “Information Ambassador” for the San Diego Zoo, and ran a little Nature Center for 8 years. In all that time and all that training I never came across the man who first organized and ‘codified’ interpretation. Freeman Tilden was hired by the National Park Service when most people would be retiring. After a whole career spanning at least three decades of being an international reporter for several media outlets, Tilden then spent another three or so decades working with the National Park Service to study and improve their interpretation activities. Several papers, books, lectures, and internal NPS work led to his philosophy. Out this philosophy came his 6 Principles I outlined below. I have no idea how I have never come across this guy before but I suppose that is one of the reasons I am graduate school…

1. Any interpretation that does not somehow relate what is being displayed or described to something within the personality or experience of the visitor will be sterile.
2. Information, as such, is not Interpretation. Interpretation is revelation based upon information. But they are entirely different things. However all interpretation includes information.
3. Interpretation is an art, which combines many arts, whether the materials presented are scientific, historical or architectural. Any art is in some degree teachable.
4. The chief aim of Interpretation is not instruction, but provocation.
5. Interpretation should aim to present a whole rather than a part, and must address itself to the whole man rather than any phase.
6. Interpretation addressed to children (say up to the age of twelve) should not be a dilution of the presentation to adults, but should follow a fundamentally different approach. To be at its best it will require a separate program.

 
 
HDR and “Shooting to the Right”

A great example of HDR from: https://gardencottageprints.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/hdr-and-how-the-process-works/

Technically I am in graduate school so this belongs here but I did not learn this from school. I learned these photo techniques from extracurricular activities and a very instructive 2 hour lunch with a great photographer.
 
HDR: high dynamic range. I'm fascinated by this (google HDR pics and you’ll see why). It’s awesome. Basically the idea is that our eye is better than a camera (our eye catches a larger range of light where a camera catches a little more than a third of what our eye does) so to get a photo that the eye can relate to better you shoot at least 3 shots. One shot is normal, one shot is underexposed, and the other is overexposed. Then you combine all three. Newer cameras do it automatically if you set it up that way but most cameras allow you set it up in "bracketing function" and Lightroom has a method to make it work. There is a downside and it is that it doesn't work terrific with blue or white skies (forests, grey skies, lower light, is do-able). It requires stationary shots of all three and is best indoors or semi-indoors. It creates vibrant photos with depth and substance and I can’t wait to play with.
 
Regarding “shooting to the right,” I learned a year ago how to read and edit with my histogram but I didn’t know the importance (or reason) to shoot with the histogram. I've watched a couple youtube videos of how to read a histogram and that has helped. On a histogram, the left is how much darkness you have in a shot and the right is how much light. There is no ideal histogram bell curve, just whatever works. However, the further right the majority of your curve is the more 'information' (pixels, wavelengths, color, etc) it contains. As the scale moves more right you get more information in a logarithmic growth. This means there is literally more than 10x more information of shots w a histogram heavy on a right curve. This allows you a lot more flexibility when you edit, crop for production, etc. It basically gives you more to work with.
 
Hume’s Naturalistic Fallacy
This is going to be a very brief statement because it is the kernel of thought that will evolve into at least two presentations I’m going to give and to how I think about conservation in general. Basically, Hume says we cannot get an “ought” from an “is.” This is profound to me because I have been working under the assumption that you can get value out of fact and more knowledge but that is not true a priori. This has huge ramifications for dealing with valuing species and habitat that I will explore later. For now, I will quote Gorke’s book The Death of Our Planet’s Species that I read last year but am re-approaching with a different eye:
 
“Even more remarkable is the observation that in the more theoretical field of environmental ethics naturalistic fallacies are repeatedly presented without explicitly questioning Hume’s Law. This is revealed, for example, by the original purely descriptive concept of ‘ecological balance,’ which literature on environmental ethics almost always describes as an ecologically ideal state to which we should aspire. I can envision two reasons for such clearly unintended violations of Hume’s Law. First, with relationships between humans and nature the naturalistic fallacy seems to be more difficult to recognize than in the case of a relationship between one human and another. To consult nature as an advisor when dealing with nature is apparently more plausible than when dealing with another human. Second, in public discourse the terms “ecology” and “ecological” are employed so often in an ideological, political, or even moral sense that it is no wonder that their use results in misunderstandings and erroneous interpretations. // But it would be a mistake to think that naturalistic fallacies are a purely academic problem and of no significance for discussions about the environment or the practical problems of nature and species protection. Uncritically blurring the discrepancies between is and ought, facts and values, continually leads to considerable confusion in many different areas of society and also results in ecologically veiled ideologies and illusions.” (Gorke, p. 50)