Forest for the Trees

Some challenges in life are easy to solve – but others can leave us scratching our heads looking for a workable solution. Take this tree, for example.

The lone tree caught my eye with its vibrant patches of orange and yellow mixed with all the leaves that still remained green. I’m a sucker for fall foliage, and I thought this colorful tree in transition might make for an interesting photograph.

But as I've seen many times before, what catches our eye and what works well as a picture can be two entirely different things. As I looked through the viewfinder, I saw nothing that felt worthy of a shutter click. The background was a hodgepodge of buildings – too distracting. I moved in closer for a tight shot of the leaves, but I wasn’t happy with those results either, because I hadn't brought along the right lens needed for that type of shot.

I finally decided to try something more experimental. I knelt down low to shoot upwards toward the sky, framing the tree against the plain white overcast background, eliminating all the buildings from view – and then I twisted the zoom ring on the lens during a long exposure, creating a whooshing whir of fall colors. I'd never suggest using this zoom-out technique on every photo, but in this case I felt it added an impressionistic touch to the colorful palette.

Is there a life lesson in here? Perhaps there is.

Sometimes we can get so caught up in the details of a problem that we miss the bigger picture – not seeing the forest for the trees, as the saying goes.

If we allow ourselves the freedom to explore different solutions, zooming out metaphorically to a larger perspective, we just might see the forest – and the trees – in a different way.

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