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Photographer Uses Tech To Tell Story On Light Pollution

Jim Richardson, a photographer with National Geographic, spoke at Chautauqua Institution this week on the theme "After Dark: The World of Nighttime." Photo by Georgia Pressley/The Chautauquan Daily

CHAUTAUQUA — A National Geographic photographer wants people to give the night a special place in their minds.

Jim Richardson thinks a lot about the night sky and how it can be reclaimed. He also wants to end light pollution, and he shared his views with and Amphitheater audience Monday at Chautauqua Institution on the theme “After Dark: The World of Nighttime.”

Richardson said that places to view the night are diminishing in the world. It’s hard to see the night sky in any big city in the United States.

Technology, he noted, has helped with his ability to tell his story about light pollution.

“Digital cameras had gotten us to the place that we could really do this,” he said. “We could really do a story about light pollution — the laws of the night sky. We could see the Milky Way. We could make the images that would really make a visual story out of it. Back in the era of film that was virtually impossible to do.”

He showed a map of the Earth at night and he said it is actually a depiction of the night sky as it is lit up from the ground. He said it’s also a population map, and a gross domestic product map (GDP) as well.

“It’s also a map of paved roads,” he said. “You have more light pollution where you have more paved roads.”

One region of the world that is not so lighted is Africa. Sub Sarahan Africa is where inhabitants still use fire as a light source, he said.

He said that whenever someone looks at something in nature like a tree, a body of water or a mountain, that all of the elements in those trees, in those bodies of water, and in those mountains came from the stars.

“All of it (is) forged within the hearts of stores,” Richardson said. “So we are not just observers. All the atoms in our bodies formed within the hearts of stars. It’s the only place you can make complex atoms. So we are not just the observers. We are the participants in this great journey and I think it’s worthwhile for us to then to consider with our knowledge with what we know how we think about the night with that in mind.”

The photographer said about 80% of children born in this generation will probably never see the Milky Way again. He showed a timetable of how from the 1950s light pollution was clustered around big cities. He estimated by 2050, that a large part of Earth will be emitting light pollution. He said, for example, that the light atop the Luxor Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas can be seen for 250 miles.

The photographer also noted that light pollution is disrupting the migration patterns of birds. Lights on oil platforms and wind turbines are also troublesome.

“Those (lights on) oil platforms are significant, not because they pollute the sky for humans, but that because they misguide birds on their migrations. That’s the big problem of those things out in remote areas. That same kind of thing can happen on those wind farms,” he said.

Light pollution also causes problems for humans, Richardson said. Light pollution disrupts circadian rhythms, suppresses Melatonin, increases risk of breast cancer, and glare makes driving unsafe.

Richardson said there is a big cure to light pollution — turn the lights down. There has to be a way that people can live with the lights turned down.

He told audience members that when a meeting is scheduled about street lighting in their hometowns, that they should raise their voices to make intelligent decisions about how people can live in a world of limits and be happy doing it.

People need to make peace with the universe.

“It’s not just a technological solution. It’s a moral solution as well. We have to start thinking that if we demand that we get everything we want, we may end up with nothing when it comes to the dark skies, and that would be a horrible thing to lose so quickly, not just for us, but for all the generations to follow,” he said.

Richardson has produced more than 50 stories for National Geographic and National Geographic Traveler magazines since starting at National Geographic in 1984. His work on environmental issues has covered topics ranging from feeding the planet to protecting our night skies from light pollution, featured in a National Geographic cover story on “The End of Night: Why We Need Darkness,” according to assembly.chq.org. Since starting his career as the Topeka Capital-Journal, Richardson’s work has taken him around the world, from the tops of volcanic peaks to below the surface of the soil that provides our food, from the Arctic to the Antarctic and many places in between.

He has worked for The Denver Post and has been published in Time, Life, Sports Illustrated, and The New York Times. His 40 years of photographing life in the Kansas town of Cuba, population 230, was published in National Geographic and featured twice by “CBS News Sunday Morning.” His 1979 study of adolescence, “High School USA,” is now considered a photo essay classic. His “Reflections from a Wide Spot in the Road,” an audiovisual presentation, received a Crystal AMI Award. He has received three Special Recognition Awards in the World of Understanding contest, and numerous Pictures of the Year honors. Richardson was named the Native Sons and Daughters’ Kansan of the Year in 2007, and in 2015 he was honored by his fellow National Geographic photographers as their “Photographer’s Photographer.” Jim Richardson’s presentation and visit to Chautauqua is coordinated in partnership with the International League of Conservation Photographers.

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