Garrett Fisher has published “Around the Summit: Flying Grand Teton” and “Yellowstone’s Hot Springs: An Aviator’s Perspective,” aerial photography books that document incredible beauty as found in each of these national parks. One may ask the relationship to economics, and while it may not be immediately obvious, the tenets of economic innovation call for noticing trends, correlations, and undercurrents present in our society in otherwise occluded fashions, yet they remain in the open. In concert with a theme of noticing the unconventional, each book looks at these national resources in ways unavailable to most: from the cockpit of a two-seater 1949 Piper PA-11 aircraft. Piloted by Mr. Fisher, who is also the photographer at the same time, views are up close and personal to the grand peaks of the Tetons, or voyeuristically directly overhead, looking into the heart of hot springs from otherwise forbidden angles.
While the works are primarily of an artistic and scenic nature, it causes some pondering to examine the value proposition around national parks. One of “America’s best ideas,” national parks are a testament to both specifically valuing natural beauty and excluding it from standard economics in order to protect it. Market pricing usually ascribes a exclusionary high pricing to things that have inherent value, yet at the same time, we recognize as a nation the limits of unfettered market forces, as the presumed resulting exploitation of resources within these parks would be something pitiable in the eyes of the American people. In a way, it’s a capitalist paradox, though for the moment, it is something that was merely enjoyed from above.