Sugar Coated

Everything is better with sugar! Well, maybe not everything but a little sugar coating goes a long way.

I did not use any layers for this image but did fade out the colours and bumped up the exposure in Lightroom. The strong red in the original capture was not the softness that I was seeing.

Sometimes when I take a photo I see it differently than how it actually is. Well, this is true for a lot of dud shots but what I am referring to now is seeing with my heart and possibility, not my eyes alone. The mood is present in capture, even if based on my perspective, my heart.

I wonder if this is similar to thinking in a different language than we grew up with. It is certainly thinking and seeing in a new way, a different way than the many years I lived without a camera.

Seeing and Knowing

I don't see clearly yet.
I don't know fully yet.
But one day...

Seeing

Sometimes we need to see things from a different perspective to see things at all. Here is a good example. The gaps between the bricks on a wall are home to sprouts of moss. Looking straight on, it looks like green grout and the assumption is made that mossy mounds fill the valleys. On closer inspection, they are not mounds at all. The sprouts reach further than we think. We see each one growing and reaching, instead of just as a mound or mass of, well, green.

Perhaps we can learn a thing or two from this. When we see groups of people do we make certain assumptions that stop us from looking closer to see the individuals? Or do we notice that each one is growing and reaching and living? They are not just one thing. They are not just green.

Seeing Woodlands

Was something there for me to see? Indeed there was.

The trunks' strong lines, the branches' chaos, the grasses' softness and the bark's boldness...these are what drew me to get out of my jeep to take a closer look...not their separateness from one another but rather their togetherness in their differences.

Now my eyes seem to dance around the image but not because there is no place to land but rather the movement is the vehicle for my seeing. Locked on one thing, one branch, one trunk, one blade of grass, I would miss what is really to be seen.