What is Real, Really?

January 29, 2023

Peaceful or chaotic? Healing or harmful? What story am I telling?

Sunrise 1/24/23

Photography is all about perspective. For instance, the same object taken from a distance with my zoom lens (below: left) vs close up with my phone (right) looks like two completely different scenes:

This change in perspective changes the feeling - for me, the first feels quiet and peaceful and the other feels busy (yet I love all the detail). They are both ‘real’. I think the photo on the left represents what caught my eye better than the photo on the right.

The sunrise can look different when taken with the same lens in the same spot if I shift from standing up to sitting on the ground:

Sunrise 1/27/23 - standing up

Sunrise 1/27/23 - 1 minute later, same spot, sitting down

The same scene looks different still by lowering the camera to the ground and slightly altering the angle towards the water:

Sunrise 1/27/23 - another minute later, but lower and tipping the phone towards the water

Was it a calm, still morning? It was actually windy, but it feels calmer to me on the ground and the photos reflect this. It’s one of the many reasons I value being able to sit down on the ground so highly and miss it when I can’t (as I wrote about here).

People often ask if I “photoshop” my photos. I don’t know how to use Photoshop, but I do use Lightroom to edit photos. Typically I’m editing for light, color tone, contrast, straightening the horizon, cropping as needed, and adding a watermark. (Side note: our eyes are so amazing that even the BEST cameras cannot deliver the scene the way my eyes do.) I post very few photos that didn’t have at least some minor editing. A different photographer in the same location at the same time might produce a very different photo. Both would be “real”, but they would be different.

A little snow can also change the scene completely. 1/25/23

I try to refrain from changing images in ways that don’t feel respectful to the beauty I saw through my lens. I admit it makes me crazy when people superimpose a huge moon over a skyline in an unnatural way - though that too can be created by perspective (being many miles away from the skyline will make the moon look much larger). I also struggle with highly oversaturated sunrise shots unless they are clearly made to be artistic and not look “real”. I wonder if are we creating such a constant stream of hyped-up and overdone photos that people no longer appreciate the actual moon and sunrise when they see them.

That said, I think macros (magnified close-ups) are magical even if I will never see something that way with my eyes. I have great respect for artists who take a photo and through some kind of editing magic create amazing artwork that is clearly art and yet has great respect for what was seen through the lens. This is all just my opinion and my judgment (and boy would I like to be less judgmental, surely there’s room for all kinds of art in the world). It’s possible that simply by knowing how to look at things differently or having a zoom lens through which to look I am also creating a world where people don’t appreciate what they actually see.

A sunrise view through the zoom lens looks different too. 1/24/23

Writing is also all about perspective. Every story is told from the perspective of the writer and even the writer can often tell a story from different perspectives if they choose. It doesn’t take much to see that most stories in our media are hyped-up and oversaturated and that the desire for “clicks” keeps leading us further and further down this path. Yet I suspect that most writers are not doing this consciously (ok, maybe the headline editors are).

Wonder what the world looks like from this cardinal’s perspective?

Where this gets really interesting to me is the stories I am telling myself about what’s happening in my life. (I’ve written about this before, here - and I will probably write about it again!) I struggle a lot with fear. When my fear is high, my faith is low. The stories I tell in this state tend to produce a lot of “second arrows”:

Parable of the Second Arrow: It is said the Buddha once asked a student, ‘If a person is struck by an arrow, is it painful? If the person is struck by a second arrow, is it even more painful?’ He then went on to explain, ‘In life, we can’t always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. This second arrow is optional.’

This storyteller looks so innocent but she’s been making a lot of noise!

I’m often aware my reaction isn’t helpful. A racing mind makes it harder to know what steps to take and to hear the guidance of the universe. Tensing my muscles does damage to my physical body. I am trying to better accept the reactions I have and respond to them with kindness and nurturing. I am also trying to find ways to bring myself back to a healthier state more quickly without squeezing my body into stillness. To eliminate more of the second (and third and fourth and fifth) arrows. I have found it hard - but maybe that too is just a story? I wonder, has my inner storyteller also learned to amp up the story to make sure she gets attention?

I’m guessing each of the common mergansers would tell a different story about who’s fish it should be.

Sometimes my story will shift because I read or hear something that changes my perspective. For instance, I used a sleep app with a coach that suggested if I woke up in the night to just gently tell myself I’d probably go back to sleep and if I didn’t it would be ok. It’s amazing how much more easily I go back to sleep (most of the time) with this suggestion from an “expert”.

Sometimes the shift in perspective happens with experience. For the first 30+ years of my driving life, I drove small cars and convertibles. The story I told myself was that I was a terrible driver in the snow. A few years ago I bought a Subaru and discovered that I wasn’t a terrible driver in the snow - I just had the wrong equipment! I still hesitate in snow and have to remind myself that it’s different now. I have to feel my way into the new boundaries, but my perspective has changed.

Sometimes the shift is mysterious. Every week I seem to be down to the wire writing these posts. This week I finished at about the same time I did last week, yet this week feels calm and last week felt like a struggle. This week I had faith I could get to a coherent end and last week I did not. I can’t explain why. For several days this week, my fear was high and my faith was low. I’m exhausted from the struggle. Then today it was reversed. I’m grateful - and I wish I could reproduce it more often.

Always grateful for the peaceful times - 1/21/23

What helps us change our perspective and the story we are telling? What helps us find that faith and enable our nervous system to stand down? These are questions I’m still exploring.

As I create photographic art and written words, I want to keep asking myself these questions: What is my responsibility as a writer/photographer to the story I am conveying? What is my responsibility to those who receive this work? Am I being ‘real’ with myself? Not in the name of perfectionism or even of being as ‘authentic’ as possible, but simply from the perspective of being kind and ‘doing no harm’. I want to ask these questions of my inner stories as well.

She has questions too I think.

While we are talking about perspective, Heather Cox Richardson shared the following this morning and it moved me to tears. Tyre Nichols, the young man who was brutally beaten to death by Memphis police, was a photographer. We can view his life through the lens of his death, but we can also view his life through the lens of his creation. If you want to see some of the beauty he shared with the world in his short life, you can find his website here. I wept when I opened the page and saw this quote: “A good photographer must love life more than photography itself. — Joel Strasser”