Revealing Behaviour

Snow and ice scenes seem to be good at revealing the nature of human behaviour because evidence of human presence, or indeed lack of presence, can clearly be seen.  Of course to capture such behaviour the photo has to be taken before the next heavy snow fall or before the ice and/or snow melts!

In the situations shown here there are examples where advice and the needs of people have been ignored, along with people being compliant and non-compliant with the prevailing “rules”.  As ever, the series of pictures are simple in concept to begin with, then I throw in a bigger question, for which I usually have no answer!

I should say that this series resulted from me simply looking for “winter landscapes” for a competition, then I realised I had some winter photos with a human element, which seemed to be better at revealing the nature of human behaviour than scenes without ice and/or snow.

The first one above shows an off piste area of mountain, the pisted area being at the foot of the mountain to the left.  Off piste areas although fun, can be dangerous, as shown in the photo below.

It’s generally accepted that people should take rubbish home with them, but here the cartons were thrown out of a parked car.

It was good of Oldham Council to provide a good quality off-road cycle and pedestrian route, but it was clearly too much to bother with during snowy conditions.  In Denmark, for example, people continue to cycle in such weather because the authorities see the value in clearing the route of snow in order to keep their population fit and healthy.

Nice to see a positive image of compliance with the road markings, ie nobody parked over it during the night.

It’s just a nice photo of a glacier in the Swiss Alps, or is it?  It was taken nearly 15 years ago so I wonder if it is now larger or smaller and therefore how this feeds into the climate change problem.