David Harp's Chesapeake Bay Lecture/Slide Show

After attending Mr. Harp's Lecture tonight on the Chesapeake Bay and the work that he has done there I felt very moved by his work and intrigued at how he did it. I have never been to the Chesapeake Bay, but after hearing his talk and seeing his photographs I feel that I have a good sense of everyday life in the area. Also, I thought this lecture was interesting because most of the lectures that I have attended are lecturers standing in front of a crowd talking, then answering questions. That tactic is fine and very effective at times, but through seeing his photographs I feel so much more informed and knowledgeable about the area and its inhabitants. I think this is because in a typical lecture and/or from a book your imagination (which is different from person to person) plays a large role in the mental picture you you create. Whereas with the photographs you know exactly what the scenery looks like. Also, He did a great job of telling a story with his pictures, then complimented that with spoken words to give added strength to the points that he was trying to get across. One example of this that stuck out in my mind was with the oyster fishers. He started off by showing pictures of many fishing boats with multiple fisherman on each. Then, he showed more modern pictures where there were sometimes only a few to a couple of boats, most of which only had one to two fisherman on them. Just those few pictures alone told the audience that there has been a large decline in oyster fishing in the bay. Then, he started going into the topic of how there were no restrictions on fishing oysters and how the boom in population, and therefore pollution had contributed to a 95% decrease in the amount of oyster's harvested, which is due to a huge decline in population.

Another photograph which stuck out to me was the one of the house on the island from back at the turn of the 20th century. He went on to say that the isolated island had 400 people living there at one time. Now all that was left was that one house, which had water completely surrounding it up to its foundation, and a cemetery. All the other structures had been abandoned and crumpled over time due to the island slowly being covered by the rising water levels.

To conclude I was glad that I attended Mr. Harp's lecture and slide show. It was an interesting way to learn about the area and his life's work. I felt that the photographs really added to the story that he was trying to portray. With that I felt that he wasn't trying to just tell a story, he showed us the real live snapshots of the story as it unfolded. For example, I feel like if it was someone up at a podium telling us about the flowers, soft shell crabs, the oysters, muskrats, fish, and otters that I wouldn't have gotten as much out of it as I did with Mr. Harp showing pictures of each of these individual animals.