Behind the Digital LensMusings of an Amateur Photographer

26th Jul, 2010 Looking up

I love to take photos; that’s obvious in the number I take in a year – good or bad.  Yesterday I went to our local State Park, a favorite place, to take some photos around a pond and lake.  As I was walking around the board walk next to the pond, it occurred to me that I was always looking ahead of me or down around my feet or down at the pond.  I never looked up to see what was above me besides sky and trees; I wasn’t looking to see what might be IN the trees or the sky.  What a realization that was!

We are so used to looking straight ahead or looking down at our feet or just beyond to see what we might see to take a photo of that we miss a very important part of our environment – that which is above us.  How many times, sans camera, have we looked up to see sun rays peeking over the clouds, birds in flight, flocks of birds in trees or other animals, and wish we had our camera?  And then, when we pack our gear and head out, we totally forget to look up, instead focusing on the scene before us.  Not that that is wrong, mind you, but we forget all that neat stuff we saw when we didn’t have a camera to capture that neat moment in time.

A few weeks ago, at this same state park, my wife and I were walking around an area known as the “butterfly” garden, even though it’s not been kept up well.  At my eye level I spotted a lot of butterflies that were just sitting on the tree trunk, flying or landing.  We had never seen this phenomenon before so we were both fascinated by it.  And then we looked up.  Above us were banana spiders, one large and several much smaller, scattered throughout the trees.  It was one of those rare times I thought to look up and had I not, I would have missed the spiders.  Not that I could get a decent photo of any of them because of the angle, but they were there and something that might have been overlooked.  Later that evening, while sitting on the beach by the lake, we happened to look up again and saw a Great Heron flying above us followed by two resident geese.

The environment above us should not be ignored, but often times we’re too “centered” on what is before us and below us to remember what is above us.  We might not be able to capture the moment because we’re not quick enough, but at the same time we had the moment to see things that live outside our personal space.