Natural Order #33, Grey County, Ontario, Canada, Spring 2020© Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto / Flowers Gallery, London

The pandemic-era restrictions on travel and social interactions have prompted everyone to adapt, not least photographers, who can't work from home as easily as some. After all, to take pictures, you need subjects, and the living room has its limits.

Thankfully, parks and forests have made the cut for essential service, and we are still allowed to visit the great outdoors. No doubt this new condition is converting many to nature photography who would otherwise point their lenses elsewhere. Following Orson Welles's dictum that "The enemy of art is the absence of limitation," it may be said that exploring one's local bio-region makes for a livelier creative constraint than hibernating at home.

Just ask Edward Burtynsky. Finding himself in lockdown this past spring, Canada's celebrated documentarian of human nature and "our collect...