Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
CASPER, Wyo. (AP) — The picture shows a young girl, her blond hair haloed by the bright sky, her tennis shoes gripping a large chunk of sand-colored rock. Far below her are the pin-thin lines of streams, the metallic reflections of lakes, and the dark peppering of trees. Draped over the girl's slender shoulders, and rippling in an invisible breeze, is a Wyoming state flag.
The picture was taken by Wes Richner, a senior at Natrona County High School. In March, the photo hangs at the Natrona County Public Library, one of a series of statewide winners in the Nature Conservancy's "I Believe in Conservation," high school photography contest.
Molly Olsen, a junior at NC, also won. The two teenagers will receive $50, and their photos will go on tour throughout the spring and summer to towns like Cody, Jackson and Lander.
"Our initiative is really to get kids out into nature and the natural world, find new ways to capture what nature means to them," said Sara Deur, operations program manager for the conservation agency.
This is the seventh year of the photography contest, and NC has taken part since the beginning.
That is partially the work of Sheila McHattie, Wes and Molly's visual arts teacher at NC. She is a decades-long veteran of the Natrona County School District and wrote the district's photography curriculum. In the low-ceilinged warren of rooms that constitutes the art department at NC, McHattie has built an artistic haven for the kids, a hodgepodge of antique desks, funky lamps and olive green filing cabinets.
McHattie's students' participation in the photography contest is a continuation of the kids' annual visit to Yellowstone National Park, she said. McHattie impresses on her students the importance photography has played in the history of Wyoming's landscape, she said.
When the photographer Ansel Adams visually captured the West in his now iconic photographs, he shared a connection to the land through images no one had seen before, she said. That work, and the photographer's advocacy, helped develop the public park system in the U.S. and spurred a desire to increase conservation efforts, the teacher said.
But it wasn't the famous photographer, or the history, that appealed to Molly. It was her personal experience. She didn't expect to win, or receive a cash prize. But she has seen the importance of conservation in her hometown, she said.
"I've lived in Casper my whole life, and growing up there was never this many houses and buildings," she said. "It kind of bothers me, because they are building on all this pretty land."
The image that she submitted to the contest was of a frozen lake high in the Bighorn Mountains.
She feels like the mountains are part of her, she said. And living in Wyoming is a privilege.
Molly's personal relationship to the state's wild landscape is not unique, said Deur.
"(The students) understand conservation and what it means," she said. "They all have their own reason for why they want to value it."
For Wes, who grew up on a ranch, interacting with nature is a heritage most kids in the state inherit, he said.
"I think most of Wyoming kids like being in the outdoors . going out and exploring," he said.
But while appreciating the land is integral to Wes's mindset, explaining it is less so. He said he wasn't sure how his picture captures the essence of the category he entered: "People in Wild Places."
With a society that's more and more plugged into technology, many kids appear oblivious to the natural world, McHattie said. The photo contest gives her students a chance to articulate their life here in Wyoming and how nature plays its part in that.
Wes's photo of the girl in the mountains was taken from Medicine Bow Peak. He hiked up a 7-mile incline and took the photo with a GoPro camera, he said.
The edges of the horizon in the image turn slightly down as though the picture were held inside a globe — as though Wes captured the curve of the earth.
___
Information from: Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune, http://www.trib.com
Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
