A Different Point Of View

I like to look up.

I think this is something that runs in my family because it was my sister who first introduced me to taking photographs of trees by leaning on the trunk and looking straight up, making a picture from a squirrel’s point of view (or perhaps the viewpoint of a dog who has just chased the squirrel up the tree). 

It’s extraordinary how different something can be when looked at from another angle, how all your preconceptions can be knocked sideways. Size, scale, and your own relationship to where you are all suddenly seem very altered.

Then there’s the wide angle, or the macro close-up. You can take the long view, stand back and see how everything fits into the larger landscape, or you can get in close and immerse yourself in something so intimately that everything else fades into oblivion and is lost to sight and mind.

Almost as a matter of course these days I look at my feelings from different perspectives, sometimes backing off and seeing how they fit into the larger scheme of things, and sometimes observing them, fondly and face-to-face, trying at the same time to be detached and not to pass judgement.

Sometimes I sit for a while, just watch the the flow of things, watch the ripples…..and sometimes I look deeper, and try to see beneath the surface.