Nature’s Instruments showcases 19 landscape photographs that illustrate the differences between human innovation and the natural world. During the 2025 fall quarter, I worked with a 4×5 field camera in two contrasting environments: the Mojave Desert and four places of scientific research. The desert’s unaltered terrain has little human impact compared to the highly controlled nature of the laboratories. By considering these starkly different landscapes, we can imagine a future shaped by minimal human intervention compared to one engineered through highly controlled scientific environments. The project contrasts our role as both the cause of environmental problems and the creators of their solutions and reveals the complexity of our relationship with the natural world.