underwater kingfisher etc

[Anthony]

It is a view of balance of the interests of man vs nature. Only if man sees himself superior to all other creatures can land use be described in commercial terms.

By the way, Anthony, please edit your next to last post. Some code tags obviously are missing so formatting is all wrong.

I don't want to add to the discussion, except to say that Peter is correct, although the specific underlying issues are different in different countries.

I am not sure what is wrong with the formatting of my post (apart from some of the paragraph spacing).  It looks fine on my screen.  Please let me know what the problems are and I will try to correct them.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

The entire post appeared as a block quote. Thus impossible to see what you added or quoted.

[Anthony]

On my screen my comments appear in bold.  I did this by typing in the comment, highlighting the comment, and pressing  the B button above the typing window.  This inserted b in square brackets before my comment and forward slash b in square brackets after it.  This put my comment into bold text.

It still looks fine to me.  I wonder if it is showing wrongly for others.

[John Geerts]

I only see ONE quote, and not really understandable who is saying what.

[Anthony]

I wonder what is happening here.  This is a screenshot of how my comment appears on my screen.

Over to the technical experts!

[Jack Dahlgren]

The blue box is usually expected to enclose quoted material.

You have put your comments within the blue box and designated it as different using bold formatting.

There is not a technical problem, but there is a style problem which only you can solve.

Best practice is to end the quote using /quote within square brackets before adding your text. To start a new section of quoted material use quote within square brackets to start a new section of quotation like I have done below.

Don't believe everything you read on the internet. -Abraham Lincoln 1862

Add your text after the /quote tag.

[Les Olson]

I wonder what is happening here.  This is a screenshot of how my comment appears on my screen.

Over to the technical experts!

The problem is that when someone clicks "quote" in order to reply to your post-within-a-post, everything disappears, because only the most recent text is preserved in the blue box in the reply. 

What is unethical is treating others as a means to an end, rather than as an end in themselves. 

A photographic example of treating a person as a mean to an end is photographing them without their consent.

The idea that it is perfectly OK to treat the natural world as a means to an end is at the root of all the environmental damage done by humans, and as long as that idea dominates thinking the environmental destruction will continue. It is a fantasy to imagine that the natural world can be saved by making it the means to a lucrative end, because always, sooner or later, people have found a yet-more-lucrative end that the natural world is in the way of.

What links ivory poaching and the underwater kingfisher photograph is that both are being justified by the assumption that it is OK to treat the natural world as a means to an end.  The fact that in one case the end requires a large mammal to be killed and in the other it requires only a few fish to be killed makes no difference of principle.  Of course it is possible to photograph the natural world in a way that does not treat it as a means to an end, but whether that is the case for any particular photograph is a question the photographer has to answer before the shutter clicks.  Asking "How do you know the animal's behaviour is being changed?" is beside the point: if you do not know that it isn't being changed the photograph is unethical.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Please note that while off-topics may be entertaining and even valuable at times, they also capable of disrupting the NG communication lines and as a consequence even divide members into groupings. This is against site policy and one of the reasons why we don't support Off-topic boards or content.

We note the opinions on the question(s) and ethical issues derived from the initial post are highly varied. The NG Community cannot hope to solve such issues on its own. Basically there is a larger, political scope at play.

I am going to lock this thread to make it contain the informative content it has generated from all parties contributing. Any reader can digest whatever views have been put forward and make up their own mind about the state of the affair.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

We decided to open the thread again. As long as the contributors abide the NG Guide Lines, the thread will remain in that state.

[Anthony]

Not wishing to reopen  the debate, but thank you to Jack and Les for putting me right on the technique for inserting comments.

[PeterN]

I won't join the debate but wanted to thank Elsa  for posting this link. I've always wanted to photograph the kingfisher - my personal favourite bird - so this might be an opportunity for someone with eyes that are not so good as they used to be.

[elsa hoffmann]