Final Video & Justification

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Kylie Spindler, Ashton Martini

Justification

            Throughout this course, a vast amount of material was covered regarding different perspectives of nature and personal experiences from different environmentalists. In addition, we each interacted with nature copious times through nature observations, where we implemented some common themes that we learned. It is a challenge to condense everything covered throughout the semester, so we decided to focus on a few common themes that stuck out to us. The overarching theme included the dynamics between human interaction with nature. We as humans can either alter nature for better or for worse. This also leads into a theme of industrial tourism and how threatening it can be to the natural environment. Between our many interactions with nature, we have directly observed the circle of life through the active work of the biotic pyramid. These themes drove the structure of our video and what we decided to discuss.

            Since we participated in many self-driven nature observations, nature activities during class, and volunteer work in the Fort Worth Nature Reserve and Rescue, it was fitting to film this video with one final nature observation in the park. This brought our whole semester’s worth of experiences full circle and allowed us to show examples in nature that reflect our previously discussed themes. In addition, we included a slideshow of each of our ten best photos to display examples of our self-led nature observations that we covered in our journals and summarize our journeys. During these visualizations, we discussed our themes of human interaction with nature and the biotic pyramid. The second section of our video included interview portions from both of us. Relationships with nature are personalized and vary between people, so allowing us both to express our different experiences was the most beneficial choice. This course has altered our perceptions of nature and what it means to us. To end the video with a more lighthearted topic, we discussed what our most and least favorite animals are in nature.

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