A Piece of Sky
The sun was just coming up as I walked outside this morning. It looked like a red disc floating through wispy layers of grayish-purple fog, and I watched it as I continued up the hill near my house. I reached the top of the hill before I knew it, and stopped for a moment to stretch and catch my breath. When I glanced back toward the horizon, I took in the view and noticed all the other stuff I hadn't seen while I was gazing at the bright red sun: lots of telephone wires, a crane and bulldozer parked at a construction site across the way, light poles, traffic, etc. It was almost jarring to see the difference between the awesome sunrise I'd been watching earlier and the wide-angle view of the beginnings of the day that I now saw. What happened?
Nothing had changed, of course, except my own view; the sun had barely risen a few degrees higher as I made the short trek up the hillside. What was different was that my focus had shifted: instead of looking only at the rising sun, maintaining that intimate connection with it, my eyes now took in everything indiscriminately and the spell was broken. Photographers are familiar with this; they zero in on some part of a landscape and crop out the extraneous things on the sides that don't contribute to the power of the composition. We can edit our own compositions too, deciding what we will and won't allow to clutter our vision at any given time.
We don't want to have tunnel vision, of course; we don't want to be overly optimistic Pollyannas, refusing to acknowledge the carnage and crap all around us. We have to look at things realistically most of the time, whatever that means; "realistic" is a far more relative term than people think it is. But sometimes it's good to narrow the focus a bit, to ignore the distractions and the drone of everyday life, and just look at that one thing that inspires or moves or encourages you. We need to take time, now and then, to feed our minds something besides the mundane reality we deal with on a daily basis. It might be a piece of the sky; it might be a few moments with a child or a dog.
What's your focus right now?
Nothing had changed, of course, except my own view; the sun had barely risen a few degrees higher as I made the short trek up the hillside. What was different was that my focus had shifted: instead of looking only at the rising sun, maintaining that intimate connection with it, my eyes now took in everything indiscriminately and the spell was broken. Photographers are familiar with this; they zero in on some part of a landscape and crop out the extraneous things on the sides that don't contribute to the power of the composition. We can edit our own compositions too, deciding what we will and won't allow to clutter our vision at any given time.
We don't want to have tunnel vision, of course; we don't want to be overly optimistic Pollyannas, refusing to acknowledge the carnage and crap all around us. We have to look at things realistically most of the time, whatever that means; "realistic" is a far more relative term than people think it is. But sometimes it's good to narrow the focus a bit, to ignore the distractions and the drone of everyday life, and just look at that one thing that inspires or moves or encourages you. We need to take time, now and then, to feed our minds something besides the mundane reality we deal with on a daily basis. It might be a piece of the sky; it might be a few moments with a child or a dog.
What's your focus right now?
Labels: Think Tank
# posted
by Rob Colfax, Senior Editor @ 8/27/2006 12:28:00 PM
